The removal of the Farsi/Persian word “Danishgah” which means university from the sign board banner of Balkh University by the Taliban has met with widespread reactions. Persian speakers describe this action of the Taliban as “Anti-Persian” and enmity with this official and the native language of the country. Referring to the law of higher education, the Taliban say that the word “Danishgah” is not included in this law and the word “Pohantoon” is used instead. Therefore, they have the legal right to remove this word from the signs and banners. Although the use of the word “Danishgah” has been controversial many times during the past two decades, and since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, this group has changed most of the signs and banners of government offices from Farsi/Persian to Pashto; An action that has angered the speakers of this language.
The Taliban confirmed on Monday, 19 September 2022, that their local officials in Balkh province have removed the word “Danishgah” from the plaque of the new building of Balkh University. A few months ago, this group removed this Persian word from the sign of the old building of Balkh University. An action that was met with the reaction of a large number of citizens.
In their first period of rule over the country in 1996, when the Taliban captured the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, they changed the word “Danishgah” to the Pashto word “Pohantoon”. The removal of the Farsi word “Danishgah” from the board of Balkh University has always been controversial and a source of tension. In 2008, the installation of a Persian Sign Board at Balkh University led to a conflict between students and police forces, but finally, the local authorities at that time installed a new sign in Farsi/Persian, Pashto, and English at the entrance of this university to calm the anger of the citizens.
This is not the only action of the Taliban to remove Persian words and terms from the board of public institutions. Last week, the local officials of the Taliban removed the plaque of the regional hospital in Herat, which was in Farsi/Persian, and replaced it with a plaque in Pashto and English. While this sign was installed on the entrance gate of this hospital since its establishment and did not cause any criticism. In addition to this, the Taliban have also removed the boards of the publications management, information technology, procurement management, and several other management departments that were in Farsi/Persian and replaced them with boards in the Pashto language words and terminologies. Also, the Farsi/Persian title has been removed from the board of the Supreme Court in Kabul, and a new board in Pashto and English has been installed at the entrance of this court.
In the past few months, the Taliban have continued to remove Farsi/Persian words and terminologies from the boards of government institutions, and have also changed the boards of the appeal courts of Ghor and Bamyan provinces. This is even though the absolute majority of the residents of these two provinces speak Farsi/Persian. At that time, several civil and media activists of Ghor said in connection with the removal of the Farsi/Persian words and terms from the court of this province as ignoring the mother tongue and linguistic identity of the inhabitants of this land and considered this as disrespectful to those who 900 years ago started to expand the territory of the Farsi/Persian language in the Indian subcontinent. They have called this behavior of the Taliban as anti-Persian and coercion.
Taliban installed a new plaque on the entrance door of Bamyan province on Thursday, the 15th of September 2022. A new plaque installed on the door of the governor’s office of Bamyan has the following Pashto terms written in large letters: “De Bamyan Maqam Velayat”. The removal of Persian words from the entrance door of the Bamyan provincial government met with widespread reactions. In social media, the cultural activists of this province called it the elimination of Farsi/Persian and enmity with the speakers of this language.
Badakhshan is another province where most of its residents speak Fars/Persian. There are no Pashto-speaking natives in this province, but in the latest case, the electricity bill in the city of Faizabad, the center of Badakhshan, is printed in Pashto. A number of educators and residents of Faizabad city have protested against this and said that no Pashto-speaking people are living here, except for travelers and some shopkeepers who come for business. They described this action of the Taliban as enmity with the Farsi/Persian language and “coercion” and said that this action causes and spreads ethnic and linguistic hatred in the country. The Taliban, however, have not paid any heed to this request of the people.
With the Taliban regaining control over the country, the discussion of “anti-Persianism” has heated up once again. A number of citizens and scholars consider the removal of the Farsi/Persian language from the correspondence of most government offices, the change of the solar Hijri calendar to the lunar Hijri calendar and the removal of Nowruz from the calendar, the speeches of Taliban officials and the removal of Farsi/Persian text from the tablets and boards of government offices as clear signs of the Taliban’s “anti-Persian initiatives”.
The removal of the word “Danishgah” from Balkh University’s signboard has not only provoked the protests of citizens, but also the reactions of politicians and educators. According to them, Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic and linguistic society, in which diversity adds to its beauty and color, and no authoritarian government or system can implement the policy of cultural homogenization.
Ahmad Taqi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Taliban, said about the removal of the word “Danishgah” from the Balkh University signboard: “Terms are defined in the third article of the Civil Higher Education Law. [It is clear there] What does the institution mean? What does university mean? What does student mean? All terms are defined. The term “Pohantoon” is defined in the law, the term “Danishgah” has no place in the law, and this law was also used in the republic government as well.” Meanwhile, the Taliban have declared the abolition and cancelation of all laws, including the national constitution, which is known as the mother of all other laws, after regaining control of Afghanistan, but they consider these laws to be valid only in cases that benefit them.
However, Manijeh Bakhtari, a writer and Afghanistan’s ambassador to Austria, said in an interview with Hasht-e Subh Daily: “Taliban, in addition to being a terrorist criminal group, also has animosity and hostility towards cultures and languages. They want to introduce Afghanistan as a monocultural and monolingual country, and in this regard, they have a specific agenda.” Afghanistan’s ambassador to Austria adds that Afghanistan is a colorful country with many cultures and languages, and this diversity belongs to all citizens. No one has the right to exclude, deny and oppress the identity of our country to a single language and people. According to her, the Farsi/Persian language is the inter-ethnic language in Afghanistan, and its removal means denying more than half of the citizens of this country; the culture of the Persian language.
Ms. Bakhtari clarifies: “Afghanistan’s history and historical experiences prove that discrimination, militancy with culture and language, and the implementation of monoethnic, monolingual policy, is a failed strategy that has never been successful and effective, and creates more discord and gap between people.”
The ambassador of Afghanistan in Austria emphasizes: “[Danishgah] is one of the noble words of the great Farsi/Persian language, and we, the speakers of this language, carry and cherish the word “Danishgah” as a symbol and sign of resistance. One day, this word will be engraved on the doors of our universities with pride and greatness.”
Also, Atta Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh, who ruled this province for more than a decade, said in response to the removal of the Persian word from Balkh University: “Don’t be hostile to the language of the people.” Mr. Noor said to the Taliban: “With these anti-language actions, you can’t do anything else except to intensify the fire of hatred.” The former governor of Balkh considered the Persian language to be the language of communication and understanding of all the Afghan tribes and said that this language is “The language of culture and thought, animosity with it, is animosity with knowledge and wisdom.”
Mujib Mehrdad, a journalist and university professor, also wrote in a note about the anti-Persianism of the Taliban: “The removal of the Farsi word “Danishgah” from the Balkh University board connects the policies of the Taliban with the policies of the narrow-minded nationalists of the republican period and the deep-rooted history of cultural oppression in the homeland, and this perception that the Taliban is just an Ideological force is illusional and invalidate.”
Kawa Jubran, author and university professor, has also reacted in this case. Mr. Jubran considers the removal of the word “Danishgah” to be an ethnic attack and emphasizes that “denying the ethnicity and language of the Taliban is a political and extremely misleading discussion. It is a project built and completed by two rounds of the Karzai-Ghani ethnic republic with the cooperation of several Tajik and Hazara Flattering agents, which was designed and implemented in the rooms of the then National Security Directorate.”
However, several Pashto language educators reacted by removing the Persian word “Danishgah” from the Balkh University board and said that by removing one language, it is not possible to provide a platform for the growth of another language. In the meantime, Shafiqa Khpalwak wrote on her Facebook page that you cannot develop another language by damaging one language. Ms. Khpalwak has written that before India was colonized by the British, the official language there was Persian. According to her, the Persian language has been the official language of the Afghan government for a long time, and many historical, literary, and cultural works of the region have been written in Farsi/Persian.
Ms. Khpalwak, who is a poet, said: “We are lucky to speak this language. Especially the Pashtuns who naturally speak both Pashto and Farsi/Persian.”
Ahmed, one of the Pashtun activists, wrote to Hasht-e Subh Daily on social media: “I believe that today’s writers and intellectuals of Pashto and Farsi languages will one day restore the two-way relationship between Pashto speakers and Persian language, and the relationship that has been damaged in the 20th century due to the creation of the nation-state and the wrong perception of the “awakening of identities”, and has caused the separation of Pashto speakers and Persian speakers, who target the history of Persian and Pashto classics. It will be repaired again.
Habib Tutakhil, a writer and political activist, has also reacted in a tweet in connection with the removal of the word “Danishgah”. He wrote: “Persian speakers say the name of our language is Persian, but some Pashtuns insist that the name of your language is not Persian.” He added that Farsi, Dari, and Tajik are one language and if you think that these are separate languages, then Kandahari, Wardaki, Paktiawal, Waziri, Peshawari, Gholji and other dialects of Pashto are also different languages.
Javed Faisal, a political activist, also quoted a sentence from Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai on his Facebook page: “Learn Persian and speak Persian.”
Background of Persian language
Most of those who are against the word “Danishgah” or other Persian words and terms argue that Persian is the language of ancient Persia and present-day Iran; However, Dr. Hossein Yamin, the late professor of Kabul University and one of the prominent linguists of the country, believed that Persian/Dari is a continuation of Parthian Pahlavi and has nothing to do with the word Fars or Iran today. Mr. Yamin considers the Persian language to be the continuation of Parthian Pahlavi, that the origin of this word is Pahlavi or Parti, and over time, Parti was changed to Persian as a result of linguistic changes, and with the advent of Islam, it took the form of Persian.
This linguist of the country considered the views of several Iranian orientalists and linguists who consider the origin of the Persian language to be Fars or modern Iran and consider it to be the sequence of ancient Persian or the Pahlavi sequence of Sassanid, as unscientific and said that these designations are not historically correct.
Dr. Younus Taghian Sakai, a retired professor of the Faculty of Language and Literature of Kabul University, in an interview with Hasht-e Subh, has a similar opinion to Dr. Hussain Yamin and confirms it, quoting from Bondhash Book, written by Bandhash Franbagh Dadagi, one of the followers of Zoroastrianism, translated by Mehrdad Bahar says, when talks surround mountains, “Pars” is being mentioned. Dr. Sakai adds that it is said in this book that Abrasin Mountain is located in Pars, the same mountain is located in Sistan that continues to Chinastan.
According to Mr. Sakai, Farsi is the continuation of Parthian Pahlavi, which over time has evolved into Parthian and then Parsi, and has nothing to do with the words Fars and Iran today.
The Origin of Anti-Persianism
Based on literary texts, the origin of anti-Persianism goes back to the past centuries. During the Umaian Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf period, he ordered that the Persian language should not be used in court affairs. In this way, he went as far as beheading and burning the books of Persian speakers; Until the people’s tied got cut from the language and from its calligraphy, and couldn’t write or read with it.
In the contemporary history of Afghanistan, when Mahmoud Tarzi managed the only royal publication, he considered Persian as a “borrowed language and a relic of the former government of Iran”. He wrote in an article in “Seraj Al-Akhbar” weekly newspaper: “When His Highness Ahmad Shah Babai Ghazi [Ahmad Shah Durani] succeeded in establishing and gaining the independence of the Afghan kingdom, Bookkeeping, writing, formal letters, and government writings, which is the basis of government affairs, was done in Persian language, by the same Persian-speaking people of Iranian origin, who were among the relics of Iran’s history. It is known to the world that the world calls our nation Afghanistan and us Afghans. Therefore, in the explanation and interpretation of our helpless title, one doubt that remains is whether “Afghan national literature” is correct and whether “Persian national literature” is a loan word. After that, in contemporary history, the issue of language, along with the issue of ethnicity, has always been one of the most challenging and tense issues; In such a way that the Afghan parliament could not approve the new law on higher education in at least three legislative periods due to the tension created by words such as “Danishgah” and “Danishkadeh”.
On the other hand, after taking control of the country, the Taliban canceled the constitution and other laws in force, but now they are returning the issue of removing the word university from Balkh University to a law that its founder and implementer accused of tampering and to overthrow that system, that they have fought for about 20 years.
However, a number of Taliban supporters say that the word “Pohantoon” is a national term that is used in both Persian and Pashto languages; While this definition of national terms should be based on the constitution, now that the Taliban has removed the constitution, it is not clear what should be considered national terms.
Persian speakers in Afghanistan say that “Pohantoon” is a Pashto word, and they use it willingly whenever they speak Pashto, but when they speak in their native and official language, they use the word “Danishgah” instead. They insist that no one should consider themselves a language “Traffic” and control our language.
Author: Amin Kawa – Senior Reporter and Analyst at Hasht-e Subh