Since the Taliban entered Kabul on 15 August, politicians from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other Hindu nationalist ideologues have manipulated fears for the rights of women and minorities in Afghanistan in order to fan the flames of already rampant islamophobia in India.
It would be better, however, if the crisis in Afghanistan prompted some much needed soul searching in India. For the question must be asked: has life for women, religious minorities, and oppressed castes in India during the last seven years of BJP rule been staggeringly different than what is about to befall those in Afghanistan?
In the ‘new’ Afghanistan, it is alleged that the Taliban will implement laws that will relegate Shias, non-Muslims and women to second-class citizenship. Hindu nationalists have used this to draw favourable comparisons with India, suggesting that Indian Muslims should be glad to live where they do. Yet even a cursory glance at the laws brought in by India’s current government suggests that it is targeting Muslims by taking a wrecking ball to the country’s secular constitution.
