The ‘Kabuliwala’ Syndrome - Assessing The Sociological Cultural and Economic Aspects of the Afghani Muslims in India.

Abstract

Introduction: Post implementation of CAA, the glaring exclusion of Islam and increasing Islamophobia by the right-wing activists in power have stirred widespread debates and discussions regarding its implications on various minority communities settled in India, including those from Afghanistan. This paper uniquely combines social psychology, transnationalism, and acculturation studies to draw up a theoretical framework. Moreover, statistical measures, aided by text analysis, were explored to strategise its aftermath in terms of sociological, cultural, and economic aspects, numerically. Finally, proposing a policy framework to restore the Refugee crisis and enhance cultural competence in India post CAA.

Objectives: The Present study considers three well-defined objectives:

• To codify and deconstruct the concept of Kabuliwala syndrome and adding it to the mainstream discourse.


• To identify the sociological, cultural and economic aspects of Afghan Muslims affected due to the introduction of CAA.


• To propose a policy framework for non-refoulment and integration of refugees post CAA.

Methods: This paper considers a wide range of content analysis using traditional text analysis techniques on 30 published articles from a 10-year period (2014-2023) to assess the significant socio-cultural and economic factors affecting Afghan Muslims residing in India in the aftermath of the CAA. The present study has considered both humanist tradition and positivist tradition for the search of meaning and interpretation from the articles (texts) analyzed, further reducing those texts to codes that represent concepts and applying standard quantitative methods to explore the relationships among the codes.

Results: The present study has observed significant factors proxying the sociological, cultural, economic aspects of affected Afghan Muslims. It has also The present study has also observed few control variables to be significant. Further, the study has ranked the factors on the basis of composite index for its magnitude of impact. Further, as the coefficient table has suggested the most significant social factors are: alienation, religious discrimination and conversion, citizenship, domestic abuse, refugee status. Weighing in on the cultural factors: linguistic barrier and islamophobia seems to be quite the stir. Whereas, the crucial economic factors are unemployment and illiteracy.

Conclusions: Based on the coefficient values and interconnectedness of the various parameters, the paper concludes by proposing few pointers that could be weighed in by policy makers while attempting to formulate Refugee policies for India in the wake of CAA.