After the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, women there have been prohibited from education, from using mobile phones, from travelling alone, and from many other aspects of ordinary life. As a result, in the state called Afghanistan, women are essentially absent from both the state and society. Where a particular class, gender, race or ideological group does not have the right to express its views about the state or to grow and develop freely, they can, in a sense, be described as invisible within that state or society.

Alongside women, another class is also invisible in Afghanistan at this moment. They are the educated elite and middle class who believe in modernity while remaining rooted in Afghanistan’s traditional culture. The overthrow of Afghanistan’s modern King Amanullah by a lawless armed group led by Bacha-i-Saqao, followed by the Soviet invasion, the American invasion and, alongside these, the rise of the Taliban, has meant that this elite and cultural class of Afghanistan remains unknown to many in today’s world. Many members of this class left the country with each successive catastrophe; even so, a substantial section of them still remains there. But in reality, at this moment they are invisible from both the state and society.

In this Afghan reality, whether because of trade, because of resources, or because of mobility and various other strategic considerations, many countries of the world continue to maintain diplomatic relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban government. International organisations, too, are trying to work there to whatever extent they can. But most of them are working while effectively denying the existence of more than half of the population. Even from European human-rights groups, one does not hear very much about the fact that this half of Afghanistan’s population, the women, has in effect been rendered invisible from both the state and society.

There was a time when, not only in European countries but also in other democratic countries of the world, if an entire female population, together with a cultural class rooted in a country’s traditions, were subjected to this kind of treatment by the state, the matter would be raised in international forums as well as in their respective legislatures or parliaments. Even until the 1980s, in Afghanistan’s democratic neighbour India, one could see both the state and its intellectual and cultural community protesting against such injustices elsewhere in the world. The reality of today’s world is different.

Rabindranath Tagore, speaking of the British merchant class taking possession of the state in India, wrote, “The merchant’s scales appeared in the form of the royal sceptre.” In other words, the ruler lost the character of the ruling class and assumed the character of the Vaishya, or merchant. Today, throughout the world, rulers governing in the name of the people have assumed the character of the Vaishya. For example, America and Iran are at war. Yet the eight oil and gas companies Aramco, BP, Shell, Equinor, Chevron, TotalEnergies, Eni and ExxonMobil earned nearly twice as much profit between April and June as they did during the corresponding period last year. The combined profits of these eight companies amounted to nearly 93 billion dollars.

Therefore, this war is not essentially a war of one country against another. In reality, it is merely one of the ways through which the profits of the oil companies are secured. More simply, it may be called a business strategy, a route through which the merchant acquires wealth or carries out exploitation.

Therefore, when the world itself is moving along this path, it is a mistake to see any practical reality in the idea of “people-to-people” diplomacy, or in the idea of a country maintaining relations with the people of another country.

For this reason, whatever relations Bangladesh now has, or continues to maintain, with any country must also be regarded as relations between one government and another.

This is because, in the election through which the present government of Bangladesh was formed, in the real sense, no more than 10 to 12 per cent of the people cast their votes. Former opposition leader G. M. Quader presented the relevant data through an analysis of polling centres and voting times. Therefore, there is no scope for describing Bangladesh’s 2026 election as either better or more representative of the people than the election of 2024. Moreover, in 2024 no political party was banned. This time, a political party supported by nearly half of the people was kept out of the election through an executive order. Even now, people who hold that political view have no political rights. This means that these people, who believe in that political position, are, like the women of Afghanistan, invisible from both the state and society.

Beyond them, there is also a large cultural community that carries within itself the culture and traditions of Bengal and the Bengali people through the ages, together with the thought and consciousness of Rabindranath, who gave that culture its modern form. Many among them, although their fathers were poets, writers or intellectuals, neither issued statements in favour of banning Rabindranath during the Pakistan period nor took part in movements demanding such a ban. And without comprehending Rabindranath, one cannot comprehend the true Nazrul. Therefore, beyond those who oppose Rabindranath and Nazrul, there exists in this country a large cultural community. In today’s reality, they too have become, to a considerable extent, as invisible as that cultural class in Afghanistan. And the extent of their invisibility can be understood from the fact that, on the day Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated (the man under whose Himalayan leadership this country was created for the protection of Bengali culture and heritage), two young women were arrested while going to place flowers at his “demolished” house at Dhanmondi 32, a place inseparably associated with his memory. And the rest who wish to pay their respects are, like the women of Afghanistan, invisible from both society and the state.

In the present world, driven by Vaishya interests, none of this is new. Yet this reality must be acknowledged: where more than half the people are invisible, “people-to-people” diplomacy is little more than a mockery. In Afghanistan, there is, in reality, no difference between a mountain goat on the mountainside and an adolescent girl.

And yet, for all those invisible people, from the adolescent girl of Afghanistan to the young woman arrested in front of No. 32 in Bangladesh, and to the bloodied adolescent girls of Iran and Palestine, Rabindranath left behind these words for them all: “This alone I know: for their sake, through the darkness of night, the human traveller has journeyed from age to age, towards ages yet to come, through storm and thunderbolt, carefully keeping alight the little lamp within.”

The human traveller’s journey along this path towards liberation has continued through age after age. No one has ever been able to extinguish the light of that inner lamp.

Author: Recipient of the highest state award in journalism; Editor, Sarakhon and The Present World.