New Delhi: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Pope Francis at the Vatican City, Congress leader Manish Tewari called it an alliance of civilisations in wake of the Taliban’s rise in Afghanistan.

In a tweet, the Congress MP said that one must discern deeper strategic rationale to the meeting between the two.

“Read visit in conjunction with Western Quad US (Anglo Saxon) Israel (Jewish) India (Hindu according to BJP) and UAE (A Prop),” he tweeted.

On Saturday, the PM said he had a “very warm meeting” with Pope Francis and discussed a wide range of issues, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges posed by climate change.

He further invited him to visit India at an early date.

Modi, who is the first Indian Prime Minister to meet Francis since he became Pope in 2013, also shared photographs of him, embracing the head of the Roman Catholic Church on Twitter.

The Pope received the Indian Prime Minister in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, the Ministry of External Affairs said in a press release.

Briefing reporters, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla described the meeting as a “unique occasion” as the last interaction between the Prime Minister of India and the Pope was in June 2000 when the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

Coming to Manish Tewari’s tweet, American political scientist Samuel Huntington in his 1996 magnum opus ‘The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order’ hypothesized a new post-Cold War world order in which the most pervasive and dangerous conflicts will not take place between social classes, rich and poor but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities.

Asserting that the influence and importance of religion in world politics will grow considerably, the political scientist opined that it will fill the vacuum created by the loss of political ideology. 

The rise of the Taliban 2.0 is a serious cause of concern for the West and both India and the US have said that Afghanistan’s territory must not be allowed to be used as a safe haven for terrorists.