Taliban’s Exclusion of Women Journalists in India Betrays the ‘Mother of Democracy’ Ideal

A Diplomatic Affront in New Delhi

PAHARI BARUAH

On October 10, 2025, the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi became a stage for an unsettling paradox. Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, fresh from high-level talks with India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, held a press conference that barred women journalists, admitting only 16 handpicked male reporters. Women, including a seasoned correspondent from The Independent, were turned away by security and Delhi Police, their pleas ignored in the lush diplomatic enclave.

This exclusion, occurring on the eve of the International Day of the Girl Child, was no mere oversight-it was a deliberate echo of the Taliban’s relentless campaign to erase women from public life, now brazenly enacted on the soil of a nation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaims the “Mother of All Democracies.”

The incident has unleashed a torrent of outrage from India’s media, opposition leaders, and activists, exposing a jarring contradiction between India’s lofty democratic ideals and its acquiescence to a regime that silences half its population. As Afghan women endure suffocating restrictions-barred from schools, workplaces, parks, and even the internet-the silence of India’s leadership in the face of this affront raises a piercing question: Can the “Mother of Democracy” uphold its title while hosting those who shackle women’s voices?

The Taliban’s Systematic Erasure of Women

Since reclaiming power in August 2021, the Taliban have woven a tapestry of oppression, issuing over 80 decrees that the United Nations labels “gender apartheid.” These edicts, enforced by morality police with batons and zeal, have stripped Afghan women and girls of their fundamental rights, plunging them into a world of enforced invisibility.

Education, once a beacon of hope, was the first to fall. In September 2021, secondary schools barred girls, leaving over 1.1 million without classrooms while boys studied freely. By December 2022, universities followed, banning women entirely, even from schools for the blind. The International Criminal Court, in January 2025, issued arrest warrants for Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani, charging them with crimes against humanity for using education denial as persecution. Zarina, a 16-year-old from Kabul, dreams of physics but is confined to sewing, her textbooks buried under dust.

Workplaces have been gutted. Women, once vital to media, NGOs, and civil service, face sweeping bans. By 2023, restrictions choked international aid organizations and shuttered over 12,000 beauty salons, a lifeline for many. Bans on medical training have worsened Afghanistan’s maternal mortality crisis, among the world’s highest. Only 24% of women now work or seek employment, compared to 90% of men, deepening poverty in a nation where 85% live below the breadline.

Public spaces, meant for solace, are forbidden zones. Since August 2023, women have been barred from Band-e Amir National Park, gyms, public baths, and cultural sites across Herat, Kandahar, and beyond. Sports-cricket, soccer, even chess—have vanished for women, with athletes like cyclist Fariba Hashimi fleeing or facing arrest. Dress codes mandate full-body coverings, and a 2024 edict silences women’s voices in public, even during prayer, to avoid “provoking” men. Mobility is chained: Women cannot travel beyond 72 kilometers without a male guardian, enforced through beatings or detention.

The digital realm, a last refuge, is under siege. In 2025, internet blackouts swept northern provinces like Takhar, targeting “immorality” but severing women’s access to online education, advocacy, and income from e-commerce. Secret schools, where teachers like Mahsa risk lashings to educate girls via smuggled SIM cards, teeter on collapse. UNAMA reports a surge in arbitrary arrests, torture, and suicides, with 8% of surveyed women knowing someone driven to despair. “I am a ghost,” whispered a woman from Herat to Amnesty International, “seen by none, heard by none, allowed nowhere.”

At the New Delhi press conference, Muttaqi sidestepped these atrocities, claiming “peace has returned” and dismissing critics as propagandists. His words mock the reality: a regime that jails women for singing, flogs them for park strolls, and now exports its misogyny to democratic capitals.

India’s ‘Mother of Democracy’ Faces a Reckoning

Modi’s declaration of India as the “Mother of All Democracies” is a cornerstone of his global narrative, rooted in the nation’s ancient Vedic traditions and its 1950 constitution, which granted women voting rights from inception, outpacing many Western nations. First uttered at the UN General Assembly in September 2021-weeks after the Taliban’s Kabul conquest-the phrase has echoed from Copenhagen’s 2023 WorldPride Human Rights Conference to the Red Fort on August 15, 2025, where Modi’s 103-minute Independence Day speech tied it to “Nari Shakti” (women’s power), envisioning a “Viksit Bharat” by 2047 with women as its backbone.

Yet, the Afghan Embassy incident lays bare a troubling hypocrisy. By allowing the Taliban to exclude women journalists, India permitted a violation of its own constitutional ethos. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra called it an “insult to some of India’s most competent women,” demanding, “How has this been allowed in a country whose women are its pride?” Rahul Gandhi accused Modi of weakness: “Your silence tells every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them.” CPI’s D. Raja labeled it “blasphemy to our constitutional spirit,” questioning whether this was “Taliban misogyny or tacit endorsement on Indian soil.”

Politician Mahua Moitra excoriated the male journalists who stayed, branding them “spineless hypocrites” who “dishonoured every single Indian woman.” Former Home Minister P. Chidambaram urged male reporters to have walked out in solidarity. A social media post posed a haunting question: “What if the Minister of External Affairs had been a woman, as was the case not long ago? Would they have kept her out too?”

The timing stings. India’s Women’s Reservation Bill, promising 33% parliamentary seats for women by 2029, was celebrated as a democratic triumph. Yet, days later, the Taliban’s exclusion of women journalists unfolded without protest, undermining India’s global posturing. Journalist Barkha Dutt wrote on X, “This isn’t just about a press conference-it’s about whether India’s democracy can look Afghan women in the eye.”

A Voice for Afghan Women

The New Delhi exclusion is a microcosm of Afghan women’s daily torment: silenced, sidelined, erased. In Kabul, girls like Zarina study in secret, risking imprisonment. In Balkh, activists like Zahra are jailed for reciting poetry. In Herat, women defy bans through coded WhatsApp groups, their protests met with gunfire. Their courage shames the world’s silence, yet their plight demands more than sympathy-it demands champions.

The Ministry of External Affairs claimed “no involvement” in the presser, noting that Indian requests for women’s inclusion were ignored. A Taliban source cited a “coordination lapse,” promising future invites-a hollow pledge from a regime that thrives on exclusion. India’s decision to reopen its Kabul embassy signals pragmatic engagement: trade, security, counterterrorism. But at what cost? Hosting a UN-sanctioned official like Muttaqi, whose regime flogs women for singing, risks complicity in their oppression.

India’s “Mother of Democracy” mantle carries a moral weight. It demands not just words but action-clear diplomatic protocols that bar foreign guests from trampling constitutional values. Afghan women, fighting in shadows, deserve a partner who amplifies their voices, not a host who nods politely as their oppressors exclude.

The gates of the Afghan Embassy may have closed on October 10, but the fight for Afghan women’s dignity-and India’s democratic soul-must not. To be the “Mother of All Democracies,” India must stand firm, ensuring that no daughter, Afghan or Indian, is silenced on its soil.

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