TALIBAN IMPACT ON INDIAN VILLAGE

Barely 25 km from the bustling township of Karnal, India is the village Mundogari, where people don't buy television sets, don't get themselves photographed, or even listen to Hindi film music.

It's not because they don't have the financial wherewithal to do so; it's because the 5,000-strong Muslim population of the village is under the near-total sway of retrograde maulvis whose edicts have barred the folk from any form of recreation.

With just one Hindu Dalit family in Mundogari, the village has more or less been reduced to a Talibanised relic. It's not the rule of law that enshrines personal freedoms that prevails here; it's the fatwas from maulvis, who interpret the Koran according to their blinkered vision, that calls the shots, preventing people from exerting their right to freedom in a country that celebrated its 60th year of independence in August this year.

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