Letters
January 2005
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Nothing wrong with calling yourself Persian
In response to Roozbeh Shirazi's "Identity
politics":
I call myself Persian not
because that was what the country was called into middle of the
last century. There is tons of material written about our culture
during the ages about Persian culture, language and people. I call
myself Persian and Iranian interchangbly to preserve a culture. I
do not do it because I am a racist or anti-Turk or anti-Arab or
becuase I am embarrassed being a moslem.
So there is nothing wrong with calling yourself Persian and don't
make it so. If you want to take a dig at the posers in the
US, there are other ways of showing them up. Given
the melting pot of our history it is simply a ridiculous for
anyone to try and relate beign Persian to an ancient tribe
or imply a heirarchy. It is laughable and will not gain currency.
With regards to the Iranian habit of joking about ethinicity, this
is not limited to Iranians and it is no worse than American jokes
about the Poles of English jokes about the scots, Irish, Welsh,
Indians, Germans, French etc (in fact everybody except the English!). The
accusation of bigotary is really taking it too far. Nobody
can be that PC. The writer is cleverly inferring that calling yourself
Persian is equivalent oto being a racist. His own way of rubbishing
what is an innocuous term.
With regards to those who try and make this a racial term,
a lot of those writing to me I have found to be either Arab or
Turkish Nationalists. This is really interesting as it seems to
be used the old tactic of slandering to discredit any
opposition to your own ideas. As soon as one tries to defend
our history or culture we are accused of being Persian nationalist etc.
Taking a look at the history of both groups you will
see it is they who introduced the Germanic ideas of nationalism
in the region as their founding fathers were mostly military who
were trained by Germans, and fought along them in the world
wars. It is without a doubt one of the factors contributing to
the present day mess in the region.
I leave you with another thought. Although the following is wrong
but nonetheless there is a message in it that is inescapable and
I have written about in the past, if you want the world to recognise
the import of your culture then you have to work at its institutions
and longevity, changing names and imposing what you feel is the
right term from your own language (ie. Iran - "land of
Aryans" gondeh goozi is more nationalistic and racial than
Persia I would think - and Farsi) foreigners just gives
the impression of a banana republic. The following is an excerpt
from a letter written by managing director of Worldscale
Association (shipping body) in response to a complaint
about their use of the wrong term for Persian Gulf:
"
The term '....... Gulf' has become the accepted nomenclature for
that particular area in the international tanker industry at least
since the Iranian government wished to dispense with any references
to 'Persia'."
Interesting that by trying to belittle us culturaly he admits to
the British encouragment of national differences (almost half a
century later!). By the way he is wrong on a further point, using
the erroneous term did not start when the Iranian government asked
foreign governments to change it to Iran but BUT AFTER IRAN
TRIED TO NATIONALIZE ITS OIL, and the first western body to
use the erroneous term was The Times of London in 1958.
So before we Iranians become "gheirati" and
act out of haste about insisting that it should be Iran and nothing
else, or trying to imply people with other views are posers or
bigots, we should think about all the consequences and not just
home in on what we think should be right because of prevalent ideas
of that instance in time.
Maybe we cannot help it. Maybe cutting our noses to spite our faces
is in our genes now.
Regards,
Amir Rostam
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