Can non-Persians speak? The sovereign’s narration of “Iranian identity”

Introduction

On 1 August 2018, Caucher Birkar, a Kurdish mathematician and professor at the University of Cambridge, was awarded the 2018 Fields medals—the most prestigious awards in mathematics. At the award ceremony, referring to his fellow Kurds, Birkar remarked: ‘I hope that this news will put a smile on the faces of those 40 million people.’ Birkar’s statement—celebrating his Kurdish identity and intimating systematic oppression and discrimination against Kurds—angered many Iranian Persians inside Iran and abroad. ¹ For them, what Birkar said amounted to treason and betrayal. That is because the dominant ethnic group (i.e. Persians) considers evocation of non-Persian identities as treasonous, irredentist, and separatist, and as such, inherently anti-Iranian (Elling, 2013: 2). Other Persian detractors saw Birkar’s change of name from a Persian to a Kurdish one as incontrovertible evidence of his disloyalty. ² The Iranian state’s institutions and officials also reacted to Birkar's statement. For example, in his appreciation letter to Birkar’s family, Sorena Sattari, Hassan Rouhani’s vice-president in science and technology, wrote that ‘whether or not he wishes, Caucher Birkar is Feridun Derakhshani.’ ³

Students of Iranian history know that the reaction to this Kurdish scholar is part of a pattern, not an isolated event. The Iranian state has not entirely criminalized the use of Kurdish names. However, it poses various bureaucratic obstacles to the use of Kurdish names as a strategy to assimilate non-sovereign communities (for example, in Kurdistan, the Iranian Census Bureau provides a list of acceptable names from which people must choose). The Iranian state’s attempts to erase manifestations of non-Persian cultures do not trouble Persian intellectuals. On the contrary, they have regularly provided epistemic ground for the state’s assimilatory practices. The Persian elite has shown no sensitivity to their non-Kurdish compatriots replacing their Persian names with Western ones in Europe and the United States. One could ask why, despite their vigorous protest against Kurdish cultural self-assertions, Persian elites do not become irritated when Iranians adopt aspects of Western culture while living abroad. Some recent statistics indicate that the Iranian ‘diaspora’ in the West displays a significant degree of cultural hybridity. According to a recent survey by the TV channel France 24, a large number of Iranians even conceal their ties with their country of origin. ⁴ Nonetheless, a Kurdish scientist choosing a Kurdish name has caused much rage. ⁵

The Kurdish community all over the world was jubilant about both Birkar’s accomplishment and his emphasis on his Kurdish identity. The Kurds largely interpreted Birkar’s statement to be courageous and ‘patriotic.’ ⁶ Why, then, did such a symbolic act induce such a panoply of contradictory readings? What is the backdrop to these reactions? What do these reactions tell us about ‘Iranian identity?’ Most importantly, why could such a simple act manifesting a Kurdish individual’s agency (to be recognized with a name of his own choosing) instantly lead to the evocation of rival identities? What kind of logic could such reactions entail? This paper aims to answer these questions by glimpsing Iranian historiography in the light of studies of internal colonialism.

The current paper treats ethnocultural and political hierarchies in Iran and the scholarship that sustains them as a system for the production of internal colonialism through which non-Persian communities constitute the Other’s Other (for more on this concept, see Mohammad, 1999). As a concept, internal colonialism describes how political, cultural and economic inequalities exist between the center and various regions within a given state. These inequalities are often structured along ethno-linguistic, racial and religious cleavages. Internal colonialism was employed by Leo Marquard (1957) in his study on Apartheid in South Africa. It subsequently gained currency in developmental studies following the publication of Pablo González-Casanova’s article on Mexico in 1965. González-Casanova defined internal colonialism, inter alia, the ‘rule of one ethnic group … over other such groups living within the continuous boundaries of a single state’ (González-Casanova, 1965: 130–132). Inspired by González-Casanova, Andre Gunder Frank, a leading figure in dependency theory, argued that internal colonialism was a form of “uneven development” signifying unequal structural relationship manifest in “metropole–satellite” or “center–periphery’ (Peet and Hartwick, 2009: 168). Since then, internal colonialism has been adopted by many scholars, particularly in the context of Latin America, Mexico and United States (Hechter, 1975; Peckham, 2004).

Alireza Asgharzadeh, a scholar of Iran, has also made use of this concept in his recent study of modern Iranian history. Asgharzadeh, for instance, views ‘various Azeri-Turks' communal activities as signs of their “resistance against internal colonialism … in Iran.” (Asgharzadeh, 2007: 179). ⁷ Within the scholarship on Kurds, however, Turkish sociologist İsmail Beşikçi was the first scholar, after the 1965 work by the Kurdish leader and political activist Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, to refer to Kurdistan as an ‘international colony’ (see Beşikçi, 1990; Ghassemlou, 2006). Such an approach to Kurdish studies seems to have gained a wider acceptance in recent scholarship (cf. Gambetti, 2009; Yüksel, 2011). Recently, Mehmet M. Kurt, a Kurdish sociologist, published a seminal paper on Islamism and internal colonialism in which he, for the first time, investigates the colonial trends of Islamism (Kurt, 2019). We too, here, subscribe to a definition of internal colonization, ‘as a special form of colonization outside a context of a [classic] colonial system’ (Blauner, 1969: 393). ⁸ Perceiving colonization in this way will help us ‘explain some of the dilemmas and ambiguities’ (Blauner, 1969: 296) present in the hierarchical relationships between dominant and dominated communities in the Iranian context.

Why this panoply of opposing reactions to Birkar’s case?

One explanation is that in Iran the dominant or sovereign community perceives non-Persian self-assertions as a threat to the officially desired identity. This, in turn, underscores that there exist different conceptions of national identities. Also, controversies over Birkar’s case are indicative that Kurds do not see their entry in the ‘union’ as entirely voluntary. Historically, the sovereign community has declared signifiers of Kurdishness either as symptoms of backwardness, foreign meddling, separatism or all of the above (for more see Elling, 2013). Kurdish self-assertions have not been entirely distinguished from Kurdish demands for self-rule or independence. Such a connection between Kurdish political demands and their linguistic and cultural self-references is closely tied to the sovereign’s definition of ‘Iranian identity.’ Hence, utterances like the one by Birkar, who is now an iconic Kurdish figure, could simply throw the official claim of the uniformity of ‘Iranian identity’ into question. This is the case since such utterances could either mean protesting the imposed cultural signifiers or it invokes involuntary Kurdish entry into the ‘union.’

The reactions to Birkar’s statement might explain the very definition of Iranian-ness and how the notion of the sovereign and sovereignty have been constructed and construed. Historically, Iranian state nationalism has been formed within the framework of Persian culture and language, which excludes non-Persians and denies their identity. The modern state has portrayed Persian and ‘Iranian identity’ as synonymous. In the state-nationalist discourse, the identity of the sovereign community has been equated with that of the polity as a whole. The relation between the dominant (Persian) and dominated (non-Persian) communities, therefore, can be understood through the study of these communities’ very sense of belonging to the officially declared ‘unified Iranian culture and identity.’ Persianist ⁹ elites have constructed and assembled a specific set of referents through which the interpolation of the non-Persian Other has gained historical and legal legitimacy. Take the example of Nematollah Fazeli, a pro-Islamic Republic academic, who has no qualms equating Persian with ‘the national’ and therefore he can declare that the Persian Academy, established in 1934, ‘intended to employ Persian folk language and literature for purifying the Persian language and strengthening national identity over other ethnic and regional identities’ (Fazeli, 2006: 53, emphases added).

These referents warrant the epistemic privilege of Persian language and culture and designate other languages and cultures as qowmi (ethnic) or boomi and mahali (local) (see Vejdani, 2015: 117–145). The Persian elite refers to non-Persians as ethnic minorities, ethnic groups (qowm) or tribes (cf. Ahmadi, 2008). Simultaneously, they oppose any such references to their own community. Non-Persians’ cultural and linguistic self-assertions are berated as ethnocentric or separatist (tajziyeh–talab). These referents define the identity of the sovereign ethnie (Persians) and its Other, which the older Persian scholarship was more revealing in this regard. For instance, the doyen of Persian studies, Ehsan Yarshater, states that ‘Persian language (not Farsi, please) is a reservoir of Iranian thought, sentiment, and values, and a repository of its literary arts. It is only by loving, learning, teaching, and above all enriching this language that the Persian identity may continue to survive’ (1993: 142, emphasis added). In more recent literature, Persian intelligentsia claim that there is ‘no such thing a Persian ethnicity.’ Royalist Persian writers like Elaha-ye Bughrat, warn that any references to the ruling Persians—as another ethnie in Iran—is a conspiracy against the country’s unity. Persian is a language and there are no ethnic Persians. ¹⁰ Similarly, Akbar Ganji, a Persian journalist and ex-Islamic Revolutionary commander, claims that he has ‘no idea what being a Persian means.’ ¹¹

Since the last decades of the 19th century, the dominant community’s ‘discourse [has] represented Iran as the motherland [and tied it to] Persian as the mother tongue (zaban-i madari)’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 112). Recent works by Persian scholars defend the same Primordialist sense of Persian culture and language with greater sophistication. They resort to various explanatory strategies to decouple the Persian language from any sense of ethnicity. One such strategy is the adaptation and use of ‘Persianate World.’ ¹² Since its initial appearance, this Orientalist neologism has been used uncritically by many scholars. The ‘Persianate world’, we are told is a ‘geo-cultural world’ (Kia, 2014: 90), the language of Persians is its single constituting element and its people are Persians due to their use of the Persian language. In her attempt to de-ethnicize Persian-ness, Mana Kia writes that she uses ‘the term “Persians” to refer to a group of people who shared a particular language of learning’ (Kia, 2014: 90, emphasis added). Then, she goes on to claim that, even in the premodern era, Persian language enabled them to imagine their ‘community and origin.’ Kia tells us that ‘Persians [i.e. those who knew the language] in Iran, Turan, and Hindustan shared a particular understanding of the meaning of geography, and how these meanings constituted bases of origin and community’ (Kia, 2014: 90, emphasis added).

To preserve and justify the imposition of their language and culture, Persian elites’ denial of the existence of their ethnicity is necessary. Historically, Persian nationalists have perceived language as the building block of national unity. Fathers’ of Persian nationalism, like Aqa Khan Kirmani (1854–1896/1897), believed that the historical was essentially linguistic, or ‘language is history’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 96). From such a perspective, without a strong linguistic unity, it is impossible to ‘make the national and political coterminous,’ to borrow Gellner’s phraseology. In Kirmani’s words, ‘the strength of each nation and people depends on the strength of their language’ (quoted in Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 104). As stated, since the late 19th century, the ‘formation of a modern Iranian national identity [has been] linked intimately [to] the Persian language’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 96). Such views about the inevitability of linguistic unity for national unity encouraged many leading figures to advocate publicly for the elimination of all non-Persian languages. Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946), for instance, claimed that multiple languages would cause discord and therefore ‘the least diversity, the better [national] unity’ (1944: 1).

Both the state and Persian intellectuals have presented the Persian language as all-inclusive. As stated earlier, González-Casanova defines internal colonialism, inter alia, as the ‘rule of one ethnic group … over other such groups living within the continuous boundaries of a single state’ (1965: 130–132). It could be a response to the rise of Postcolonial Studies that Persian elites are eagerly trying to reduce Persian-ness to a mere linguistic referent and inform us that Persian is nothing other than ‘the national language.’ Persian ‘nationalist discourse portray[s] Iran as an ancient and unified nation with one history, one culture and one literary language’ (Kia, 1998: 9–10). Again, such a unitary portrayal of ‘the nation’, in the words of Iranian scholar Mehrdad Kia, becomes possible only ‘by denying the existence of non-Persian identities’ (9–10). Other languages, if acknowledged, would be depicted as varieties [gooyesh] or dialects [lahjeh] of this ‘mother-tongue.’ ¹³ Thus, Persian academics like Changiz Pahlavan claim that ‘Persian is the language of science and literature [adab] … and it should be the natural and national language of all Iranians … and the rest are primitive [ebteda’i] languages.’ ¹⁴ Therefore, ‘no to teaching mother tongue’ in Iran, states Masud Luqman, another Persian intellectual. ¹⁵

Many contemporary linguists perceive such differentiations between ‘dialects’ and ‘languages’ as a socio-political act rather than a scientific endeavor (see Barfield, 1998; Billig, 1995; Chambers and Trudgill, 2004). They hold that there are only varieties of languages and, to them the official ‘language is but a dialect with an army/navy’ (cf. Brown and Ogilvie, 2009; Chambers and Trudgill, 2004; Skutnabb and Tove, 2000). Nevertheless, while the sovereign community presents Persian as the ‘reservoir of Iranian thought, sentiment, and values’ (see Yarshater, 1993: 141), dominated communities have resisted its imposition (see Asgharzadeh, 2007: 85–117). As stated, the ruling community regards non-Persians’ resistance to the imposition of the sovereign’s language and culture as separatism (cf. numerous ethnophobic articles on Parsi Anjuman). ¹⁶ Therefore, this paper argues that Persian intelligentsia’s support for the state’s nationalist and assimilatory policies evidence that they are partaking in an internal process of colonization. Their use of anticolonial and postcolonial theory has reproduced internal colonization in the ‘East.’

Historiographical erasure of non-Persians

Iranian/Persian historians, by and large, set out to apply an anticolonial approach to modern Iranian history (Amanat and Bernhardsson, 2007; Bakhshandeh, 2015; Dabashi, 2016; Marashi, 2008; Scot-Aghaei and Marashi, 2014; Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011). However, instead of deconstructing hegemonic discourses, their argument seems to have reproduced a ‘provincialized form of Orientalism’ that privileges dominant Persian culture over ‘Others.’ Hamid Dabashi appears as an exemplary figure whose self-proclaimed critical examination of Western imperialism eventually leads to the creation of a universal and transhistorical entity called Iran. Dabashi summarizes the mission of his book, Iran without Borders: Towards a Critique of the Postcolonial Nation, as:

 … dismantl[ing] that false binary, and proposes … the ‘cosmopolitan worldliness’ characterizing the modus operandi of Iranian culture, from its own imperial background to its subsequent postcolonial character, as well as the future rediscovery of its origins beyond its current fictive frontiers—borders manufactured through colonial domination … (2016: 5)

Since the 19th century, Persian elites have coined the phrase ‘Iranian culture,’ in its singular form, to present ‘Persian culture’ as ‘the shared culture’ of Iran and now use the ‘Persianate world.’ In addition to claiming that it is inclusive, Persian intellectuals increasingly defend the ‘trans-border quality and longevity’ of this culture and therefore blithely call the ‘Persianate world’ any area where Persian might have been read along with other languages. Those regions that Persian literati imagine to be ‘Persianate’ can easily be called ‘Arabicate’ or ‘Ottomanate’ as these languages were also as prevalent as Persian. Then, why are such multilingual and multiethnic regions posthumously named Persianate?

This naming of an imaginary linguistic world reflects Primordialist nostalgia of nationalist intellectuals, who in the words of Boroujerdi, ‘have anchored their conception of identity on the matrices of language, selective historiography, and a Persian-centered nationalism’ (Boroujerdi, 1998: 43). These nostalgic feelings are best observed in the following remarks: ‘The idea of Iran beyond its current borders that I propose here embraces the imperial pedigree of the nation as such and remaps it within a transnational public sphere that embraces and enables all these people within an interpolated conception of the nation beyond its colonial domination’ (Dabashi, 2016: 146, emphasis added).

Shahab Ahmed, historian of Islam, rightly argues that the use of terms like ‘Perso-Turkic or Persianate world’ for such a polyglot and multicultural universe ‘assumptively privilege [certain] linguistic and “ethnic” elements’ (Ahmed, 2016: 84). He warns that the term ‘“Persianate” as a primary marker or adjective of first-instance usage selectively highlights the ‘Persian’ element and suggests that it is ‘the constitutive and definitive genius of the shared Islamic paradigm’ (2016: 84). Nevertheless, despite their critical reexamination of some aspects of older Persian nationalist historiography, the new generation of scholars also falls into the totalizing discursive trap of thinking only in terms of ‘the Persianate world.’ ¹⁷ In fact, the blithe usage of this concept leads to selective readings of history, privileges Persians as the sole historical agents in that ‘world’, and erases Others from that particular historico-cultural and linguistic space.

The ruling elites’ emphasis on ‘the originary’ and the ‘rediscoveries’ of the ‘nation’s past’ are essentially invocations of ‘the stable past’ that constitute the core concerns of modern nationalism. Such anxieties about the past inform the construction of identities and provide the impetus for nationalist agents to negotiate their similarities and differences. In other words, it ‘is in the emergence of the interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference—that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nations, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated’ (Bhabha, 1994: 2). In the existing Persian scholarship, however, non-Persian voices and experiences are habitually eclipsed, since otherwise any coherent presentation of a singular Iranian identity is rendered impossible. Giving voice to non-Persians could affect the way in which now ‘the nation’ is being sung, to borrow Butler-Spivak’s suggestive phrase (2007). Take the example of Kurdish leader Ismail Agha Simko who, as early as 1922, wrote that he was not an Iranian, he was a Kurd. In his newspaper, also entitled ‘Kurd,’ Simko declares:

I am a Kurd and have dedicated my life to my nation. However, based on what I hear, Iranians call me a bandit and trying to discredit me by propagating that I am involved in banditry. I am not a bandit; I am defending the rights of my nation. Iranians are [but] thieves and oppressors and have stolen the country of Kurdistan and have trampled on Kurdish honor. (Kurd, 1922, no.2)

In the 1940s, only two decades after the above remarks by Simko, the Kurds and the Turks declared two short-lived autonomous republics (see Asgharzadeh, 2007; Vali, 2014). ¹⁸ In the same era, Khozistan’s ‘Arab movement employed the standard devices of an ethnonationalist discourse. They continuously stressed that their ethnicity, language, customs, and history constituted a defined nation that had no place in an ethnically Persian-dominated Iran’ (Mann, 2014: 114–115). Nevertheless, Persian scholars, to use Blauner's phraseology, who ‘manage, represent and manipulate the experience’ of the dominated communities present us with a different collective historical memory of all Iranians. A Persian scholar such as Tavakoli-Targhi habitually ignores the disparity of historical experiences of the people across the Iranian Plateau and claims that ‘the protagonists of the [1905–1906] constitutional order … instituted history and culture as expressions of its soul, a national soul that was inherited by all Iranians’ (2011: 112, emphasis added). Whereas by the late 1920s, there were myriad examples that evidence how various communities in Iran faced ‘a process, which often led to large-scale deaths. Those in charge of such operations looked upon the nomads almost in the same way as many American whites viewed the Native Americans in the nineteenth century’ (Katouzian, 2006: 326, emphasis added).

It is not hard to see how many Persian scholars’ use of postcolonial theory is imbued with conceptual and historical contradictions. To advance Persianism disguised in claims of linguistic and cultural unity, the first step was to reappropriate the West versus the ‘rest’ binary for internal colonization. Here, the ‘West,’ in its entirety, is hastily equated with Western imperialism, notwithstanding the fact that postcolonial theorists do not conflate the West with Western colonialism. Frantz Fanon (1967) and Homi Bhabha (1994), for example, do not view imperialism as a single formation either in terms of its historical construction or in the way it was experienced by the colonized (Bhabha, 1994; Fanon, 1967). Yet, in order to justify claims of a uniform identity, Persian intelligentsia constructed their identity in opposition (see Matin-Asgari, 2018) to, yet at the same time inspired by that of Europeans (see Boroujerdi, 1998). It should be noted that, since the early 1920s, a call for ‘an epistemological break with Orientalism and the construction instead of an “Eastern perspective,” which is called ‘Occidentalism’ (Gharbshenasi),’ has been an important feature of Persian nationalism (see Matin-Asgari, 2014: 59). While building their identity on some forms of self-differentiation, they simultaneously claim a common historical and cultural origin for both Iranians and White Europeans.

In the grand narrative of the Iranian historiography, Europeans who had learned their racial and linguistic ‘origin’ through Iranians, either dismissed or denied this influence of Persian scholars. Accordingly, Persian contributions to European progress were deceitfully neglected. In his book, Refashioning Iran, Tavakoli-Targhi sets out to explore ‘the institutional erasure of the labor of Persianate scholars who contributed to the making of Orientalism [and] to correct a current critical tendency that focuses solely on European scholarly productions without inquiring into the contribution of native scholars in the making of Oriental studies’ (2011: xi). Rather than defying European hegemony over non-Western cultures, the Persian elite implicitly endorses Eurocentric thought and simply seeks their ‘forgotten share’ in the orientalist production of knowledge. At the same time, they complain about the unfair treatment of European members ‘of the Aryan family.’ In the works of Persian nationalist writers, Iranian history thus becomes a case of a Freudian complex of love and hate. These factors led them to adopt ‘Orientalism in reverse’ (Boroujerdi, 1996, 1998). ¹⁹ It should be noted that a number of Persian and Azeri Turkish critics such as Mostafa Vaziri (1993), Mehrzad Boroujerdi ²⁰ (1996, 1998), Alireza Asgharzadeh (2007), Afshin Matin-Asgari (2018), and Reza Zia-Ebrahimi (2011, 2016) have questioned the existing Persian-centered Iranian historiography as well as the myth of the cultural singularity and historical continuity of ‘the nation.’ Nonetheless, some of their critiques have been met with vehement resistance.

Having embraced the postcolonial criticism of the West, and sympathizing with non-Western societies, such Persian scholars showed little interest in the most basic premises of postcolonial theory: fighting all manifestations of colonialism and supporting emancipatory struggles by the oppressed with no discrimination. In essence ‘from the beginning critical engagements both with colony and nation have characterized’ postcolonial and subaltern studies (Dube, 2010: 102). On the contrary, Persian elites’ endorsement of the discourse of internal colonization has become an instrument for the sovereign epistemology and produced its own Oriental Other. ²¹ Like its western counterpart, Persian historiography is preoccupied with historicism that is recasting general patterns across time and space and that enables Persian intellectuals, like Dabashi, to conceive of the ‘idea of the nation that actively remembers and reauthorizes its transnational, cosmopolitan origins’ (2016: 233).

Historicism, as conceived by Leopold von Ranke, aims at discovering the supposed pre-existing laws of historical destiny, explaining the rise and demise of societies (see, Iggers, 2005). While excogitating a uniform image for Iranian history, Iranian intelligentsia has constructed a past centered on debatable notions and controversial figures and ‘origins.’ To essentialize ‘Iranian identity,’ two historically unsubstantiated claims were put forward. The first designated the temporal and spatial realm from which ‘Iranian identity’ presumably originated. The second propagated hypotheses and theories justifying the cultural unity and continuity of ‘Iranian identity’ over the course of thousands of years, according to which there has always been a distinct and single Iranian culture. For example, Yarshater writes that a ‘very early affirmation of Iranian identity can be recognized in the emergence of the Medes [1100 to 1000 BC] against a background of Mesopotamian domination’ (1993: 141).

This self-proclaimed universal and cosmopolitan culture was supposed to have evolved through the rule of various dynasties despite myriad ruptures and disruptions (cf. Amanat, 2017). For example, Persian historians see Arab expansion into the Sassanid realm, which led to the conversion of the populace to Islam and established the domination of Arabic language and culture on the Iranian plateau for centuries, as a negligible interruption that had no effect on the historical continuity of Iran. Yarshater claims that ‘the Arabs imposed a new faith and a different worldview. The response that emerged after decades of struggle was a compromise: adoption of Islam on one hand and preservation of the Persian language and cultural heritage on the other’ (Yarshater, 1993: 141, emphasis added).

Similarly, a singular ‘Iranian identity’ was not disrupted by major upheavals such as the Alexandrian and Mongolian invasions, each of which led to long-lasting socio-political impacts; the former resulting in the prevalence of Hellenism, the latter in the establishment of Mongol dynasties and even temporary conversion of major segments of the population to Buddhism (Holt et al., 1970). Persian scholars have thus put forth Primordialist and anachronistic readings of the past. For instance, Kashani-Sabit tells us to understand Iran ‘much like nation-states today [as] a means of self-definition’ shared by ‘other Iranians’ even in medieval times (quoted in Kia, 2014: 89). Kia, another Iranian scholar, despite stating that Kashani-Sabit’s ‘reading creates a premodern period consisting of centuries of static homogeneity, posed in contrast to the radical changes of the modern period’ (2014: 89) and ‘yet strangely,’ she claims, ‘a sense of being Iranian seems to have existed throughout nonetheless’ (2014: 89).

In a way, Persian intellectuals’ insistence on the historical consistency and uniformity of ‘Iranian’ (read Persian) culture implies this supremacy since to which is ascribed a unique and immutable ‘modus operandi.’ Claims to ‘the discoverability of the origins of’ a culture that stretches over millennia combined with calls for the revival of this imagined ‘imperial culture’ have a nationalist and imperialist resonance. The imaginers of this cultural revivalist project happen to view only the current ‘postcolonial frontiers’ as fictive; this in itself implies the naturalness and retainability of ‘precolonial imperial borders.’ However, this revivalist project and nostalgia are more future-oriented than they appear. This is the case because this project reveals the sovereign community’s anxiety over the sustainability of the current asymmetries of power in Iran. Such an anxiety is best exemplified by assertions that the ‘formation of an independent Kurdistan [from Iraq, not Iran] would be disastrous for all peoples of the region’ (cf. Dabashi, 2018a). Hence, we witness how a critique of colonialism is employed for the protection of the ‘motherland’s unity’ and its imperial culture.

Persian intellectuals mostly see Western colonialism behind non-Persians’ political demands. As such, any opposition to the existing linguistic and cultural hierarchy is deemed to stem from Western interference in the region. Arabs, Baluchis, Kurds, and Azeri Turks’ resistance to Tehran-centered tendencies is seen as a sign of foreign meddling. ²² Their claim is that without foreign incitement these communities will not resist the center since, in reality, they possess nothing other than ‘manufactured ethnized [sic] identities’ (cf. Dabashi, 2016: 17) as opposed to that of the Persian community whose identity must be an inert fact of nature. Persian intelligentsia allege that except for that of the sovereign, other identities are anomalous and artificial. At times, non-Persian communal resistances are branded merely as ‘accumulated anger’ at ‘the incompetence and negligence of the central government’. ²³ As such, ‘the central government’s’ cultural-linguistic differences with non-Persians and the resultant politics of oppression and assimilation has been categorically obscured. When the ruling elites speak for the dominated communities at the periphery, they, at best, reduce the historical internal colonization to the legitimate and yet marginal grievances against dysfunctional ‘central state.’

Aryanism and silencing the past

Generally, in the Persian-centered historiographical space, ‘non-Aryan’ Others have been eliminated. So, Persian nationalist historians have casually evaded historical facts and claimed that the so-called ‘Aryan migration’ to what is today Iranian land occurred sporadically over several centuries, during which time ‘Aryans’ assimilated ‘local ethnic groups.’ For this fictitious racial narrative, ‘Pre-Aryan’ ethnic groups who inhabited Iran for thousands of years remain a troubling fact. Aryanism's historiography even denies post-Turko-Mongolian ethnic fusions. An illustrative example is calling Turks old Azeri Iranians who have forgotten their origins and their original language. ²⁴ Thus, we are told that there has existed a unified Iranian identity for millennia. According to Yarshater, ‘Iranian identity is clearly asserted in the inscriptions of Darius the Great (522–486 B.C.), who as an Aryan and a Persian was fully conscious of his racial affiliation and proud of his national identity’ (Yarshater, 1993: 141, emphasis added).

In the early 20th century, in an attempt to remember ‘the past’ selectively, Persian historians and intelligentsia embarked on the misrepresentation of Iran’s ancient history. Having silenced Iran’s pre-Achaemenids’ past, they also excluded non-Persian histories and the cultural diversity of the region in favor of some grand narrative of Iranian history. What remains intact in such a fictitious account of history is then an imagined Iranian culture embodied in the pure language of Persians. Here, ‘Iranian identity’ ‘finds its expression primarily through the Persian language, not simply as a medium of comprehension but also as the chief carrier of the Persian worldview and Persian culture’ (Yarshater, 1993: 141, emphasis added). Such an Orientalist perception of a highly problematic and remote past fails to provide any reliable evidence for its ungrounded self-proclamation (Pourpirar, 2000; Vaziri, 1993). It also attests to the fact that Persian historians, like the Pahlavi kings and the leaders of the Islamic Republic, require that non-Persian communities submit to their rule to be considered Iranians.

The affinity of Iranian nationalist discourse with the precursors of Nazi Aryanism is now well known. The spread of Aryanism in Iran was mainly due to the work of Persian intellectuals known as the Berlin Circle, who, published the journal Kaveh, that ‘had a profound impact on modern Iranian nationalism and political culture’ (Matin-Asgari, 2014: 54). Iranian scholar Marashi notes that ‘in an important sense, the history of Iranian nationalism began with the publication of Kaveh’ (2008: 53). Dabashi favorably refers to ‘the publication of Kaveh from Berlin’—from 1915 to 1921 and its propagation of Aryanism—as the inauguration of ‘a major ideological movement conceptualizing Iranian history through the energetic resuscitation of its ancient heritage’ (2016: 69). The writers of Kaveh were blatantly pro-German in their politics and ‘were embracing German intellectual authority’ (Matin-Asgari, 2014: 54). Later, the same circle published other journals such as Iranshahr whose ‘ideological innovation was firmly rooted in Weimar Germany’s cultural milieu, something that historians of Iranian modernity  … have ignored or downplayed’ (Matin-Asgari, 2018: 64, emphasis added).

Persian nationalists’ claim that ‘the Iranian nation’ is historically continuous and singular for whose ‘past’ the Persian has functioned as the linguistic cement. This is how Persian is transformed into a de-ethnicized language, perpetuating its imposition as a historico-national language. This ultimately leads to the conclusion that there are no actual non-Persians, except for fake or ‘manufactured ethnicized identities’ (cf. Dabashi, 2016: 17). Non-postcolonial scholars lacked the sophistication to deny diversity categorically, and therefore they, at least, admitted the existence of ‘various independent non-Persian tribes’ who possessed their own language and culture. For instance, famous historian of Iran Ervand Abrahamian, ²⁵ portrays non-Persians as:

The population lived in small face-to-face communities with their own structures, hierarchies, languages, and dialects, and, often, until the late nineteenth century, self-sufficient economies. Physical geography lay at the root of this social mosaic … . The tribes, totaling as much as 25–30 percent of the population, consisted of some fifteen major entities known as its – Qajars, Kurds, Turkmans, Baluchis, Arabs, Qashqa’is, Bakhtiyaris, Lurs, Mamasanis, Boir Ahmadis, Hazaras, Shahsavans, Afshars, Timouris, and Khamsehs. (Abrahamian, 2008: 21, emphasis added)

In the more recent Persian-centered scholarship, however, through claims to the singularity of Iranian identity, the above fragmentation of ‘the nation’ has been obscured. Persian elites have made consistent efforts to either deny or ignore their Others’ cultures and languages, branding them as, respectively, ‘local mores or dialects of Persian.’ Yet, they paradoxically claim that ‘the Persian language [has] instituted as an essential element to the formation of Iranian national identity’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 104). This scholarship, however, rarely acknowledges that such a connection between the Persian language and Iranian-ness is sustained through the support of the military, which has been instrumental in the construction of ‘the national vs. the local.’ Persian intelligentsia have strived to construct a racial, linguistic, and cultural unity that sustains a colonial hierarchy. Compared to the likes of Abrahamian, the newer generation of scholars (such as Tavakoli-Targhi) presents a more totalizing nationalist reading of the Iranian past based on which ‘a cohesive and unified nation’ becomes traceable to a distant past. He interprets Persian primordial nationalist attempts of the 19th century as merely ‘refashioning Iran,’ rather than as the construction of a new identity. For him, that time’s nationalist tendencies as ‘Reading and (re)citing these Iran-glorifying texts in a period of societal dislocation, military defeats, and foreign infiltration during the nineteenth century allowed for the re-articulation of Iranian identity and the construction of alternative forms of historical narrations and periodizations’ (2011: 97, emphasis added).

The likes of Tavakoli-Targhi struggle to present the pre-existence of a uniform Iranian identity as self-evident. He admits that, for instance, there were attempts at ‘the construction of alternative forms of historical narrations and periodizations’; however, this was simply ‘the re-articulation of Iranian identity.’ Tavakoli-Targhi confesses that ‘Iran, Furs’ and ‘Ajam’ are ‘highly contested concepts and cannot be assigned fixed meanings at any particular historical period’ (1994: 317). Nevertheless, he claims such a conceptual ‘linguistic ambiguity has enabled and will continue to allow both Iranian and Western historians to project “Iran” as a homogeneous entity with a distinct and totalizing history and civilization’ (1994: 317, emphasis added). Conversely, some Kurdish oral narratives, dating back to the early 17th century cast serious doubt that the entirety of the population perceived themselves as either Iranian or ‘Ajam. For instance, in one Kurdish story-song, we learn the Kurdish ruler of the historic Dimdim Castle, around Lake Urmia, proclaimed that ‘the Persian King [padshay ‘Ajaman] came beneath me … I shall never accept the rule of Persians … I shall [never] disgrace the Kurdish name [Kirmancîyê bênav nakim]’ (Socin and Prym, 1890: 186–187). ²⁶ By silencing or ignoring non-Persian voices, Tavakoli-Targhi and company fail to take heed of their own criticism of totalizing discourses for eliminating the difference when they fault Orientalism as ‘a hegemonic and totalizing discourse [that] celebrates its own perspectival account as scientific and objective while forgetting the histories and perspectives informing its origins’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2011: 18).

A cursory glance at works by prominent Persian historians shows that their reading of history is fundamentally a state-centered one. Yusuf Abazari, an Iranian academic, states that, in reality, all this ancientism and nostalgia for the glorious past is nothing but a yearning for a strong central state. ²⁷ Despite their criticisms of imperialism and its destructive role and influence on other cultures and societies, Persian intelligentsia, mainly, fail to observe that they are partaking in a similar colonial and hierarchical discourse in Iran (cf. Dabashi, 2007, 2015). In their Persian-centered historiography, non–Persian or/and non-Shi‘a (e.g. Arabs, Baluchis, Kurds, Turks and Turkmans) are constantly being introduced as a lingering quandary in the state’s efforts to secure Iran’s territorial integrity.

In such a statist and ethnocentric narrative of history, non-Persians are depicted as endless troubles for ‘the nation,’ where communities such as Kurds are described as lawless tribes and the fifth column of imperial designs (Mohammadpour and Soleimani, 2019; Soleimani, 2017). The exclusion of Kurdish history from mainstream Iranian historiography is the nodal point between state nationalism and Iranian intelligentsia, giving rise to a political discourse that contrasts the ‘centralist patriot’ with ‘the local separatist.’ In such a statist perception, the center becomes a forerunner of civilization and the protector of the integrity and security of ‘the nation.’ Conversely, the margin signifies instability, backwardness, and disorder. Whether in Persian or foreign languages, Iranian historiography advances a centralist, univocal, and selective account of Iran’s past and present. Iranian historiography is centralist and systematically marginalizes the histories of Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Turks, and Turkmans in favor of the state discourse. In this statist historiography, the sovereign always speaks for the totality of Iran, and non-Persians are always the source of anxiety.

Since the 1920s, Persian elites’ works have been usually replete with harsh criticisms of colonialism, while simultaneously advancing similar colonial policies toward non-Persians. Ahmad Kasravi (1890–1946) was one of the precursors of such anti-Western Nativism whose works according to Tavakoli-Targhi, ‘offered a comprehensive critique of European civilization and the mimetic project of Europe, a futurist project that viewed the presence of the West as the future of the “Rest”’ (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2015: 229). Nonetheless, Kasravi was one of those who best represented ‘anticolonialism for the sake of internal colonization.’ He had no qualms in advocating openly for linguicide. Kasravi wrote that he did not call for the expulsion of any ethnic groups (Kasravi, 1944: 1). He adds that

all I have defended and wished is the elimination of languages spoken in Iran: Turkish, Arabic, Armenian, Assyrian and semi-languages [i.e. Kurdish, Shushtari … ], for all the Iranians to speak only one language, which is Persian. This has been my will, and I have strived for that. (1944: 1, emphasis added).

In post-1979 Iran, claims to the uniform identity of Iranians have been reformulated and seem to be far more in tune with a Shi‘i narration of the past. In the newer scholarship, even secular-minded scholars such as Amanat (2017) have put a greater emphasis on the Shi‘i identity in their writings on the last 500 years of Iranian history. Amanat’s reading clearly presupposes a coherent and traceable national identity for more than five centuries that is centered on Persian language and Shi‘a religion. His effort to carve out a singular Iranian national identity is decidedly essentialist and evidence the influence of methodological nationalism, ²⁸ not to mention the resonance of pervious Orientalist studies on Iran. ²⁹ In post-1979 Iran, Persian culture and language has become a manifest synthesis of Persianism and Shi‘ism. The state’s political oppression and its violence toward non-Persian communities is fundamentally grounded in Shi‘i Persianism.

Despite the polity’s multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious composition, Shi‘i-Persian nationalism has treated any claim regarding the non-singularity of ‘the nation’ as the gravest of sins. In the officially sanctioned primordial and exclusive account of ‘Iranian identity’, the Shi‘i and Persian elements are presented as the sole determinant of the ‘nation’s destiny.’ The statist narrative ignores the forced conversions of the population to Shi‘ism by the Safavids in the 16th century. Since the spread of Islam in Iran until their rule, Sunni Islam was the creed of the majority of the populations who used to live on the Iranian Plateau. While carrying out forced conversions, the Safavids put three choices before their subjects: conversion to Shi‘ism, leaving the land, or embracing death. Nonetheless, Iranian intellectuals have deliberately neglected the fact that the denial of other identities is at the heart of any given colonialist discourse. They have used anticolonialism in a self-serving manner; as a mere instrument rather than an emancipatory approach.

Ending remarks

We hoped to show that the controversy over Birkar’s case manifests a certain relation between the sovereign and dominated communities in Iran. The sovereign community celebrates its Persian identity as all-inclusive. This entails the dominance of Persian identity, which enables Persians to determine the condition of belonging to ‘the nation.’ Therefore, the sovereign community views a Kurd’s disavowal of his previous Persian name as subversive, since they perceived it as a politically/officially undesired self-affirmation and as a form of resistance to the imposed ‘Iranian identity.’ The practice of changing one’s name has a specific meaning within the struggle against racism, discrimination or domination. Famous African American figures such as the boxer Muhammad Ali and the freedom fighter Malcolm X resisted white racism in the United States partly by changing their white/Christian names and adopting names that signified self-identification and resistance. Their negation and rejection of identities which had turned them into invisible creatures testified to the nature of their resistance (Eliassi, 2013).

Birkar’s act unearthed how the sovereign has defined itself and the dominated communities. His act revealed that Iran is divided into the centre, which has a voice, and the voiceless margin; no space and time are allocated to histories of non-Persians. Birkar’s utterances and the reactions to it, unveiled the official and the epistemological erasure of his identity. Because mostly in historical writings on Iran, the word Kurd is either seldom mentioned or altogether ignored, or Kurds are painted as credulous separatists: ‘separatism’ is an anxiety of the majority of Persian intellectuals. In recent years, they have been predominantly silent about daily executions and indiscriminate arrests and killings in Kurdistan. Khalid Tavakoli, a Kurdish intellectual, voices this reality when he writes that the ‘Persian elites oppose oppression all over the world. However, due to their fundamental anxiety over “separatism,” they have all taken a vow of silence when it comes to opposing violence against Kurds.’ ³⁰ Nonetheless, their ideological stances and strategic silences have justified the perpetuation of the state’s oppression.

Our contention is that the non-sovereign communities’ assertions of their identity are perceived as a threat by those on top of the existing ethnonational hierarchy in Iran. The construction and perpetuation of this hierarchy has become possible through a process of internal colonization. This colonializing discourse is fostered by contradictory claims of the concurrent sameness and difference of all Iranians. At times, there is a reluctant admission of the existence of diverse linguistic and cultural communities on the part of the sovereign ethnicity. Their admission of difference, however, does not disrupt the hierarchical organization of the polity. Persian elites’ description of non-Persian communities (e.g. Kurds) has fostered the historical power relations in Iran. As Potts and Brown would put it, power and knowledge

are inherently interrelated; anti-oppressive researchers recognize that knowledge is political; it is not benign as it is created in the power relations between people. Knowledge can be oppressive in how it is constructed and utilized, and/or it can be a means of resistance. (2005: 259)

Persian intelligentsia’s explicit or implicit support for the Persian state practices has emboldened it to enforce the ‘singularity of the nation’ and the imposition of Persian racial, cultural, and linguistic superiority. Despite their known conflicting ideological visions, almost all Persian intelligentsia, even majority of left-leaning intellectuals, advocate adherence to the statist view, ‘the sacredness’ of territorial integrity, and devotion to ‘sweet Persian’ as the ‘national language.’ In the words of Persian intellectual, Nasser Iranpour, some left groups now ‘have turned into the mouthpiece for fascism’ and ‘outperformed fascists.’ ³¹ Persian political dissidents, who were jailed for years or lost their loved ones to state violence, side with the state when it comes to the elimination of any space that might enable non-Persian cultures to flourish.

In summation, in Iran, the study of history has aided in sustaining the existing ethno-linguistic and cultural hierarchies, and therefore Persian historiography has served to reproduce its ‘Oriental other.’ Writing history has mostly assisted the state’s practice of forging an involuntary hierarchical union and expediting internal colonization. In Iran, dominant historiography has had the mission of silencing an undesired ‘past and present.’ ³² At its core, Persian historiography, despite its postcolonial-sounding tone, has functioned as an instrument for homogenizing non-Persians and aided the very state that condemns challengers to death. This paper was an attempt to cast light on how non-Persians have been represented by Persian intellectuals inside and outside Iran. Their intellectual orientation has been crucial to the statist-nationalist discourse and has legitimated the state policies for the erasure of the non-Persian Others in Iran.