The press conference held by the visiting Taliban delegation in New Delhi on October 10 was unusual. Not only was it the first visit by a Taliban foreign minister to India but also it made news because there were no women journalists in the room. The Islamic fundamentalist regime had pointedly barred women journalists from attending the press meet at the Afghan embassy in the Indian capital.
The backlash against this regressive stance was severe. Opposition leaders, journalist bodies, and journalists strongly condemned the exclusion.
“How dare our government allow Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to exclude women journalists & hold a ‘male-only’ news conference on Indian soil with full protocol?” opposition Trinamool Congress parliamentarian Mahua Moitra tweeted. “How dare @DrSJaishankar agree to this?” she said, questioning Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s decision to allow a press meeting without women journalists.
Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra scaled up the attack and lambasted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government. “Mr Modi, when you allow the exclusion of women journalists from a public forum, you are telling every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them,” she said.
The Editors Guild pointed out in a statement that “while diplomatic premises may claim protection under the Vienna Convention, that cannot justify blatant gender discrimination in press access on Indian soil.” Under Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the premises of foreign embassies are inviolable spaces.
The press conference sparked outrage that the notoriously misogynistic Taliban regime, which has got away with anti-women policies in Afghanistan, was exercising “Talibani writ in India.”
The Muttaqi-led delegation was forced to make amends. A second “inclusive” press meet was called two days later, on October 12. In a visual show of force, Indian women journalists occupied the front rows in the press meet, with photographs showing Muttaqi face-to-face with women journalists. Even the international media took note of the “rare challenge” that the Taliban minister faced abroad.
Women journalists then confronted Muttaqi with tough questions on the suppression of women and women’s rights in Afghanistan. “When will Afghan girls be allowed to go back (to schools) and get the right to education?” independent journalist Smita Sharma asked the Taliban minister. Muttaqi chose to brazen it out with lies, claiming that “2.8 million women and girls” are attending schools and educational institutions in Afghanistan.
Muttaqi cited a “technical issue” to justify why women journalists were absent from the first press event. “It [the first event] was organized on a short notice… a short list of journalists were invited… There were no other intentions other than that,” he said at the second press meet.
As shocking as the Taliban regime’s exclusion of women in India was that the Modi government green-signaled the regime’s exercise of its misogynistic policies on Indian soil.
Social media discussions, especially users on X (formerly Twitter), were quick to draw parallels between the Islamist fundamentalists of the Taliban and the Hindutva fundamentalists of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). The RSS is the ideological mentor of India’s ruling BJP.
As author Ravi Nair tweeted, “Things common between the Taliban and the RSS are that they both suppress women and women’s rights, they live in the past, and are orthodox to the core.” In a column in the news portal The Wire, Vrinda Gopinath outlined how the Taliban and the RSS appear to be ideological twins or “Two sides of the same coin…”
Soon after it captured power in Kabul in August 2021, the Taliban regime abolished the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and declared the Quran as the unwritten constitution. It negated the rule of law and has relied on religious decrees to rule the country. Likewise, the RSS has been critical of the Indian Constitution and has openly advocated for replacing its secular and socialist principles, describing them as Western ideas. The Sangh Parivar relies heavily on the anti-women and casteist ideologies of the Manusmriti, legal texts that are believed to have been written between 200 BCE and 200 CE.
Both the Taliban and the RSS accord second-class status to women. While the Taliban overtly declare women to be the root of all evil, who must be controlled for the good of all society, the RSS excludes women from its main decision-making bodies. Also, the RSS holds patriarchal views on gender specific roles; it believes that women should be confined to the home and do domestic chores while men should work outside the home. BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have enacted “love jihad” laws, which deny adult women and men the autonomy to choose their marriage partner.
The views of both the Taliban and the RSS on procreation are not too dissimilar. The Taliban have banned birth control and the use of contraceptives in Afghanistan, while RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat publicly called upon Hindu women to have more babies and advocated that they produce at least three children to ensure that Hindus remain a majority in India.
Expectedly, both the Islamic and Hindu fundamentalists abhor LGBTQ and same-sex relationships. While the Taliban are more violent in their approach to denouncing it, the Indian government perceives sexual minorities as a threat to the Indian family system.
Both regimes do not see a need to maintain a separation between the “church and state.” While the Taliban govern Afghanistan through Shariah or Islamic law, the BJP/RSS have infiltrated all wings of the government and institutions, including education, with Hindutva ideals. The participation of the RSS in governance has been legitimized by the Modi government; in 2024, the latter lifted the ban on government officials participating in RSS activities. Recently, the government released a 100-rupee coin to commemorate the centenary celebration of the RSS. The coin carries an image of the Hindutva flag and not the Indian national flag.
It is therefore not surprising that with both regimes holding not too dissimilar ideological views, the Modi government ignored the Taliban regime’s inherently gender discriminatory press meet in New Delhi.
The Taliban regime’s brutal enforcement of the isolation and exclusion of women has prompted activists and U.N. groups to accuse them of presiding over “gender apartheid.” The International Criminal Court has called for the prosecution of Taliban leaders for its violation of women’s rights, which is perceived as committing crimes against humanity.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world that bans girls from getting general education in secondary (beyond the sixth grade) and higher education levels. Afghan women are not allowed to step out of their homes without a male escort. Women are banned from working, stepping outdoors in parks, gyms, salons, and travelling alone. And then there is a strict enforcement of the dress code — women are required to cover themselves from head to toe. Even the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan. It is not without reason that the four-year-old Taliban regime in Afghanistan continues to be diplomatically isolated over its gender apartheid policies.
Indian women journalists did well to give the misogynistic Taliban a reality check, compelling the Taliban minister to revise his decision. They embarrassed Muttaqi, even as their male journalist colleagues and the BJP government chose to ignore the glaring exclusion of women at the press meet.