Kabul/New Delhi — In a development stirring both religious and geopolitical debate, Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi visited India’s historic Darul Uloom Deoband seminary on Saturday, marking an unprecedented moment in South Asian diplomacy. This was the first visit by a senior Taliban leader to Indian soil since the group’s return to power in Kabul in 2021, and one that India has curiously framed as a gesture of “religious engagement,” even as global powers continue to deny recognition to the Taliban regime.

Muttaqi, who arrived in Deoband from New Delhi with a delegation of senior officials, was received with elaborate protocol by a 15-member clerical committee led by Mufti Abu Qasim Nomani, the rector of the seminary. Among those present were Maulana Syed Arshad Madani, head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, and several leading scholars of Islamic jurisprudence.

Following the Zuhr prayers at the seminary’s main mosque, Muttaqi delivered a brief lecture to students and interacted with faculty, reviewing the institution’s curriculum and library system. Speaking to the press, he said his “journey has been very good” and thanked the Deoband community for their “warm welcome,” adding that the “future of India–Afghanistan relations seems very bright.”

For India, the optics were unmistakable. A senior figure from an unrecognized government being accorded reverence by a religious institution deeply interwoven with the subcontinent’s Islamic history. For observers in Pakistan, however, the symbolism ran deeper and darker.

From Akora Khattak to Deoband

Muttaqi’s visit has prompted debate across South Asia over what it signifies for the Taliban’s ideological identity. For decades, the movement’s roots were traced to Darul Uloom Haqqania, the seminary in Akora Khattak, Pakistan, often described as the “University of Jihad” by Western analysts for producing many Taliban leaders. Unlike many Western portrayals, Haqqania has historically been a center of Islamic scholarship, not militancy, and has played a stabilizing role in Afghan–Pakistan religious linkages.

Now, Indian media’s portrayal of Muttaqi’s presence in Deoband, the intellectual mother institution of the Deobandi school of thought, appears to signal an attempt to rewrite that history.

Analysts in Islamabad suggest that India is deliberately reframing the Taliban’s lineage, pulling their perceived “ideological center” away from Pakistan’s seminaries and into Indian territory. The gesture, they argue, allows India to portray itself as the spiritual home of the Taliban’s Deobandi roots, while also positioning itself as a stakeholder in Afghan religious and political affairs.

In effect, a so-called secular India is embracing a movement its own allies in the West still classify as extremist, a paradox Pakistan’s policymakers view as both hypocritical and geopolitically calculated.

Diplomacy or Double Standard?

While New Delhi has consistently projected itself as a bulwark against terrorism, its hospitality toward Taliban leaders raises eyebrows. India has yet to recognize the Taliban government officially, but by facilitating Muttaqi’s week-long stay and enabling his Deoband appearance, it has effectively legitimized a regime widely accused of harboring transnational militants.

However, history reminds Kabul that India has not always been this welcoming. When the Taliban retook Kabul on August 15, 2021, India was among the first to shut down its embassy and evacuate all personnel overnight, abandoning Afghan citizens who had worked with its mission. Hundreds of Afghan students, traders, and refugees were left stranded as India revoked their visas, cut aid, and even deported several asylum seekers.

It is therefore ironic that the same India now seeks religious symbolism and goodwill through Darul Uloom Deoband, after years of dismissing and isolating the very movement it now courts.

A resurfaced 2021 clip of late UP MP Shafiqur Rehman Barq, who had urged dialogue with the Taliban after their takeover, has gone viral again. At the time, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath condemned him in the Assembly and filed a case; today, his own government is providing protocol to Taliban Foreign Minister Muttaqi in Deoband.

Another old video, attributed to Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, has also re-emerged online, in which he can be heard discussing India’s strategic approach toward Afghanistan. 

The clip, which has circulated for years, includes remarks interpreted as: “We will use the Taliban the way we want. They listen more to Deoband. We will control them through Deoband. They are mercenaries bought by someone; India is a bigger economy, we will deal as a state, we will inject more funds by using Muslim organisations.” 

Although the video’s authenticity and context remain debated, its renewed circulation during Muttaqi’s visit has fueled perceptions that India’s religious outreach may in fact be a long-calculated state strategy.

The viral clips and the trend have reignited debate online over India’s apparent U-turn, exposing how domestic political posturing often contradicts its diplomatic choices.

Pakistan’s security observers point out that this reflects a strategic contradiction. India condemns terrorism when it affects its own interests but is willing to engage groups accused of exporting instability into Pakistan.

“This is classic statecraft in camouflage,” said a former Pakistani diplomat. “India is presenting religious engagement as cultural diplomacy while quietly leveraging it to expand influence inside Afghanistan.”

Such engagement also conveniently undermines Pakistan’s traditional role as Afghanistan’s primary interlocutor, especially after Islamabad’s repeated calls for Kabul to act against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group operating from Afghan soil. Yet, despite recent tensions, Pakistan’s decades of engagement with successive Afghan governments, from humanitarian aid to border facilitation, remain unmatched by India’s largely symbolic overtures.

By hosting the Taliban’s top diplomat, India may be signaling to the world that it can do business with Kabul, but for the Taliban, this may be a temporary handshake, not a realignment. The deep mistrust rooted in India’s past abandonment of Afghanistan still lingers.

Deoband’s Legacy and Symbolism

Founded in 1866, Darul Uloom Deoband has long been South Asia’s most influential center of Islamic scholarship, often compared to Al-Azhar University in Cairo. It has educated thousands of scholars across Asia, including many Afghan clerics. Even Afghanistan’s former monarch, King Zahir Shah, visited the seminary, and the institution still bears a gate named in his honor, “Bab-e-Zahir.”

Currently, around 15 Afghan students are enrolled there, though stricter visa laws since 2000 have curtailed the influx that once numbered in the hundreds.

By returning to Deoband, Muttaqi sought to emphasize an intellectual lineage that predates borders, yet in the process, India appears to have discovered a soft-power channel to rehabilitate its influence in Afghanistan under the cloak of shared faith and heritage.

The move, however, risks backfiring, as the Taliban leadership remains wary of India’s past duplicity and its continued silence on Afghan refugees and humanitarian needs.

Regional Implications: Faith Meets Realpolitik

For Pakistan, the optics are not lost. India’s outreach to Taliban leadership through religious institutions contrasts sharply with its domestic intolerance toward its own Muslim citizens and the systematic marginalization of Islamic seminaries at home.

“Delhi’s selective secularism is showing,” noted one Islamabad-based analyst. “It bans hijab in classrooms but embraces Taliban clerics for geopolitical optics.”

The Taliban, meanwhile, appear to be pursuing a pragmatic, if transactional, diplomacy, seeking economic and political openings wherever available. But Afghan Taliban leaders are also aware of India’s history of backdoor diplomacy, from supporting the Northern Alliance during the first Taliban era to quietly funding anti-Taliban networks post-2001. 

Muttaqi’s appearance in Deoband underscores this shift, suggesting Kabul’s growing comfort in diversifying ties beyond Pakistan, even as Pakistan continues to shoulder the fallout of cross-border militancy emanating from Afghan territory. At the same time, Islamabad remains the only neighbor that has consistently engaged with Afghanistan through decades of conflict and recovery, from hosting millions of refugees to leading reconstruction assistance.

A Visit Laden with Symbolism

Amir Khan Muttaqi’s stop in Deoband was more than a religious visit,  it was a symbolic recalibration. India, once a vocal critic of Taliban rule, is now using religious diplomacy to carve a niche in post-war Afghanistan, while the Taliban seek validation from an unexpected quarter.

For Pakistan, the development reinforces a long-held concern that India’s strategy in Afghanistan is less about cooperation and more about narrative engineering, dragging the Taliban’s perceived roots away from Haqqania and into India’s Deoband, to recast the region’s ideological geography in its favor.

What appears as a spiritual visit may, in essence, be India’s most sophisticated political sermon yet, preached not from a pulpit, but through the corridors of Darul Uloom Deoband.

Also See: Behind Muttaqi’s India Visit Lies a Deeper Question