India’s decision to engage with Afghanistan’s Taliban regime — even without formally recognizing it — has unsettled an already fragile South Asian landscape.
To many, it appears to be a calculated act of realpolitik, a strategic counterbalance to Pakistan’s deep-rooted influence in Kabul. But beneath the surface of this diplomacy lies something far more disquieting: an ideological symmetry between India’s ruling right and Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers — a convergence that can aptly be described as “unity in obscurantism.”
At first glance, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Taliban seem like ideological opposites — one rooted in militant Hindu nationalism, the other in rigid Islamic theocracy. Yet, peel away the religious veneer, and what emerges is a shared disdain for modernity, pluralism and women’s autonomy.
Both movements idealize a mythic past, where faith was pure, authority unquestioned, and gender roles rigidly defined. Both see progress, particularly women’s emancipation, as a threat to social order rather than a marker of civilization.
The Taliban’s exclusion of women from public life, education and governance finds an unsettling echo in the RSS’s patriarchal worldview, which seeks to confine women within traditional Hindu roles under the guise of cultural preservation.
While the Taliban enforces this through fear and violence, the RSS does so through social engineering and political power. The result, in both cases, is the same: women’s bodies become ideological battlegrounds used to assert religious identity and moral supremacy.
The RSS’s influence through the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has slowly redefined India’s secular democracy into something resembling a Hindu rashtra — a nation built around majoritarian faith rather than constitutional equality.
Textbooks have been rewritten to glorify ancient Hindu empires. Interfaith marriages are vilified as “love jihad.” Dissenters, journalists and activists face increasing hostility, branded as anti-national for questioning the state’s moral agenda.
The Taliban, meanwhile, governs Afghanistan with its own brand of puritanical absolutism. It dictates how people dress, what they learn and how they pray, erasing decades of progress in women’s rights and education.
Both movements weaponize faith to claim legitimacy, portraying themselves as protectors of divine truth against the perceived corruption of modernity and Western influence. The irony is stark. The same India that once championed women’s rights, secular democracy and education for all is now flirting with a regime that denies these very principles.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to host the Taliban’s foreign minister in New Delhi, even unofficially, signals a pragmatic but morally fraught calculation. It risks legitimizing one of the world’s most repressive governments in the name of strategic necessity. In the pursuit of regional influence, India may find itself mirroring the very intolerance it claims to oppose.
This trend extends beyond India and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) exploits blasphemy laws and street power to challenge the state. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid’s attempt to sympathize with the TLP amid its violent protests shows how extremism transcends borders.
Already sheltering the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, which has launched hundreds of cross-border attacks into Pakistan territory, the Taliban’s interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs is being manipulated despite the TLP’s limited power.
What unites the RSS, Taliban and TLP is not theology but a shared politics of fear. Each movement thrives on grievance — the belief that its faith and culture are under siege. Each promises a return to purity by purging society of dissent and difference. And each uses religion not as a means of moral guidance but as a tool for domination.
The danger of this “unity in obscurantism” lies in its normalization. When democracies like India begin to compromise with fundamentalism for strategic advantage, they risk eroding the very principles that once defined them. The gradual acceptance of religious extremism — whether draped in saffron robes or black turbans — blurs the line between democracy and theocracy.
South Asia’s greatest challenge, then, is not the clash between religions but the rise of religio-political movements that hollow out democracy from within. As these forces gain legitimacy, they erode freedoms in the name of faith, turning citizens into subjects and belief into a weapon.
If India continues down this path — engaging the Taliban abroad while empowering the RSS at home — it may win tactical victories but suffer a deeper moral defeat. The true danger to South Asia is not terrorism across borders, but the quiet transformation of its nations into sanctuaries of sanctimony, where faith is no longer a matter of devotion but an instrument of power.
In the end, obscurantism wears many faces and when democracies embrace it, the light that once guided them begins to dim.
Advocate Mazhar Siddique Khan is a Lahore-based High Court Lawyer. He can be contacted at mazharsiddiquekhan@gmail.com.
