Afghan minister visits Deoband seminary, promises stronger ties with India

Afghanistan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on Saturday expressed confidence that his country’s ties with India would grow stronger in future as he thanked people for the welcome he received during his visit to Saharanpur’s Darul Uloom Deoband, an influential Islamic seminary.

Muttaqi, who is on an eight-day visit to India, said, “We will be sending new diplomats and I hope you people will visit Kabul as well. I have hopes for stronger ties in future from the way I was received in Delhi. Such visits may soon turn frequent.”

The Afghan leader, who reached Deoband from Delhi by road with his delegation, was welcomed by Darul Uloom Deoband Mohtamim (vice-chancellor) Abul Qasim Nomani, Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind president Maulana Arshad Madani and officials of Darul Uloom, amid a floral shower.

Hundreds of students of the Islamic seminary and a large number of locals who had gathered at the Deoband campus jostled to shake hands with the visiting dignitary, but were stopped by security personnel. Later, a public event organised by Deoband was cancelled due to “overcrowding” and “security reasons”.

“I am thankful for such a grand welcome and the affection shown by the people here. I hope that India-Afghanistan ties advance further,” the minister told reporters. Muttaqi is the first senior Taliban minister to visit India after the group seized power four years ago. India has not yet recognised the Taliban set-up.

Meanwhile, Opposition parties termed the absence of female journalists from the press conference of the Afghan minister in Delhi on Friday “unacceptable” and an “insult to women”, and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “silence” in the face of such discrimination exposed the “emptiness” of his slogans on ‘Nari Shakti’.

The Editors Guild of India and the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) termed the act as “highly discriminatory, which cannot be justified”, citing diplomatic privilege under the Vienna Convention.

Amid the row, the Darul Uloom Deoband asserted that there were no directives to keep women journalists away from covering the visit of the Afghan minister to the seminary. “There were no restrictions from the Afghan foreign minister’s office about who would attend,” said Deoband PRO Ashraf Usmani, also the media in-charge of Muttaqi’s programme, dismissing as “baseless” claims that women journalists were kept away. “There were no directives from anywhere on the attendance of women journalists. But the programme got called off at the last moment,” said Usmani.

“Though the programme was called off due to overcrowding, the presence of a couple of women journalists for the Afghanistan minister’s event was enough to rebut reports of women journalists being made to keep away from the event,” he said, even naming news channels those journalists represented.