The Opposition on Saturday attacked the government over the bar on women journalists at Afghanistan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s news conference here the day before, asking how a dispensation that talks up “Nari Shakti” could allow this.
As the criticism gathered steam, the external affairs ministry stepped in to contain the damage, clarifying that it “had no involvement in the press interaction held yesterday by the Afghan FM (at the Afghan embassy) in Delhi”.
By evening, Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s ambassador to Qatar and the group’s spokesperson for years, told CNN-News18 that the number of passes was limited and that there was no discriminatory policy.
Muttaqi, who is making a ground-shifting visit to India, had on Friday responded to a question on the Taliban’s suppression of women’s rights in Afghanistan by
dismissing such allegations as propaganda.
As word of the exclusion of women from the news conference got out on Friday evening and some women journalists protested on social media, Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress fired the first salvo on behalf of the political class.
“How dare our government allow Taliban foreign minister Amir Muttaqi to exclude women journalists & hold a ‘male-only’ news conference on Indian soil with full protocol?” Moitra tweeted.
“How dare @DrSJaishankar agree to this? & why did our emasculated spineless male journos remain in room?”
The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, picked up the issue in the morning after Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra too had weighed in.
“Mr Modi, when you allow the exclusion of women journalists from a public forum, you are telling every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them,” she said.
“In our country, women have the right to equal participation in every space. Your silence in the face of such discrimination exposes the emptiness of your slogans on Nari Shakti.”
As a slugfest broke out on social media, the Rightwing ecosystem underlined that the news conference had been held inside the Afghan embassy, where India has no jurisdiction.
Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 states that “the premises of the mission shall be inviolable”.
Reflecting on this, Priyanka Chaturvedi of the Shiv Sena (UBT) said: “Yes, I totally get that the presser was inside the Afghan embassy and their protocols follow, as much as it is unpalatable to India’s stances.
“However, rules of engagement cannot be abject surrender to their protocols, at the very least, raise our voice of disagreement about women journalists being barred, which I hope MEA will do.”
Till late on Saturday evening, the external affairs ministry had not responded to queries whether it had registered a formal protest with the Taliban regime.
What perturbed many reporters covering the ministry was that a woman officer had been part of the Indian delegation that called on Muttaqi in Kabul in March 2024 in one of India’s several engagements with the Taliban since its takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Even the delegation-level meeting at Hyderabad House on Friday had no female presence but sources attributed this to there being currently no woman officer in the PAI (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) division of the ministry.
The controversy has also drawn attention to the absence of any mention of gender issues or human rights from external affairs minister Jaishankar’s opening remarks at the bilateral or from the joint statement.
These subjects had been missing also from the joint statement issued after the Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan — where India was a participant — earlier this week.
While the 10 participating countries had last year said they expected the Afghan authorities to protect the basic rights and interests of all Afghan people, including women, girls and all ethnic groups, this was not part of this year’s joint statement.
Several commentators have chided the male reporters who attended Friday’s news conference for not boycotting or, at least, protesting the exclusion of their female colleagues.
In a post on X, former home minister and Congress veteran P. Chidambaram said: “In my personal view, the men journalists should have walked out when they found that their women colleagues were excluded (or not invited).”
Condemning the exclusion of women, the Editors Guild of India said: “While diplomatic premises may claim protection under the Vienna Convention, that cannot justify blatant gender discrimination in press access on Indian soil. Whether or not the MEA coordinated the event, it is deeply troubling that such a discriminatory exclusion was allowed to proceed without objection.”
The controversy has also brought under the scanner India’s decision to upgrade its technical mission in Kabul to an embassy. This does not amount to India recognising the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
At least 10 other countries, including Pakistan and China, have functional embassies in Kabul but only Russia has accorded recognition to the Taliban.
Consequently, the Taliban’s black-and-white flag was included at the Moscow Format Consultations while India avoided the use of flags at Friday’s bilateral. The Afghan embassy in India still uses the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and not that of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Among the anti-women decisions the Taliban has taken since returning to power in 2021 are a purge of books written by women from Afghanistan’s male-only university system and the outlawing of gender studies courses, The New York Times has reported.
Women are denied education beyond the sixth grade, employment in most workplaces, and access to public spaces like parks, gyms and salons. They are barred from long-distance travel unless accompanied by a male relative. They cannot leave home if not covered from head to toe.
Even the sound of a woman’s voice outside the home has been outlawed in Afghanistan, the NYT says.