How Indian Media Missed Grey Areas In Afghanistan

Sameer Arshad Khatlani
Follow on Facebook

A significant section of the Indian media have been among the most formidable allies of ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They have over the years amplified and focussed on issues that boost the BJP’s main election-winning strategy of projecting India’s Muslim minority as the threatening other and fifth columnists that only the governing party is capable of dealing with. The prime-time debates on Indian television channels mostly focus on the Hindu-Muslim binary. Issues are often twisted and distorted to keep the focus on demonising the beleaguered minority. 

ALSO READ: Ignorance About It Is Biggest Crisis Islam Faces

The Taliban take over in Afghanistan was just another excuse for the media to continue vilifying Indian Muslims. While the Indian media were busy doing what they do best, they were also egging on a potential resistance against the Taliban in Panjshir Valley, the only Afghan province that did not immediately fall to the group. In the process, they were also demonstrating how baseless their broad-brushed demonisation of the Muslims is. Given the poor standards of TV channels, most of the prime-time anchors are unlikely to know that Jamaat-e-Islami is the party they were banking on for the anti-Taliban resistance under Ahmad Massoud’s leadership. What may come as a rude surprise for the anchors is the Pakistani connection to the formation of Jamaat-e-Islami in Afghanistan.

ALSO READ: West's post-1979 Afghan Misadventure Continues To Cast Long Shadow

The seeds of the party’s formation were sown when Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami began translating its founder Maulana Abul Ala Maududi’s writings in the 1960s for their distribution around the world. Afghanistan was among the first countries to receive them in the country’s two main languages—Persian and Pashto. Within a decade, the writings had so much impact that they inspired several Afghan groups to coalesce to form Jamiat-e-Islami Afghanistan under Kabul University professor Burhanuddin Rabbani’s leadership in 1972. 

ALSO READ: How Taliban Passes Off Tribalism As Religiosity

Among Maududi’s early Afghan followers was Ahmad Massoud’s father, Ahmad Shah Massoud. The senior Massoud would go on to attain legendary status as one of Afghanistan’s greatest fighters. He was still an engineering student in Kabul when he joined a botched uprising against a pro-Soviet dictator in the 1970s. Ahmad Shah Massoud, who received training in Pakistan, was closely allied to India when he prevented the Taliban from overrunning his native Panjshir during the group’s rule over Afghanistan between 1996 and 2011. Senior Massoud also led the resistance against the Soviets over their decade-long occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and prevented them from occupying Panjshir.

Ahmad Massoud was 11 when al-Qaida assassinated his father in September 2001. He has now vowed to follow in his father’s footsteps. In a piece in The Washington Post, Ahmad Massoud chose to call themselves mujahideen (holy warriors), who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban, highlighting why the situation in Afghanistan is not as black and white as the Indian media seeks to paint it. 

To buy click here 

Sameer Arshad Khatlani is an author-journalist based in New Delhi. He has been a Senior Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times, India’s second-biggest English newspaper. Khatlani worked in a similar capacity with The Indian Express, India's most influential newspaper known for its investigative journalism, until June 2018. Born and raised in Kashmir, he began his career with the now-defunct Bangalore-based Vijay Times in 2005 as its national affairs correspondent. He joined Times of India, one of the world's largest selling broadsheets, in 2007. Over the next nine years, he was a part of the paper's national and international newsgathering team as an Assistant Editor. 

Khatlani has reported from Iraq and Pakistan and covered elections and national disasters. He received a master’s degree in History from the prestigious Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Khatlani is a fellow with Hawaii-based American East-West Center established by the US Congress in 1960 to promote better relations and understanding with Asian, and Pacific countries through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. 

Penguin published Khatlani’s first book The Other Side of the Divide: A Journey into the Heart of Pakistan in February 2020. Eminent academic and King’s college professor, Christophe Jaffrelot, has called the book ‘an erudite historical account... [that] offers a comprehensive portrait of Pakistan, including the role of the army and religion—not only Islam’.