Shashi Tharoor assumed that there are at least two Malayalis in the group of Taliban fighters who captured Kabul on Sunday from a video shared on Twitter.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor sparked a massive row after he doubted that there were two Malayali Taliban in one of the celebratory videos of the group that emerged after the takeover of Kabul. “It sounds as if there are at least two Malayali Taliban here — one who says “samsarikkette” around 9-second mark and another who understands him!” Tharoor wrote sharing a video that was originally shared on a Twitter account that goes by the name Ramiz. Ramiz later clarified that there are no Kerala-origin fighters in the rank and file of Taliban. “They are Baloch from Zabul province who speak Brahvi and Bravhi language is widely spokes among them. It is a Dravidian language which is very similar to Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam etc,” Ramiz, who claims to be interested in conflict journalism, wrote.
To Ramiz’s explanation, Tharoor said that it is indeed interesting and only linguists can figure this out. “But there have indeed been misguided Malayalis who joined the Taliban, so that possibility cannot be ruled out entirely,” the MP wrote drawing wrath on social media.
Twitter users accused Tharoor of branding the entire Malayali community as terrorist sympathisers because of just one word. Such a statement should not come from the MP, one user said, as it would only fuel “right wing’s hate campaign against Kerala”. Tharoor said it’s because he is the MP that he is aware of the situation. In past, he was approached by Kerala women whose daughters were stuck in Afghanistan after “having been taken there by their misguided husbands,” Tharoor wrote adding that he had also arranged a meeting with then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on this issue. “Obviously, it’s as an MP that I am aware of the situation,” he wrote.
Then Tharoor shared a news article about Nimisha Fathima, a Keralite woman who landed in Afghanistan jail following the killing of her IS husband a couple of years ago, and wrote, “I am sure all those who decried my tweet about the possibility of Malayalis in the Taliban will now notice the ones who were released from the government’s prisons today.”
The news article of Matrubhumi that Tharoor shared said that the Taliban released over 5,000 prisoners — mostly belonging to Taliban and Al Qaeda — from Kabul jails. According to the report, there were eight Keralites among those who were freed including Nimisha.
