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Tuesday
May 1, 2001

Can't measure by today's standards

I still see some people, who owe their very existence to the Pahlavi government, continue bickerings about Reza Shah (e.g. Setareh, Peerooz, A.A., etc.). If Reza Shah failed in anything, it was in giving the remnants of feudals, mollas and bazaaris (to whom the above-mentioned clearly belong - by virtue of their writings) a sense of self-respect.

I stopped at the point where one of the above suggested that the mollas gave us universities, railways and roads. Or another one who suggested that Mossadegh was a Gandhi-like figure. Equally preposterous was the suggestion that Ataturk didn't kill anyone or steal anything.

May I remind you of Ataturk's prominent role (as a commander of the Ottoman army) in the first holocaust of 20th century which involved killing and looting of nearly two million Armenians in Turkey (circa 1915).

Also the more one of the above writers moans about "loss of land" under Reza Shah, the more persuaded I am into thinking that she is deeply hurt on a personal basis. Might I ask who did all these lands belong to in the first place? Answer, to use her own terminology, "thugs with voracious hunger for other people's land". So as one of the more well-read authors (Kashani) suggested, these writers are badly in need of a dose of history education.

Likening Gandhi to Mossadegh is an affront to the spirit of non-violence that Gandhi was a grand champion of. The person who has made this ludicrous comparison should seriously re-examine his/her understanding of the notion of non-violence and the spiritual doctrine to which Gandhi subscribed.

Mossadegh had no scruples in receiving support from the American (Eisenhower) administration. But his lack of international statesmanship (very evident by his choice of foreign minister - the foul-mouthed Fatemi) deprived him from understanding the "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K.

Incidentally, unlike Mossadegh, Gandhi was not a member of the Masonic lodge!

It is so nice and easy to sit in comfortable surroundings in America with the knowledge of newly gained (or mimicked) democracy, making wise comments about how bad it was that Reza Shah did not follow "democracy". Every novice historian knows that applying the analytical tools of one decade in analyzing the events of even one decade before is a gross mistake.

Then how is it that our so-called "history analysts", fail to see this most basic of the rules and try to analyze the events that took place some six or seven decades ago with the tools of 21st century. I put this sown as a serious lack of knowledge about Iran's culture, literature and history? Might I suggest the book by Cyrus Ghani on the Rise and Fall of Reza Shah as an authoritative source to start with.

Parviz

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