Expect BJP to use ‘Taliban’ to polarise voters

In the run-up to Assembly polls, expect BJP to use ‘Taliban’ to polarise voters by painting the Indian Muslim with the same brush

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan following the extraordinary capitulation of the Afghan government and the abject withdrawal of American troops is expectedly causing global waves. The dramatic resurgence of the inimical Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), whose suicide bomber killed over 170 people (including 13 American soldiers) at Kabul airport, is symptomatic of the crisis looming in the aftermath of US/NATO forces leaving Afghanistan to its wretched fate. With Pakistan, China and Russia occupying strategic positions on the war-ravaged buffet table, it looks like the Afghan imbroglio will witness undulating political upheavals. The global headlines from Kabul are unlikely to change in a hurry. Interestingly, back home in India, the Taliban has already become an attractive proposition for effete BJP governments desperately seeking a diversionary issue from their underwhelming governance and failed promises. Poisonous partisan politics becomes their default option. Are we surprised?

I was on a TV show when the Taliban was marching effortlessly, almost with insouciant ease, towards the huge palace of former president Ashraf Ghani, who had fled to save his life. I don’t exactly remember the full conversation but the word ‘Taliban’ was used several times by one of the speakers sympathetic to the right-wing fringe to describe the Indian Muslim and those who allegedly cavort with them for votes (Congress being accused as the principal offender, of course). “Talibani mindset” was the frequently deployed term, and the attempt was to make secular/liberal people out to be sympathisers of the jihadist insurrectionists. It was absolutely farcical, but the barrage was relentless.

Why is there a malevolent thread with the Taliban being sewn in to malign ordinary Muslims? Obviously because of the forthcoming elections. There is, of course, at stake the biggest prize of them all -- Uttar Pradesh, but there are also Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur). The BJP’s CT Ravi recently called Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM “the Taliban of Karnataka”; the rebranding of Muslim organisations is in full swing.

Also read: Will the world formally recognise Taliban?

Uttar Pradesh, based on reports, is already planning for a ‘Commando Training Centre’ for the Anti-Terror Squad at Deoband to take on the Taliban, obviously assuming that the latter will board a Shatabdi train from Delhi and arrive waving AK-47 machine guns and suicide vests. The symbolism is wilfully insidious, pregnant with political connotations.

Of course, religious zealots from both sides flirt dangerously with inflammatory vitriol. So, Samajwadi Party MP Shafiqur Rahman Barq called the Taliban “freedom fighters similar to our own”. Is he unaware that the atavistic outfit plundered Afghanistan, suppressed both women and human rights, shot Malala Yousafzai right through the head for pursuing education, ran a repressive Sharia law, and made it one of the world’s poorest countries?

Those who are expecting a miraculous transformation popularly called Taliban 2.0 maybe in for a massive jolt. A leopard cannot change its spots. The Taliban are inherently terrorists believing in guerrilla warfare -- 75,000 of them overpowered a 300,000 Afghan army trained over 20 years by the US military that spent a $87 billion fortune to do so.

Of course, now the Taliban have a government to run, and this time around, they will seek international legitimacy. In their previous avatar, during 1998-2001, they were recognised by just three countries – the UAE, Iran and Pakistan). But anyone buttressing their cause is being foolhardy. In the foreseeable future, Afghanistan may just return as the epicentre of global terrorism (a resurrected al-Qaeda and a savage IS-K).

For the BJP, the Taliban’s success is ready fodder for electoral exploitation. Muslims will be generally stereotyped as dangerous, untrustworthy extremists -- a sequel chapter to ghar wapsi, love jihad, anti-Romeo squads, cow slaughter, population control, etc) in pursuit of a parochial agenda.

Of course, there is no denying the genuine fear that Pakistan’s ISI will stoke dormant embers of fire in the Kashmir Valley through Taliban infiltration. We should expect Pakistan to reignite separatism, but that is no excuse to demonise Muslims all over our country.

I read a report recently that in a counter-terrorism course in the JNU syllabus, “jihadi terrorism” is called “the only form of fundamentalist religious terrorism.” It is specious, false. The saffronisation of education is the Sangh Parivar’s preferred strategy to brainwash impressionable youth. Of course, some of the most horrendous terror attacks have been by rogue jihadists, with 9/11 being the most macabre instance of it, but weaponising hate against India’s largest minority, which comprises 14% of the population, is a malicious project. It is unlikely that there will be any mention of the Christchurch massacre, perpetrated by a White far-right fanatic, or the Norway killings, or the Las Vegas bloodshed, among many others.

On the other hand, a well-documented research report in the US made this rather stunning disclosure: Only 12.5% of 136 terror attacks globally between 2005 and 2015 were perpetrated by Muslims. Another survey pointed out that Islamist terror got 357% more media coverage than that by other terrorists, thus exacerbating the prevalent polarisation against Muslims. It is most unlikely that the BJP MP from Bhopal, Pragya Singh Thakur -- who lionizes Nathuram Godse, Gandhiji’s convicted assassin -- who is still undergoing trial as a terror accused, will find any mention in academic research on domestic terror. Aren’t those ghastly lynching deaths wreaked by hate mobs acts of terror, too? What about the physical assaults on Muslim merchants in a bid to force them not to sell in Hindu localities? The list of ugly violent retribution in the name of religion is never-ending.

In the run-up to the Assembly elections next year in February-March 2022 (and later in December that year in Gujarat), expect the militant occupants of Kabul to be named vociferously from Kapurthala to Kanpur, repeatedly. The political Olympics of sectarianism has just begun.

(The writer is a former Congress party spokesperson)