Opinion| India’s closet Taliban are crawling out of woodwork after the fall of Kabul

Blood of the innocent flows 1,000 kilometres away in Kabul, but beasts of prey in Delhi have tasted it. The dormant support among certain sections in India for the most violent manifestation of Islam is coming out in the open. Many of them are loud votaries of secularism otherwise. One high-decibel victory in the neighbourhood, and they are cheering for the hordes who have snatched power by recruiting little boys for armed jihad, raping them, killing enemies most violently and looting houses. Why? In order to establish a “pure and just” caliphate-style government where women are disallowed in public or most jobs, are made to wear tents around, stoned to death for adultery and little girls taken as sex slaves of the Mujahideen. But the Taliban have suddenly turned into freedom fighters, liberated educationists, and “legitimate stakeholders” for a section of Indian Muslims.

Their values are being upheld most vocally.

Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind has called for separate schools and colleges for girls. It has asked parents to shun co-education for their daughters. Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (Maulana Arshad Madani faction) chief Arshad Madani appealed to the influential and the wealthy to set up separate local institutions for girls. Madani said obscenity has been condemned in every religion, and so, “we will also ask our non-Muslim brothers to refrain from giving co-education to their daughters to keep them away from immorality and misbehaviour”. Recently, Samajwadi Party MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, Shafiqur Rahman Barq, was all praise for the Taliban for “recapturing the land that originally belonged to them”. “When India was under British rule, our country fought for freedom. Now the Taliban wants to free their country and run it. Taliban is a force that did not allow even strong countries like Russia and America to settle in their country,” he reportedly said. A Twitter Space discussion which was being held as Kabul fell to the Taliban featured an accused in Delhi riots and another who has been to jail for problematic posts on social media. The riot accused reportedly remarked, “Let me give you guys a piece of good news – Ashraf Ghani has resigned. Thanks to Allah! Slowly and gradually, it will lead to the establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (governed by the Taliban). We need to take inspiration from them and learn how to struggle in the pursuit of freedom movement or azaadi.” Members of the commentariat who otherwise advocate secularism and feminism — while almost solely criticising Hindutva groups and not Islamists — seemed to drop their pretence. Journalist Ghazala Wahab tweeted: “I call them (Taliban) insurgents, because while they use the help of terrorists towards upturning governments…just because they are spreading terror and oppressing women, to say they do not have stakes in the area is foolish.” There is a swift push to give the Taliban moral legitimacy, whitewashing its ongoing massacres, unleashing sexual slavery, paedophilia, extreme misogyny and torture. The Taliban’s ideology is suddenly halal for many, and there is a growing market in India for its import.