Playing footsie with facts
For one thing, all things inside Iran are NOT Persian
May 11, 2004
iranian.com Dear Mr. Bahmani,
I had to put in my two cents because a) I'm procrastinating
from doing my
work b) one of my students just came to me a while ago and
said the Persian
Students Society here are having a debate about changing their
name to
Iranian.
I frankly think you already know the flaws in your argument
(which is
different from the flaw in the argument to change from Iran
to Persia). I
say this because your article ["Persian
vs. Iranian"] has a strange way of playing
footsie with
the facts that you yourself set out.
You present the question as whether WE (the people who somehow
associate
themselves with a land currently called Iran) should call themselves
Persian or Iranian and the land Persia or Iran. But the first
two thirds
of your article presents the history of how Persia, a name used
soley but
people outside of the territory came to be called Iran. Only
near the end
do you say "That fateful decision in 1935 that changed the
name to the
outside world."
So my question then is are you making the
historical
argument that the outside world should call Iran Persia again
or are you
making the argument that Iranians should call it Persia (for
the first
time in modern history) or are you making the argument that
Iranians outside of Iran should separate themselves from the
Iranian inside
Iran
and call Iran Persia a la pre-1935 non-Iranians, since Iran
has, for as
far as I know (and granted, I'm most familiar with 18th century
sources
onwards) been called Iran-zamin by its inhabitants. (Even Persian
speaking
Indian such as Mirza Abu Talib whose family moved from Iran
to Lahore and
who was a part of the Mugal court talked about Iranians and
not Persians,
a word that oddly enough doesn't really translate into Persian/Farsi...)
If it's the first thing you're advocating, then you have to
start a major
diplomatic campaign and get the name changed officially. It's
the official
name of Iran zamin. If you're advocating the second, then you're
calling
for a major historical rupture that has no precedence since
Iran because
an identifiable territory and recognized itself (with varying
degrees) as
a bounded territory with a quasi-central authority. But if
it's the last
one you're advocating, then that's very interesting and I'm
quite intrigued: Why shouldn't the Iranian diaspora name and
thus relate
to the
land of Iran differently from those inside it? Oddly enough,
even if this
was not your intention, I find it very interesting in the
sense that it
will reflect in the word and usage itself the fact that
when Iranians
outside of Iran talk about it, they're talking about something
completely
different than those outside of Iran. It will be a major
coup against the
nostalgists and those who think that from Los Angeles,
they have an
unbroken tie to the land they came from.
Putting aside the fact that it's unclear what exactly you're
advocating
(since your stated question and your main argument as I said
don't work
together), the last part of your article seems only concerned
with the
adjective, i.e. you seem to be at a loss as to what adjective
to use when
refering to a wide variety of disparate things. You touch upon
and yet
don't deal with a major problem of calling all things inside
Iran, Persian:
All things inside Iran are NOT Persian, no matter how you define
the term.
Baluchis ARE from Iran, they are not Persian. zereshk polo though
is
probably Persian (though since you seem to have a problem with
the
Arabicness of Farsi, you may want to research the root of ALL
things we
think are ours in the interest of "purity." Who knows,
maybe qormeh sabzi
is Yemeni...)
Having bored you and myself to tears with this long
email, I have to say,
I don't care one way or another (I do care about logical gaps
in
arguments). People should have the right to call themselves
whatever they
want. And if somehow one's pride in one's country or heritage
somehow
depends on a word or on whether some nincompoop says Iranian
or
Eyeranian,
then that person's identity is in deep poop itself. Frankly,
I smile at
the fascinating tension in the Iranian diaspora identity: On
the one hand
they're quick to exhalt their 2000-plus heritage (whatever
that means) on
the other hand they're constantly worried about how the rest
of the world
sees them. At the end of the day, actions speak louder than
words and
history means little when your present is unappetizing.
.................... Say
goodbye to spam! *
*
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