In politics, a diplomatic shift is sometimes more than a tactical adjustment; it can amount to a declaration of rupture from a historical and moral legacy. Narendra Modi’s policy toward Afghanistan and the Taliban in recent years belongs to that category. It is not merely a recalibration of regional equations. For many Afghans, it is a betrayal of centuries of historical ties between the peoples of Afghanistan and India, and a departure from the image India built for itself after independence in the name of Gandhi, coexistence, anti-colonialism, and respect for the will of nations.
The relationship between Afghanistan and India long predates the formation of today’s modern states. It was built on the Persian language, culture, trade, Sufism, literature, migration, and human exchange. This bond is not simply a political claim; it is rooted in the history of the region itself. One of the clearest signs of this connection is the place of the Persian language in India. From the Ghaznavid period onward, Persian became a major language of court, culture, and writing across much of the subcontinent, and it laid the ground for the emergence of Persian poetry in what came to be known as the Indian style. Alongside this, the role of the Timurids and later the Mughal rulers of India was especially significant, as they carried literary, administrative, and cultural traditions from Khorasan and the Persianate world into India, helping to shape a broad Indo-Persian civilizational sphere. For this reason, Afghanistan-India relations should not be viewed only through the lens of day-to-day politics, development projects, or geopolitical rivalry. They should also be understood as part of a shared civilizational, cultural, and emotional memory in which Persian, Sufism, literature, coexistence, mutual respect, and historical goodwill held a central place.
Yet over the past 200 years, even this deep and passionate relationship did not escape the shadow of colonialism. For much of those two centuries, what was called the relationship between Afghanistan and India was in fact defined under the influence of British India and imperial logic, a logic that saw Afghanistan not as a civilizational partner, but as a buffer, a security frontier, and a field for great-power competition. Later, India’s long struggle against colonial rule, led by figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, sought to break that logic and build a free, ethical India grounded in human dignity, an India meant to symbolize liberation from domination, not become an instrument of it. Yet today, in the outlook of Delhi’s strategic establishment, there are signs that this old logic is returning in a modern form. In that sense, the present crisis is not merely a temporary deviation; it is the continuation of a kind of modern colonialism that has gradually reduced the historical relationship between India and Greater Khorasan from a people-to-people and civilizational bond into a matter of calculation, influence, and geopolitical utility. An India that once reached spiritual and cultural flourishing through the grandeur of the Persian language and the refinement of the Chishti Sufi tradition now finds itself entangled in structures that strike at Persian at its roots and line up against that very Chishti tradition.
The reality is that the friendly, historical, and people-centered view of relations between Afghanistan and India has, in practice, been reduced by India’s strategic establishment to an instrumental relationship, one that is even colonial in character. In this framework, Afghanistan is seen not as a nation with the right to self-determination, but as a field of influence, pressure, and containment against a regional rival. Within this logic, the Taliban, an illegitimate and repressive structure born of a terrorist worldview, has also become part of Delhi’s new calculations. The bitter truth is that, in the eyes of this establishment, Afghanistan has not always been understood as the Afghanistan of its people, but also as an Afghanistan that could serve, in regional rivalry with Pakistan, as a pressure card and a theater of proxy conflict. Critics argue that this approach has gone beyond diplomatic and economic competition. Over the years, it has been accompanied by accusations of instrumental use of Afghan soil, indirect support for anti-Pakistan groups and networks, efforts to place aligned actors within Afghanistan’s security equations, and the use of Afghanistan’s instability to wear down a regional rival. This pattern does not end with engagement with the Taliban; it reflects a willingness to use any effective force on the Afghan scene to advance geopolitical aims. Evidence of this mindset can be seen in Delhi’s repeated emphasis on trade routes that bypass Pakistan, including Chabahar, and in the renewed prominence of India-Pakistan rivalry over Afghanistan.
This must be said plainly: Afghanistan has become a field of proxy competition between India and Pakistan, and the first losers in this situation have been the Afghan people. Peace in Afghanistan will not come from turning the country into the trench of one power or another, but through a balanced regional policy, respect for neighborhood relations, and a reduction of conflict with Pakistan and other neighbors. This is not an attempt to whitewash Pakistan’s policies. It is a reaffirmation of a simple truth: durable security in Afghanistan cannot be achieved through permanent hostility among regional actors and the treatment of the country as a pressure lever.
But the central problem with Modi’s policy is not only that it has viewed Afghanistan through the prism of rivalry with Pakistan. The deeper problem is that Delhi, under the banner of pragmatism, has moved toward engagement with and normalization of relations with the Taliban, a group that did not come to dominate Afghanistan through the will of the people, through constitutional order, or through an inclusive and national political settlement.
Defenders of this approach say India has no choice but to come to terms with the reality in Kabul to preserve its interests, security, and regional presence. But this argument carries a profound moral and political flaw: engagement that proceeds without a clear and forceful defense of the rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls, amounts in practice to a gradual legitimization of a repressive order.
Any government that today moves toward more normal relations with the Taliban must therefore answer a fundamental question: under what moral and political conditions is it doing so? Is this relationship meant to serve the people of Afghanistan, or merely a regional balance of power? Is the aim to help free Afghans from poverty, isolation, and despotism, or simply to preserve a strategic footing against rivals? That is the core question.
From this perspective, India’s policy today is nothing less than a soft return to the logic of colonialism, not through military occupation, but through turning the fate of a nation into an instrument of regional rivalry. When Afghanistan is reduced from a nation with the right to self-determination to a site of bargaining and rival containment, the spirit of domination is reproduced, even if this time it speaks the language of diplomacy and interests. This is precisely the point at which Modi’s policy parts ways with Gandhi’s legacy. Gandhi fought for an India that, after freeing itself from colonial rule, would not become an imitator of that same logic of domination, an India that would honor human dignity, the freedom of nations, and resistance to coercion, not stand beside a group like the Taliban, which has been imposed on the Afghan people through repression, exclusion, and fear. This closeness to the Taliban and the political defense of it will not be erased from the memory of the Afghan people. It will undoubtedly have a direct impact on diplomatic relations and on India’s future standing in Afghanistan. Nations do not live by political agreements alone; they also live by memory. That is why India’s policymakers should begin thinking now about the post-Taliban future: when this dark chapter ends, and the people of Afghanistan seek to redefine their relationship with the world, will they find India standing beside them, or beside the group that ruled through suffering, fear, and exclusion? And when that day comes, with what moral credibility and what political capital will Delhi hope to return to the wounded memory of a nation?
