According to a 2015 Gallup poll, India was the most loved country in Afghanistan, where the former’s approval rating was at 62%. Five years later, although India’s approval rating among Afghans is still high, there are indications that India’s popularity is declining. There are two main reasons for that: first, rising Islamophobia in India; second, the vilification of Muslim historical figures by Bollywood.

Conquests and exchange of ideas before Islam

People from present-day Afghanistan and India have been interacting with each other for millennia. There had been periods of conquests and exchange of ideas between the two countries long before the appearance of Islam on the scene. Centuries before the Ghaznavids’ and Ghorids’ invasions of northern India, the Kushans and Hephthalites, who both were non-Muslim, had expanded their reign from Afghanistan into northern India.

Prior to the Kushans and Hephthalites, the Mauryan Empire had extended its reach—in the opposite direction—from its capital at Pataliputra, in present-day Bihar. It was under the Mauryan Empire that Buddhism, from India, was brought to Afghanistan, and via Afghanistan to China. More than a millennium later, Islam would be introduced into much of northern India from and through Afghanistan.

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