Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday not to legitimise the Afghan Taliban government and to “show true leadership” over their assault on women’s rights.”Do not legitimise them,” she said at a summit focused on girls’ education in Islamic nations being held in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.”As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voices, use your power. You can show true leadership. You can show true Islam,” said 27-year-old Yousafzai.The two-day conference has brought together ministers and education officials from dozens of Muslim-majority countries, backed by the Muslim World League (MWL). Since sweeping back to power in 2021, the Taliban government has imposed an austere version of Islamic law that the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”.Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from secondary school and university. Delegates from Afghanistan’s Taliban government did not attend the event despite being invited, Pakistan Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told AFP on Saturday.”Simply put, the Taliban do not see women as human beings,” Yousafzai told the conference. “They cloak their crimes in cultural and religious justification.”Muhammad al-Issa, a Saudi cleric and MWL secretary general, on Saturday told the summit that “those who say that girls’ education is un-Islamic are wrong”.Yousafzai also highlighted the impact of wars in Yemen, Sudan and Gaza on schooling.”In Gaza, Israel has decimated the entire education system,” she said. “I will continue to call out Israel’s violations of international law and human rights.”- Taliban engagement -Pakistan’s state PTV channel censored a portion of her speech which alluded to a mass deportation scheme by Islamabad launched in 2023 that has seen hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals leave under threat of arrest. “I cannot imagine an Afghan girl or an Afghan woman being forced back into the system that denies her future,” she told the conference in remarks cut from the air.Yousafzai was shot in the face by the Pakistani Taliban when she was a 15-year-old schoolgirl in 2012, amid her campaigning for female education rights.Her activism earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, and she has since become a global advocate for women and girls’ education rights.While there is outcry in much of the international community over the Taliban government curbs, nations are divided over how to engage with Kabul’s rulers on the issue.Some countries argue they should be frozen out of the diplomatic community until they backtrack, while others prefer engagement to coax them into a U-turn.No country has officially recognised the Taliban authorities, but several regional governments have engaged on the topics of trade and security. There is little evidence that broadsides from the international community over the Taliban government’s treatment of women are having any impact on their position.Yousafzai’s father Ziauddin Yousafzai, who pushed against cultural norms for his daughter to go to school in Pakistan and co-founded her Malala Fund charity, on Saturday told AFP he had not seen “any serious step or serious action from the Muslim world” on the cause of girls’ education in Afghanistan. Roza Otunbayeva — head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan — said leaders of Islamic countries should offer direct help to Afghan girls.”I really call on all these ministers… who came from all over the world, to offer scholarships, to have online education, to have all sorts of education for them,” she told a panel.

India’s powerful and hugely wealthy cricket board on Sunday elected its new chief, former player and advocate Devajit Saikia, the only person nominated to the top post.”Devajit Saikia is declared duly elected as the Secretary of BCCI”, the Board of Control for Cricket in India said in a statement.Saikia, 55, succeeds Jay Shah who left the position to become chairman of the International Cricket Council, the global governing body.Businessman and state cricket administrator Prabhtej Singh Bhatia has been appointed BCCI treasurer, the board added.Shah’s departure last month to become chairman of the ICC prompted the appointment of Saikia, who was already on the BCCI board as interim secretary.An unknown among fans after a modest playing career, Saikia has close ties with India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Saikia began in administration by serving as general secretary of a cricket club in the northeastern state of Assam under the leadership of Himanta Biswa Sarma.Sarma is now Assam’s chief minister for the BJP, which has governed India nationally since 2014 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Saikia and Sarma both later served in the Assam state cricket association. When Sarma was tapped to lead the state, he appointed Saikia his advocate general — the government’s chief legal adviser.Saikia was a wicketkeeper-batsman with modest returns in first-class cricket where he played four matches for his home state Assam, scoring just 53 runs.

Indian farmer Govind Singh travelled for nearly two days by train to reach what he believes is the “land of the gods” — just one among legions of Hindu pilgrims joining the largest gathering of humanity.The millennia-old Kumbh Mela, a sacred show of religious piety and ritual bathing that opens Monday, is held at the site where the holy Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet.This edition of the mega fair, in the north Indian city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh state, is believed to be the biggest ever.Organisers expect up to 400 million pilgrims from India and beyond over six weeks, running from January 13 to February 26.”It feels great to be in the land of the gods for the Kumbh Mela,” said the 53-year-old Singh, who came from a village in Madhya Pradesh state, a journey of more than 600 kilometres (375 miles). “I will stay as long as the gods want me to.”The riverside in Prayagraj has turned into a vast tent city.Many pilgrims are already taking dips in the chilly water, with temperatures on the banks at midday around 20 degrees Celsius (around 70 degrees Fahrenheit).A shivering Sunny Pratap Gaur’s eyes teared up and his teeth clenched in the cold as he stood by the river after a bath in the grey waters.But he said he was happy to have “beaten the crowds” with his early dip. “I took leave from the office to be here,” said Gaur, a mid-level government bureaucrat from the state capital Lucknow.- ‘Another world’ -Beyond the bathing area, scores of boats lined up, offering pilgrims a trip to the Sangam, the spot believed to be the confluence of the three rivers.Hindus believe bathing there during the Kumbh helps cleanse sins and brings salvation.The festival is rooted in Hindu mythology, a battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality.”Hundreds of boatmen from all over the state have come with their boats to serve the pilgrims,” said Ramheet Nishad, one of them.Sprawling fields of tents — divided into sectors, complete with restaurants, shops and makeshift toilets — flank the river.Wealthier pilgrims camp in luxurious tents; more humble ones huddle under tarpaulin sheets.Saffron-robed monks and the naked ash-smeared ascetics roam the crowds, offering blessings to devotees.They will lead the dawn charge into the river waters on the most auspicious bathing dates.The massive congregation is also an occasion for Uttar Pradesh’s local Hindu nationalist government to burnish its credentials. Billboard after billboard lists the government’s achievements — some with QR codes linked to a specially designed website advertising the state’s public schemes.Indian police said they were “conducting relentless day-and-night patrols to ensure top-notch security” for the event.But for some visitors, the fair transcends politics and religion –- a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”It is about the feel,” said 26-year-old Rohit Singh. “The people, the river, it is another world.”