-Anand Mishra
Mumbai: The difficulties of thousands of Afghan students studying in Mumbai and the country started only after the arrival of Corona Pandemic, when air flights between the two countries were canceled, but since The Taliban has come to power in Afghanistan, its blame lies on thousands of students studying here.
Ever since the change of power in this country reeling from political turmoil, cultural and political ties between the two countries have been shattered and students have been affected the most as their scholarships have been stopped. Their hopes are now pinned on the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) from which students have started pleading for financial help.
If the government helps, then talk
28-year-old Safdar Khan, who did his MA in commerce from Gujarat, told that his studies have been completed only in August 2021, but with the cancellation of air flights and the return of Taliban to his country, the whole matter has gone wrong. Same is the condition of 600 students and girl students like me whose future hangs in balance. Khan told that he wants to do PhD, but for this the government will have to help us. Jarha Rezahi, one of 190 female students studying in India, has completed her MA in Political Science from the University of Mumbai, but she sees a bleak road ahead as the pandemic in Afghanistan and the current government has taken away her dreams. Controlling his emotions, he said that how unfortunate we are that we can neither study here properly due to lack of money nor can return to our homeland. Our hopes rest on the Government of India.
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Difficulty increased than just student visa
One of the major pains of Afghan students is that they only got visa to study while staying in India. This means that they cannot do any work and hence they have to depend only on scholarships from the Government of India. Another Afghan student studying in Mumbai told that we families of Afghan students studying in India are not able to support us financially because everyone has lost their jobs and we have to depend on scholarship. Students studying in many colleges have been asked to deposit the fees, but they have not been able to deposit the fees yet. They say that we should be allowed to do jobs along with education.
Students trapped in Afghanistan too
It is not that only Afghan students studying in India are in trouble. Students from Afghanistan studying in India are also stuck there. Onib Dadgar, a resident of Nangarhar province there, said in a letter that there are more than 2500 Afghan students in Indian universities who are waiting for visas to be issued in Afghanistan so that they can come to India to study. Onib, a doctoral scholar from the University of Mysore, said that our Ambassador to India has requested the Ministry of Home Affairs to expedite the issuance of visas to these students who are stranded in Afghanistan. He said that India’s policy of issuing visas to Afghans has changed after the Taliban took over our country, we students have nothing to do with them.