All the gains from the unprecedented tête-à-tête between India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai, the highest level of engagement between New Delhi and Kabul so far, after we hastily retreated from the Taliban country in mid-August 2021, will eventually go to waste if Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government doesn’t stop shunning ordinary Afghans. It may sound undiplomatic, but it is true.

On the one hand, India wants to cosy up to Afghanistan to secure our legitimate national interests, especially at a time when relations between Islamabad and Kabul are in tatters; Misri’s rendezvous with Muttaqi in a third country, capping a string of overt and covert initiatives by New Delhi, is proof of our eagerness to go to any length to woo the Taliban regime. But on the other hand, we flatly deny visas to Afghan students, patients and businessmen; Afghans are virtually forbidden to enter India!

The Modi government’s shockingly contradictory, two-faced approach begs some fundamental questions: Is it really possible to win over Afghanistan while deliberately keeping ordinary Afghans at arm’s length? Can India hope to exercise any worthwhile influence in Afghanistan in pursuit of its strategic goals after slamming the door shut in the face of ordinary Afghans as if they are all terrorists? At this rate, will there be any goodwill left for India among the Afghans for us to tap into?

India banned the entry of Afghans by suddenly cancelling all existing visas four days after New Delhi shut down its Kabul embassy and evacuated all personnel in mid-August 2021, hours before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Stunned Afghans were imperiously told to apply for new e-visas online. Almost three-and-a-half years have elapsed since, but India refuses to issue visas to Muslim Afghans. It is, however, giving visas to Hindu and Sikh Afghans. In fact, India plans to issue multiple entry visas to non-Muslim Afghans, rubbing salt into Muslim Afghans’ wounds. According to figures tabled in Parliament in December 2021, out of 60,000 Afghan applicants for e-visas, only 200 were granted visas. Although a religion-wise break-up was not provided, the lucky ones were obviously Hindus and Sikhs and the unlucky 59,800 were Muslims, given that Afghanistan is 99.7 percent Muslim.

There are estimates that India has so far denied visas to more than two lakh Afghans, and the number is steadily rising thanks to the embargo. The worst hit are Afghan students enrolled in Indian universities with Indian Council for Cultural Relations scholarships, patients in dire need of medical treatment, Afghan spouses of Indian nationals, and traders and businessmen, whose plight has been highlighted by leading Indian newspapers. But the Modi government has dug its heels in; there is no respite or any signs of a rollback.

Speaking off the record, Indian officials have been quoted in the media saying that granting visas to Afghans is difficult for three reasons: New Delhi is yet to formally recognise the Taliban regime as the legitimate government; Indian security and intelligence agencies keep warning the government of threats posed by visa seekers from Afghanistan; moreover, we don’t have a functioning visa section in the Indian embassy in Kabul or any of the consulates, although the embassy reopened on a limited scale within 10 months of its closure.

But these are lame excuses, to be honest. The fact of the matter is that religion seems to have become the criterion for determining eligibility for Indian visas for Afghans, making the whole process patently discriminatory. The faith criterion undermines our secular constitution and is obviously dictated by the Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019, which facilitates citizenship for Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh but excludes Muslims. 

Not too long ago, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in Vadodara that “nobody can doubt India’s feelings for Afghans” but cited “security concerns” and said that applicants will have “to wait for a level of trust and efficiency” to return for visas to be restarted. Jaishankar was compelled to speak because he was confronted by angry Afghan students whose visas were revoked in August 2021 and who have been refused e-visas and, therefore, can’t go home because they won’t be able to return to India to resume their studies.

As Afghanistan is 99.7 percent Muslim, the calibrated and cold-blooded denial of visas to Muslim Afghans makes a mockery of India’s claims of civilisational and people-to-people links with that country, which Modi, Jaishankar and the National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval, keep parroting. 

More importantly, after the Misri-Muttaqi engagement, the Afghanistan Foreign Ministry formally stated in posts on X that it had requested the Indian government to restart issuing visas to Afghans. The Taliban delegation assured the Indian side that visitors from Afghanistan would pose no threat to India and even offered to vet those who are granted visas. But India’s official statement, after the landmark meeting, skipped the issue of visas. It’s an ominous omission. It’s high time New Delhi realises that its relations with other countries can’t be a hostage to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s anti-Muslim ideology, as it goes against our national interest.

The author is an independent, Pegasused reporter and commentator on foreign policy and domestic politics