India's Taliban Embrace Exposes Two Extremist Peas In A Pod

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While the Taliban enforces this through fear and violence, the RSS does so through social engineering and political power. The result, in both cases, is the same: women's bodies become ideological battlegrounds used to assert religious identity and moral supremacy.

The RSS's influence through the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has slowly redefined India's secular democracy into something resembling a Hindu rashtra - a nation built around majoritarian faith rather than constitutional equality.

Textbooks have been rewritten to glorify ancient Hindu empires. Interfaith marriages are vilified as“love jihad.” Dissenters, journalists and activists face increasing hostility, branded as anti-national for questioning the state's moral agenda.

The Taliban, meanwhile, governs Afghanistan with its own brand of puritanical absolutism. It dictates how people dress, what they learn and how they pray, erasing decades of progress in women's rights and education.

Both movements weaponize faith to claim legitimacy, portraying themselves as protectors of divine truth against the perceived corruption of modernity and Western influence. The irony is stark. The same India that once championed women's rights, secular democracy and education for all is now flirting with a regime that denies these very principles.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to host the Taliban's foreign minister in New Delhi, even unofficially, signals a pragmatic but morally fraught calculation. It risks legitimizing one of the world's most repressive governments in the name of strategic necessity. In the pursuit of regional influence, India may find itself mirroring the very intolerance it claims to oppose.

This trend extends beyond India and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) exploits blasphemy laws and street power to challenge the state. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid's attempt to sympathize with the TLP amid its violent protests shows how extremism transcends borders.

Already sheltering the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group, which has launched hundreds of cross-border attacks into Pakistan territory, the Taliban's interference in Pakistan's internal affairs is being manipulated despite the TLP's limited power.

What unites the RSS, Taliban and TLP is not theology but a shared politics of fear. Each movement thrives on grievance - the belief that its faith and culture are under siege. Each promises a return to purity by purging society of dissent and difference. And each uses religion not as a means of moral guidance but as a tool for domination.