On October 11, Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, representing the Taliban government, made an important visit to the Darul Uloom Deoband seminary in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. This visit has attracted global attention because it marks the first diplomatic engagement between the Taliban and India since the militant group regained power in Afghanistan in 2021.

For this visit, Muttaqi received a temporary exemption from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which lifted his travel sanctions from October 9 to 16. The waiver was specifically granted to facilitate his India tour. On October 9, he arrived in New Delhi, where he met with senior Indian officials including External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. During his stay, Muttaqi also held a press conference at the Afghan Embassy in Delhi. Interestingly, just before his arrival, India upgraded its diplomatic presence in Kabul, elevating its mission to the status of an embassy, signaling cautious yet significant diplomatic outreach toward Afghanistan’s new rulers.

At Deoband, Muttaqi’s arrival drew hundreds of Muslims, clerics, scholars, students, and community leaders who gathered to welcome him. His visit lasted nearly five hours, during which he met Mufti Abul Qasim Nomani, the seminary’s rector, and Maulana Arshad Madani, president of Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind. The Afghan minister also interacted with Afghan students studying at the seminary and spent time in its vast library, exploring the manuscripts and Islamic literature preserved there for more than a century.

While addressing a large gathering, Muttaqi recited verses from the Quran and highlighted the “deep-rooted ties” between Deoband and Afghanistan. He spoke about how the teachings of Deoband had influenced Afghanistan’s religious and cultural values and acknowledged the seminary’s historical role in shaping the ideological foundation of the Taliban. Drawing a comparison with the seminary’s anti-colonial origins in 1866, he described Deoband as a center that not only shaped religious learning but also inspired resistance against imperial powers.

After the event, Maulana Arshad Madani shared details of his conversation with Muttaqi. He said, “I told him that our ties with you are not just academic. You contributed to the independence of India. Our forefathers chose the land for Afghanistan to fight for India’s independence… For your independence, you defeated powers like America and Russia. You learnt from us how to do that when we defeated Britain. I told him (Afghan FM Amir Khan Muttaqi) that this meeting shows how the Muslims of India and the Darul Uloom Deoband have deep ties with you. There should be harmony within the nations of the world, irrespective of their religion. We had no political discussion. The relations between the two nations will improve. India has had complaints that Afghanistan sent terrorists to India. Now, after this meeting, it is confirmed that no terrorists will come to India from Afghanistan.”

This powerful statement emphasized centuries of ideological and emotional connection between Indian Muslims and Afghans, as well as the shared anti-colonial and religious heritage between Deoband and the Taliban.

The Darul Uloom Deoband is often described as the ideological birthplace of the Taliban. The word “Taliban” itself means “students” in Pashto, and symbolically, Deoband is their ‘school’ — the cradle of the movement’s ideology. The Taliban’s belief system draws from the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam, which began right in this seminary in Saharanpur in 1866.

The seminary was established shortly after the 1857 Indian Rebellion, during a time of great turmoil under British colonial rule. Its founders — Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi — aimed to preserve orthodox Hanafi traditions and classical Islamic teachings against Western influence. They called for a return to the foundational principles of Islam, believing that spiritual revival and education could serve as a form of resistance to colonial domination. Over time, this idea of religious self-determination influenced anti-imperialist and even jihadist ideologies, which would later manifest in different forms across South and Central Asia.

Between 1913 and 1920, Deobandi scholars went beyond India’s borders, engaging in what can be called ideological diplomacy. They built ties with Afghanistan, the Ottoman Empire, and even the German Empire to weaken British colonial influence in India. From this period onwards, Afghan students began enrolling in Deoband, learning Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and Arabic before returning home to set up their own madrasas and religious institutions.

After India’s Partition in 1947, the Deobandi ideology continued to expand rapidly across South Asia, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Scholars and clerics trained at Deoband migrated and established madrasas in these regions, transmitting the same doctrines that promoted strict adherence to Sharia and classical Islamic education.

During the 1980s, Pakistan’s military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq launched a sweeping Islamisation policy. This resulted in the exponential growth of Deobandi institutions near the Afghan border. Simultaneously, these seminaries began to receive financial and ideological backing from Saudi Arabia, allowing Wahhabi ideas to merge with Deobandi teachings during the Soviet-Afghan War.

It was this fusion of Deobandi puritanism and Wahhabi rigidity, combined with the Afghan tribal code of Pashtunwali, that eventually gave birth to the Taliban movement. The Taliban’s ideology represents a strict interpretation of Sharia law, enforcing rigid social controls such as clerical dominance, gender segregation, and harsh punishments against those deemed un-Islamic.

Many Taliban leaders have been students of Deobandi madrasas

The Taliban’s connection to Deoband does not lie directly with the Indian seminary but rather through a network of Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan, which trace their roots back to Deoband. Among these, the Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak, Pakistan, stands out as the most influential.

Often referred to as the “University of Jihad,” Darul Uloom Haqqania was founded by Maulana Abdul Haq, an alumnus and teacher of the original Deoband seminary before Partition. His son, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, later became a major supporter of the Taliban, using the madrasa as a recruitment and training ground for fighters during the Afghan jihad against Soviet forces.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also played a crucial role in this phase. According to multiple reports, the ISI trained nearly 90,000 Afghans, many of whom became the first generation of Taliban fighters. Funding for these training programs largely came from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under Operation Cyclone, a covert program that channeled money and weapons to anti-Soviet mujahideen groups.

The term “Taliban” — literally meaning “students” in Pashto — reflects this background. By 1994, Taliban fighters trained in Deobandi madrasas began their military campaign, first capturing Kandahar and later controlling about 90% of Afghanistan by 2000, establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

For decades, Afghan Sunni Muslims have continued to travel to Darul Uloom Deoband to study Islamic theology and jurisprudence. Even today, official Taliban decrees and fatwas reference Deobandi texts. One notable figure, Grand Mufti Rashid Ludhianvi, a prominent Deobandi scholar, became a theological pillar for the Taliban. After his visit to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the 1990s, he authored a series of fatwas legitimizing Mullah Omar’s leadership, urging Muslims to show unwavering loyalty to the Amir (Supreme Leader). These works were later translated into Dari and Pashto and became the doctrinal base of the Taliban’s legal system.

When the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, Deoband’s scholars publicly supported the act, describing it as the removal of idolatry. Over the years, Deoband has praised the Taliban as brave warriors who resisted foreign powers and regained their homeland, drawing comparisons to India’s own anti-British freedom struggle.

However, the Deoband seminary in India today distances itself from Taliban brutality, repeatedly clarifying that Indian Deobandism promotes peaceful religious education and rejects extremism. Despite that, the institution has largely remained silent on controversial Taliban policies, including the 2021 ban on women’s education, raising questions about its stance on human rights under the Taliban regime.