There is a vicious thread.
Slamming Taliban is a patriotic ‘fashion statement’ in some quarters. But, in the other camp too, there is undue statements from Muslim clerics and political stars to hail Taliban.
In Amitava Kumar’s fictional work, ‘Husband of a Fanatic’; there is a reference to communal violence and also that both sides – the Hindus and the Muslims – are keen on rolling back the clock.
Can we do it today and undo some old pages like the gory Partition?
This question has its own relevance in today’s post-August 15 world where the superpower United Stateshas been humbled. The humiliation is compared to Uncle Sam’s agony and embarrassment 46 years back in Vietnam.
The rapidity with which the South Vietnamese position collapsed on April 30, 1975 was surprising to most Americans and the rest of the world.
Developments in Afghanistan much to the chagrin of the US are quite similar to the 1975 spring offensive.
Back to the present.
Unlike India’s past, people of divergent views and varying ideas may not be keen any longer to bind together in any artificial thread of unity in this new century when India has just turned 75.
Some nations are truly born in tears. Some live through violence, arson and tears. For Afghanistan, these tears have not stopped flowing yet.
The date with yet another round of tryst with violent destiny for the war-ravaged nation could not be postponed.
On August 15, 2021, Afghanistan again fell into a terrorist outfit Taliban group.
The cultural heartland of South Asia has been hit for the second time since October 2001, about a month after the kamikaze of 9/11.
The gruesome episode left both short term and long term ramifications for its neighbours and extended neighbourhoods like India.
Taliban is said to have been ‘assisted and supported’ by Pakistan. In India, people are already debating
whether their western neighbour (Pakistan) may fall by its own weight and polarised socio-political divisions.
The issue is no longer whether Pakistan as a state helped the Taliban. The Taliban extremists have immense acceptability these days among Pakistani civil society.
Of course, there are serious security implications on India’s frontiers and perhaps more importantly the socio-political and cultural ramifications in both India and Pakistan.
A section of Indian security experts say unless Pakistan changes
how it draws out its future road map, the country will remain unstable and globally suspect.
Pakistan could face a tough time.
On August 19, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told an UNSC meet that Pak-based groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed “continue to operate with both impunity and encouragement” either against India or in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has sponsored militia as a low-cost strategy to influence things in Afghanistan and bleed India with terror attacks. So, it is relevant that in India, we discuss the Pakistani role in helping the Taliban.
Pak complexity vis-a-vis Taliban makes Hindus more antagonised against Muslims even in India.
Importantly,this time pro-Taliban double standards have not only added to miseries to the Indian foreign policy leadership, this has hurt the American prestige and ego.
These are nevertheless testing times for the multi religious India which houses 80 percent of 1.35 billion Hindus, 15 percent Muslims and less than three percent Christians.
There are also sizable numbers of Sikhs and also Jains and Buddhists.
In terms of social ramifications, of course the rise of radical Islamic ideologies has stirred a communally sensitive debate in the entire region.
Some radical Muslim leaders both in political and religious fields in India have hailed Taliban for their ‘victory’ against powerful US and other western powers.
Among others All India Personal Law Board member Maulana Sajjad Nomani and socialist leader Shafiqur Rahman Burq (age 91) have lauded Taliban little realising it is just too premature to say that the Taliban 2.0 is a changed version from the dreaded Islamic extremists were in 1990s when they disallowed women education and would even stone them for real and imaginative crimes.
The BJP or the ruling dispensation has their reasons to give spin that would suit them.
BJP leader and Hindutva mascot of a poll-bound Uttar Pradesh state, Yogi Adityanath, has said -“Some people are shamelessly supporting the Taliban. These people should be exposed.”
The rhetoric in one-upmanship has just begun. Some of it – the so-called polarisation – would suit India’s ruling party, BJP. At least the past experiences tell us so.
A Muslim trader in East Delhi says, the rise of rabid Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan
may threaten social fabric in India, but it suits BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi because there are chances that as a reaction to “what’s going around in Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) region. The stage will be set in India for greater Hindu polarisation..
“The Hindu polarisation was already on cards given the ensuing assembly elections in UP.
But now the Taliban win would put it on a faster track and at a higher scale,” says
educationist Parul Mukherjee.
Another political observer in northeast India says, “The history of Muslims in India is hardly distinguishable from the history of his Hindu neighbours, yet a strong division exists between the two. The unfortunate manner US mismanaged Afghanistan can now create further divisions between Hinds and Muslims in India”.
Now given the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Af-Pak region, one is geared up for the rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India. This would essentially mean a Macho Hindu-nattionalism.
Some analysts say – “All criticism of the government is taken as a personal attack on the Prime Minister (Modi). And all criticism of Modi is taken as acts of treason or sedition”.
But, there is hardly any mechanism to counteract this dangerous vicious cycle.
It is also being presumed now that the federal government of Modi in Delhi would get a chance to ‘revive’ the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) that was put on cold storage following the December 2019 protest.
A large number of Hindu and Sikh people in Afghanistan would like to take shelter in India.
The CAA has scope for ‘quicker granting’ of Indian citizenship to Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists coming into India from these countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
But the Muslims for these countries are not eligible for citizenship under this category.
This presumption is not out of place as no less than India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar has tweeted to make it more than crystal clear that Hindus and Sikhs in Afghanistan are in top priority list for ‘evacuation’ by Indian authorities.
Parul Mukherjee joins issue with the minister Jaishankar and says: “What will the government do if any Afghan Muslim refugee family crosses over or catches a plane to reach India?”
As it is, PM Modi’s detractors say, a highly polarised social atmosphere prevails in India specially since 2014.
Muslims are seen with a jaundiced view.
Therefore as soon as the news about the fall of Kabul went viral on social media and electronic medium, a twitter message poured in and was shared by hundreds that henceforth “Condemning the Taliban will be the new patriotism test for Indian Muslims”.Indians would eventually keep fighting among themselves. The Neta class would not appreciate the gravity of such games, and make Taliban only ‘another issue’ to be exploited in future.
