Historic and political circumstances imposed an uneven economic and social development on Iran. A large part of the native bourgeoisie became dependent on the global capitalist order. This, together with the quantitative and qualitative weakness of the working class and the incompetence and mercenary nature of politicians over the last 200 years slowly pushed the country into a marginalised dependency. This historic process of non-development was inevitably tied in with poverty, class exploitation, political violence, and national oppression. Consequently, the ideals of the people of Iran in the century since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 can be encapsulated in the three principles of independence, freedom and social justice.
The revolution of 1979 could have freed Iran from the orbit of the existing global order and freed the nationalities of Iran from the yoke of national oppression. But after a brief spring of freedom, the Islamic Republic of capital established itself and took back the achievements of the revolution one by one, including cultural and national freedoms. In Iran, like all peripheral countries, true independence (rupture from the world capitalist order) is tied in with the creation of democratic national freedoms.
In his article we will briefly examine the issues of nation, nationalism and national oppression in Iran, and also the growth of national chauvinism (panism), which I believe to be one of the main consequences of the further globalisation of capital in post-cold war era.
Over the last three millennia the process of ethnic communality took shape in Iran. At the start of the 19th Century, as Iran came under the assault of colonial forces, the population of the country (perhaps around 6 million) was heterogeneous from the point of view of ethnic communality, economic growth and social stratification. A rich mixture of ethnic clans or tribes speaking one or other of the Iranian languages (Farsi, Kurdish, Baluch, Lori, Bakhtiari, Gilaki and Mazandarani, Tati, Taleshi, Hezareh etc) or Turkish group of languages (Azeri, Turkemen, Qashqai’, Afshari, Teimuris etc) or Semitic languages (Arabic, Assyrian, Hebrew etc) inhabited the country [1].
The appearance and growth of capitalism and its division of labour, extension of commodity relations, and the influx and rivalry between colonial powers transformed these ethnic groups and tribes into nations and national minorities. Language, linguistics, culture, economic ways, land ownership among others distinguished these nationalities. The mosaic makeup of modern Iran is a result of thousands of turbulent years of history of emigration, influx or waves of attack by numerous Arian-Iranian, Arab, Turkish, Mongol, Afghani … tribes. [2]
An additional, and important, element added to this diversity. The Safavid, Afshar, Qajar and Pahlavi monarchs, for example, extensively used forced migration of tribes to strengthen their own rule and to forestall revolt. Alternatively, they settled loyal tribes in the border regions while moving the more militant and quarrelsome to remote and less fertile areas or to the central deserts of Iran. By the beginning of the 20th century Iran was a multinational nation-state with a mosaic of languages and cultures.
The intermingling over several centuries has also produced what can be seen as common traits. Most significantly the consciousness of belonging to the same nation-state and same rule – particularly when threatened from outside. There is a common official (bureaucratic) language. There is allegiance, consciousness and attachment to Iran. And there are shared cultural events such as Eid, Sizdah Bedar etc. [4].
Yet, despite the historic and objective presence of communality, a feature that is a key element in the creation and safeguarding of Iranian independence and identity as a single country, the central issue of the nationality question (national oppression) and the denial of the right to self-determination remain unrequited.
The ethnic snapshot of Iran [5] demonstrates the key and complex position the national issue occupies in the country. It can only be addressed through a democratic and participatory policy.
Although in Iran the oppression of ethnic or religious minorities predate the growth of capitalist relations, they were fundamentally different form the national oppression of our era. National oppression as the central theme of the national question is a new phenomenon which historically is the result and one of the manifestations of the growth of capitalist relations. The control and safeguarding of internal markets is one of the main stuff of rivalry between big capitalists of different nationalities which bring in their wake injustice and discrimination [6]. The ruinous wars in the Balkans in the 1990’s, in the Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia etc) and in Iraqi Kurdistan are but a few recent examples. The opening of the “free market” and private capital to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics was co-temporal with chaos, social collapse, inflation, hoarding and finally interethnic wars.
In Iran too with the growth of capitalist relations at the end of the 19th century, national awakening grew in tandem with the spread of commodity relations, rivalry between bourgeoisie for markets, and the capitalists of the different nationalities. Injustice and discrimination soon followed and created the conditions for the growth of national struggles in the defeated nations.
But the national oppression that followed the defeat of the 1906 revolution and after the coup d’etat which brought Reza Shah to power (21 February 1921) entered a new phase culminating in the phenomenon of pan-Iranism.
Reza Shah’s regime, having brutally crushed the freedom movement and massacred the various nationalities, embarked in the 1920’s on a series of cultural and propaganda manoeuvres to spread his hegemony. This he did through the spread of Arian chauvinism. With the growth of “Aryan race” fascism in the 1930’s in Western Europe and Hitler’s ascendancy in Germany, Reza Shah and his followers tightened their cultural and racist assault on the numerous nationalities of Iran, supported by the European fascists. They encouraged fascistic ideas and fanned Arian chauvinism. Many rich and feudal Iranians were drawn to fascism and tightened their hold over minority nationalities in non-Farsi-speaking provinces. Numerous religious and secular intellectuals were won over.
Despite their protestation to the contrary, there is nothing “nationalist” in the pan-Iranists, both in the Pahlavi era and also now in the era of the Islamic Republic. They have more in common with the Eurocentrists with roots in the 18th Century anti-enlightenment movement. This can best be seen when one examines the roots of the thoughts and schools of the Pan-Iranist nationalists in their historic setting, especially in the Pahlavi era (1920-1979). These were the same roots which gave rise to fascism initially in Italy and later in Germany during the 20th century.
In Iran too the most unadulterated expression of these views, which began in the 1920’s and 30s, was in the ideology of the Rastakhiz (Resurrection) party in the last few years of the monarchy. Culturally the nationalities of Iran was portrayed as a single ethnicity with a single language. They spoke of the “superior Arian race” and a highly chauvinistic version of the history of the country, openly anti-Arab and anti-Turk, even though Turkish speakers outnumber Farsi speakers. The result, a particularly reactionary and anti-enlightenment interpretation of pan-Iranianism, was a struggle against non-Farsi languages (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic etc) and social and economic discrimination against non-Farsi speaking Iranians. And even military attacks were launched against their lives and cultures in the furthest corners of Iran [8].
This dominance of the ideology of a single language, a single nation and the “superior Aryan race” on a large section of our literature, and cultural and political discourse today is a shameful inheritance from the nationalist-chauvinist writers and researchers of the Pahlavi era – monarchist as well as non-monarchist. Spanning a period of over 80 years most of these writers did not recognise the principle of the national self-determination rights. “National unity”, “accord”, “inviolability of borders”, or “national security” were excuses to deny the existence of different nationalities living inside Iran.
They portray Kurdish, Baluchi or Lori not as languages but dialects of Farsi. Azeri Turkish, Turkemen, , and Arabic are foreign languages imposed on Farsi speakers by Arab or Mongol conquerors [9]. They equate being Iranian with being Arian and speaking Farsi. A single language is a the sign of national unity. The official language, like the currency, is a sign of national identity.
Their Euro centrism and their identification with the “Western” global capitalist order causes them to ignore, or misrepresent some of the ethnic realities of Iran.
Iran is a multilingual country where mothers talk to their children, people exchange happiness and sadness, and all defend the inviolability of the borders of the country in their own tongue – be it Farsi, Kurdish or Lori (Arian), Azeri, Turkemen, Qashqai’, or Afshari (Altai) or Arabic, Hebrew or Assyrian (Semitic) languages.
Chauvinists assure us these are mere “local dialects” imposed on the people by outsiders. Azeri is supposed not to be the language of the people of Azerbaijan and other Turkish speakers. Before being conquered by the Moguls their language was Tati or other dialects of Farsi. Turkish was imposed on them by the Mogul rulers.
The absurdity of such a statement is not difficult to see. Why should Moguls, who themselves became very attached to Farsi as a language and culture, impose Turkish on people living across an area as extensive as from Azerbaijan to Hamedan, Ghazvin, Kirkuk and Erzerum. That they even forced them to forget their “native” tongue of Tati, Harzani or Farsi, defies logic. And if that was their plan, why did they not impose it to other parts of their conquered lands.
The Moguls were supposed to have succeeded under the primitive conditions and communications of 700 years ago in what the Pahlavi dynasty so abysmally failed with 57 years of mass education, schools, high schools and universities, press and nationwide radio-television and a programme of imprisonment and systematic repression. Or the pan-Turkist government in Turkey – backed by the US and buttressed by Nato - could not get a single Kurdish village to speak in Turkish.
Finally how do our learned pan-Iranists explain the observed fact that the Turkish spoken in villages is purer than those in urban settings and not the other way round. [10]
Indeed history shows that the Mongols played an important role in spreading Farsi language and literature [11]. While prior to the Mongol conquest much of what was Iranian literature and learned writing was in the international language of the time – Arabic - during the rule of the Moguls major works appeared in Farsi – History of Beihaqqi, Rashideddin Fazollah Tusi’s Jame al-Tavarikh and the works of Amir Ali Shirnavai’.
This too is a myth. According to Pan-Iranist chauvinists Iranian Turks (Azeri, Qashqai’, Afshari, Shahsavan, etc) are in reality “Arian”. This is not a scientific or anthropological meaning of race, but an a-historic and totally artificial concoction. Underlying their bizarre notion is the belief that speaking a different language would be a prelude for secession. History rejects such an absurd notion.
The Saljuq Turks united Iran after centuries of fracture. The Safavid (also Turks 1501-1752) united and centralised Iran against the assaults of the Ottoman empire. Shah Esmail, who founded the dynasty, even wrote poetry in Azeri (under the name of Khatai’). The Azeri commanders, Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan, who could barely speak Farsi, successfully defended the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 against the despotic Mohammad Ali Shah and Tsarist Russia.
Turk, Turks and Turkish are cultural and linguistic terms and have no racial root – any more than Baluch and Baluchi, Arab and Arabic or Lor and Lori. Moreover the whole idea of an Arian or Indo-Iranian race does not have a meaningful racial root but is given to groups of languages that have special characteristics which are different from Turkish (with Altai’ roots) or Arabic (Semitic roots). [14] Being Aryan is not a racial label but a term given to people who speak one of the Aryan languages (Farsi, Kurdish, Baluchi, Lori, Bakhtiari, Tajik etc) [15]. Nor being Iranian is confined to one race, religion, language or even a political view.
The Zionist idea of the superiority of the “Jewish race” is living proof of the role of the ideology of “racial superiority” in fanning instability and wars in the Middle East, as elsewhere. Pan-Iranism, like Pan-Turkism, Pan-Helenism, and Pan-Arabism is a source of injustice and inequality and is a big obstacle on the road to a free, independent, and progressive Iran.
The Pan-Iranists also fail to see that regardless of what language the various nationalities of the country speak they are Iranian. Their slogan of “one nation, one language” imposes their chauvinist views on the people of the country. [16]. Thus while 25 million Iranians speak Turkish, Azeri is not even taught as a foreign language – let alone a second language - in schools where English, French, German, Russian, Spanish, and Italian are being taught. This is true of all the other languages as well.
This policy of ridiculing and discrediting other languages survives to this day. No doubt making a multi-lingual society uni-lingual is both dictatorial and planned. In the Islamic Republic, national oppression is one of the immutable of macro-policies, and is a major obstacle to democracy in Iran. The entire idea dates back to a political school founded by Dr Mahmud Afshar in the 1930’s. The editor of the influential magazine Ayandeh saw national unity only through imposing a single language on the country and destroying local culture by any means possible. [18].
No one can pay lip service to the “dialogue of civilisations”, “civil society” and popular sovereignty without defending the struggles of the oppressed nationalities. This is in no way in conflict with disseminating the idea of the voluntary union of all nationalities within Iran. But such an internal policy also echoes in conduct towards neighbouring nations.
Pan-Iranists denigrate the culture and civilisation of neighbouring countries. In their book all culture and civilisation in the Middle East rose from Iran. The Sumerians were the first civilised people in the ancient world. They came from the Iranian plateau and moved to Mesopotamia to set up their state. Written language was invented by Iranians which the Phoenicians and Aramies elaborated. Islam could not flourish without the help of Salman Farsi, and even Christianity was in origin the result of the inspirational thoughts of an Iranian prophet who appeared at the time of Shapur the First, the Sassanian king, and later infiltrated the Roman empire. Iranians were apparently never defeated by any other race except the uncivilised and barbarian Moguls, and that because of the treachery of the Manicheans. Alexander’s victory is a “myth” and the Arabs who conquered Iran were Iranian immigrants that had migrated to Iraq and Arabia and now returned with a religion (Islam) which was a mixture of Zoroastrianism and Mazdakism [ref]. All science or art in the Arab world has Iranian origin. Learned figures such as the Spanish Ibn Rushd, Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Batuteh are all jokes and “deviation” of human civilisation [19].
Such is the theoretical foundation of the pan-isms of Iran and similar movements in the neighbouring countries. This is a chronic illness that appears to have had a major lease of life under the spread of the neo-liberal “free market”. Pan-isms underwrote the bloodshed between Turks and Greeks, threw Indians and Pakistanis at each other’s throat, pushed Iran and Iraq into a ruinous 8-year war, set the Azeri’s and Armenians into a vicious war with one another. The roots of all of these is the greed and criminality of the bourgeoisie of these countries who want, at whatever cost, to have control over markets and accumulate more capital.
All in all pan-isms of any description deflect the sharp point of the struggle of the people of these lands against the global capitalist order, and at its head the US. It ruins these countries economically and culturally.
Fars
Kurd
Baluchi
Mazandarani
Gilaki
Bakhtiyari
Lor
Taleshi
Hezareh
Afghan and Tajik
Tat, Harzani, Khalkhali, …
Turks – 31%
Azeri
Turkman
Qashqa’i
Shahsavan
Teimuri
Afshari
Jamshidi
Ghajar, Bayat ….
Semitic – 5%
Arab
Asyrian
Hebrew
Armenians – 0.5%
Others – 0.5%:
Pakistani, Indian Russian …
footnotes
1. See: Ivanov S (ed) The national process in the Near and Middle East. Moscow, 1968; Field, H, The anthropology of Iran; Sadr Z, Multinationalism and the national identity of Iranians, (Farsi) Teheran, 1998
2. See Eskandari, I, In the darkness of millennia: the process of the break-up of primitive society and the formation of the first state in the lands of Iran. Paris, 1984.
3. Burk S. The ethnic makeup of Iran. Central Asian Review, 1960;417-20
4. The list of the ethnic groups is at the end of this article. For references see In Vad’i, K, An Introduction to the human geography of Iran, Teheran, 1970.
5. Parsa Benab Y, The national question and national identity in Iran, Washington, 1990, pp 22-3.
6. Berlin I, Anti-enlightenment and nationalism, in Against the Current. Hardy H (ed), London 1997.
7. Katuzian H, Nation and Society in Iran
8. See, for example, Kasravi, My life; Eghbal Ashtiani, A, Detailed history of Iran; Afshar, M, Political dangers (in Ayandeh, no 1927); Natel Khanlari, P, Languages and dialects, in Sokhan no 3, Spring 1946; Maleki, K, The crisis of Azerbaijan, the journal of Niruye Sevvom, 1952; Makan, M, The myth of the nations of Iran, 1969; University of Azarabadegan, The face of Azarabadegan in the mirror of Iranian history, Tabriz, 1974; Mirzazadeh, N, The national question has been solved in Iran, Par Cultural Institute, Washington 1987; Matini J, Iran in the mirror of others, Iran-Shenasi, Issue 1, Spring 1989.
9. Hei’at, J, Travels in the history of Turkish languages and dialects. Tehran 1987: pp 393-97
10. ibid pp 389-392
11. Ravandi, M, The social history of Iran, 1961-3, volume 3, pp 219-317
12. Rahmani-Far, M, A new look at the old history of Turks in Iran. Tabriz 2000 pp15-27; Zehtabi, MT, Iran Turklirineneski Tarikhi, Tabriz, 1999 pp 121-5
13. Farzaneh MA, The basis of Azeri grammar, Teheran, 1979; Karimi MR, A preface to the history of developments in Azeri Turkish, Zanjan, 1999.
14. See for example Saidian, AH. The land and people of Iran, Teheran 1990; Ahmadi, H, Ethnicity and ethnic identity in Iran, Teheran, 1999.
15. See for example: Kasravi, A, Azeri or the ancient language of Azerbaijan, Teheran 1925; Zoka’ Y (ed) Works of Kasravi Teheran 1973; Mortazavi, M, The ancient language of Azerbaijan, Teheran, 1980.
16. Al-Ahmad, J, The intellectual and the problem of Turkish language, in On the service and betrayal of intellectuals, Teheren 1997.
17. Afshar, M, The national question and national unity in Iran, Ayandeh issue 2, 1926 and Afshar M Political dangers Ayandeh issue 12, 1927.
18. Katuzian, H, Sadegh Hedayat from myth to reality (translated to Farsi) Teheran 1993 Chapters one and five; Aryan-Poor, Y From Saba to Nima, Teheran, 1993 volume 2 pp 320-5; Katuzian, H, State and Society in Iran ibid pp 431-2
19. See Berlin, I, ibid; Ashley, M, Louis XIV and the dominance of France, London 1966.