Absence has a sound. It is often more telling than speech. For women journalists, exclusion rarely arrives with a headline or a warning. It comes quietly — a list without your name, an invitation that never lands.

It arrived in New Delhi on Friday, in the form of an all-male press conference addressed by Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi , at the Afghan embassy. The questions were many, but all from men. The women reporters were nowhere to be seen, reportedly kept out in accordance with the Taliban’s rigid ideology of keeping women limited to the domestic sphere. Their absence filled the room.

The Ministry of External Affairs later clarified that India had “no involvement” in the event, which was organised by the visiting Taliban delegation inside the embassy p

See Full Page