New Delhi: Between the iron fist of the Taliban back in Afghanistan and tight visa rules in India, 27-year-old Habibullah Mohammadi feels his dreams are being crushed to dust. The MBA student at Chandigarh University has decided to drop his last semester for now, but his entire future is at stake.
Mohammadi and his roommate have not been able to pay their fees for the last two terms. There’s no money coming in from their families and their Indian visas do not allow them to work. The only life raft they have currently is the kindness of their Indian classmates.
“My father has not been able to send me any funds for the last couple of months. Finding money just to survive is getting difficult. Thankfully, my classmates have been helping me raise funds for now,” Mohammadi told ThePrint over the phone. “All I want is to be able to support myself. I want to finish my education and be able to find a job.”
He’s taking the situation day by day, but the future looks grim. Mohammadi, who has been in India since 2018 and has completed his BBA from here, knows that getting a job in the country is next to impossible and so he hopes to eventually find opportunities in the Middle East or Western countries. But right now, he’s not even sure if he can complete his degree.
Mohammadi’s plight is far from unusual for Afghan students in India. Many here are stuck in limbo. Funds aren’t coming in from many of their families, they aren’t allowed to work legally, and scholarships have dried up. Their universities are no longer as welcoming, and even their friends cannot support them forever.
According to 2021 figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 15,000 Afghans in India are registered as refugees and asylum seekers with the UN agency. In addition, about 13,000 Afghan students are currently enrolled in Indian universities, according to the Afghanistan embassy.
Most of these students possess an Aadhaar card for foreign nationals, but their visas restrict them from working. Some resort to selling tea or knick-knacks, or take up ‘under-the-table’ odd jobs. Qualified adults too struggle to get work permits or find willing employers.
Seeking recourse for these issues has been difficult due to the fallout of the political upheaval in Afghanistan.
After the takeover of the Taliban in August 2021, the Indian diplomatic mission in Kabul was shut. Eighteen months on, the Indian government does not have a diplomatic presence in Kabul while the existing embassy in New Delhi is run by Afghan officials who were part of the former Ashraf Ghani government.
Last month, ThePrint reported that the Taliban has begun pushing the Indian government to allow it to station a representative in New Delhi and that Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a controversial spokesperson for the Taliban regime’s foreign ministry, was a proposed candidate.
ThePrint has e-mailed the Ministry of External Affairs seeking a response on whether the Indian government is looking to provide any kind of aid or visa relaxations for Afghan students and refugees. This report will be updated when a response is received.
Also read: ‘Burn my degrees, photos of me without hijab’: Afghan women in India tell families back home
Running out of time
Neda Sadaqat, 20, has been ‘luckier’ than many other Afghan students. She has her family by her side and is a first-year student at a Delhi University (DU) college.
Sadaqat’s mother was a high-ranking official with an international relief organisation back in Afghanistan, which is how the family of three managed to leave for India two weeks before the Taliban government took over.
Now, their ‘luck’ is running out. The asylum-seekers have been surviving on their savings, but now funds are fast depleting.
“My mother has been looking for a job for months now. Everybody either tells her that she is overqualified or turns her away after seeing her documentation. My brother is volunteering and doing odd jobs in order to make some additional income. We are worried because my mother’s savings won’t last forever,” said Sadaqat.
Sadaqat had applied for a scholarship from the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in 2021, but was denied because of her asylum-seeker status. That year, the ICCR had granted scholarships, which come with a stipend, to 650 Afghan students, but in 2022, it refused all applicants from the country. For Afghan students, this has meant relying on their own funds to continue studying in India.
Many Afghans usually apply to Indian universities, but that is changing. Last year, the number of applications from Afghanistan dropped to zero in DU.
In Sadaqat’s case, an Indian benefactor came to the rescue.
“After I was denied admission, I decided to work. I managed to find a volunteering job with Coke Studio. One of the mentors I met there paid for my education and put me in college,” she said.
Several families like Neda’s who fled to India now live in the Afghan refugee communities in Delhi, spread across areas like Lajpat Nagar and Malviya Nagar. They rely on doing odd jobs like selling handicrafts or tea on the roadside. It’s a similar story elsewhere too.
‘Autumn in our hearts’
Chandigarh University student Habibullah Mohammadi, quoted earlier, said he is “one step away from poverty”. Yet he somehow has to arrange Rs 1.6 lakh for his pending fees for the previous two semesters for a chance to complete his MBA.
People like him, he said, can sometimes get jobs as call centre workers — undocumented, of course. “The hours are long and the pay is just enough to scrape by.”
His family is currently seeking asylum in Iran and don’t have any money to send him.
Sayed Hussain, a second-year BBA student at Chandigarh University said that under Taliban rule, several businesses in Afghanistan have had to shut down. As a result, families have been unable to support their children in foreign universities.
Owing to the economic losses, families with children in foreign universities have not been able to support them financially.
“Many Afghan students have taken a drop this semester and have fees pending from several semesters. Some get money a little money from their families every three to six months. It’s just about enough to feed themselves. They either end up opening small food\tea shops on the street or work illegally in small businesses,” he said.
Mallik Mohammad Naseri, 27, is studying for a PhD in Hindi at Lucknow University. He said he gets some money under the Junior Research Fellow (JRF) scholarship, but it just about covers daily living expenses.
As the eldest son, he feels tremendous guilt about not being able to send money back to his family in Kabul. He’s not even sure when he will meet them again. Home isn’t what it used to be.
“With no jobs or education opportunities we cannot go back home,” he said.
Speaking in immaculate Hindi, Naseri added: “Afghan students ka dil ab patjhad ke mausam jaisa ho gaya hai”— it is now autumn in our hearts.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
Also read: ‘I wanted to go to Oxford’. Afghan women’s dreams dashed after Taliban’s university ban