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The visit of Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban-led Afghanistan’s Foreign minister, to the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary was a clear diplomatic effort by New Delhi, which took the call based on “his request”, The Indian Express has learnt.
Sources said that the significance of the Taliban leader’s visit to Darul Uloom was “personal” for him and “political” for the new Kabul-Delhi engagement. The visit can be seen from the prism of what is called “religious diplomacy”, at a time Kabul’s ties with Pakistan are specially strained.
Theological parent
Born in 1970, Muttaqi emigrated to neighbouring Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. He studied in various schools for Afghan refugees, and then at the Darul Uloom Haqqania, where many other Taliban leaders have studied.
The Darul Uloom Haqqania was set up at Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Akora Khattak in 1947 by the cleric Abdul Haq Akorwi, who had both studied in and taught at the Darul Uloom Deoband. He left India after Partition.
The Deoband seminary was set up in 1866 in Saharanpur, and has influenced Islamic teaching in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. From that context, it was an “important gesture” by the Indian government to allow Mutaqqi to visit the seminary, sources said.
From a political and diplomatic perspective, this is an important moment since Pakistan-Afghanistan distrust is at a peak. New Delhi is watching this wedge, and has sought to establish the influence India’s institutions have had on Islam in Southeast Asia.
When Iran’s President visited Lucknow
India has used such religious diplomacy within leaders from Islamic countries in the past too. One notable example was former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s visit to Lucknow in April 1995, during the government led by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao.
During his visit to Lucknow, a city with a large Shiite population, Rafsanjani addressed a crowd of over 10,000 at the Bara Imambara. In his speech, he notably endorsed Indian secularism and stated that Indian Muslims should feel safe in the country.
His visit came after the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid, a sensitive moment that had strained relations with many Muslim-majority nations. His speech in Lucknow was viewed as a gesture to help calm tensions among Indian Muslims.
Message to Taliban
The government’s permission to let Muttaqi travel to Deoband is also being seen as a messaging from Delhi on girls’ education.
While Darul Uloom Deoband has insisted on gender-segregation in education, it has historically issued fatwas supporting girls’ right to learn, in contrast with the extremist ideology of the Taliban.
At the seminary
During his visit, Mutaqqi was conferred with the Sanad (a certificate), giving him official permission to teach the Hadith. He then addressed a 4,000-strong crowd of students and other scholars and clerics. In his 30-minute address, he called upon the Darul Uloom members to visit Afghanistan and said that more diplomats from Afghanistan would visit.
Mutaqi also met President of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind Maulana Arshad Madani. After the address, behind closed doors of the ‘Mehmankhana’, a guest house inside the Madarsa, Muttaqi continued his conversation with students and clerics, including Afghan students, followed by lunch.
“Humare liye toh wo Deoband ko maante hai, utna hi kaafi hai (For us, it’s enough that he believes in Deoband),” said Shah Alam, 22, a student from a nearby madrasa who was there to catch a glimpse of the Taliban minister. A senior UP police officer said that almost 15,000 students turned up at the campus to have a look at Muttaqi.
“The strength of the crowd was much stronger than we anticipated. Children from nearby madrasas of Saharanpur, Sambli and other cities had all gathered. There was a guard of honour planned for the dignitary, which could not be carried out because of the crowd,” the police officer said.
