India’s recalibrated embrace of Afghanistan

Written by Dilip Yadav
Founding Partner, First Partners (Affiliate of SEC Newgate Group)

After four years away, India’s quiet return to Kabul marks a strategic recalibration — not an endorsement of the Taliban, but a move to safeguard geography, influence, and access to Central Asia - a deft act of diplomacy without recognition.

In early October, New Delhi announced it would upgrade its technical mission in Kabul to a full-fledged embassy, marking the first time since the Taliban’s 2021 takeover that India is formally restoring diplomatic presence. On the surface, this is a bureaucratic adjustment; beneath it lies a profound recalibration of India’s strategic posture in South Asia.

India’s Afghanistan policy has always balanced realism with idealism — the moral discomfort of engaging with a regime that denies women education, versus the strategic imperative of not surrendering the region’s narrative to Pakistan and China.

The Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, received in New Delhi with cautious courtesy, embodied this new phase: one in which India no longer looks at Kabul through the lens of ideology, but one of geography, economics, and security. For New Delhi, the logic is simple yet layered.

Afghanistan is a geopolitical keystone connecting India to Central Asia, a gateway to minerals, trade routes, and influence over regional stability.

Its location — between the ambitions of China’s Belt and Road and the anxieties of Pakistan’s military establishment — makes it too critical to ignore. Over the past two decades, India has invested more than $3 billion in Afghan infrastructure: from the Salma Dam to the majestic parliament building in Kabul. When the Taliban swept to power, these assets were left in limbo, and India’s soft power receded overnight.

Re-engagement, therefore, is not a sudden shift, it’s a slow return to protect long-term interests that were never truly abandoned. The new approach is pragmatic. India has not formally recognised the Taliban regime, but it is engaging without endorsing. This nuance — diplomacy without legitimacy — is the fine line on which the foreign ministry now walks. The reopening of the embassy and the plan to resume Amritsar-Kabul flights are framed as humanitarian and commercial gestures, not political ones.

Yet the symbolism is unmistakable. India is back in Kabul, even if it doesn’t yet shake hands without gloves. This recalibration also sends quiet signals across the subcontinent.
To Pakistan, it’s a reminder that India’s influence in Afghanistan can’t be permanently erased.

To Beijing, which has moved swiftly to mine Afghan lithium and negotiate strategic projects, it’s a subtle assertion of presence. And to the West, especially Washington, it is evidence that India can act as a stabilising intermediary — maintaining dialogue with the Taliban even when formal channels are frozen. Still, the path ahead is fraught. The Taliban’s record on human rights remains appalling. The threat of terror groups using Afghan soil to target   Indian  interests persists.

And within India, critics argue that any normalisation risks eroding the moral clarity of its democratic stance. Yet history favours those who engage without illusion. In reopening its doors to Kabul, India isn’t endorsing the Taliban’s ideology — it’s safeguarding its geography. The move may appear quiet but, in the language of diplomacy, silence often signals confidence. India’s ascent in the region depends not on declarations, but on deft steps — and this one, taken softly across the mountains, could redefine its reach for the decade ahead.