The Persian language, also referred to as Parsi, has historically functioned as a unifying element in the regions of Khorasan and contemporary Afghanistan, forging connections among diverse populations with unique political identities and cultural attributes. An Afghanistani Hazara and a Tajik citizen exhibit proficiency in Persian comparable to a resident of Kabul or Tehran. Within the country, various ethnic groups, including Uzbek, Nuristani, and Afghan/Pashto, engage in communication and social interactions exclusively through this language. However, the politicization of language and endeavors to establish political dominance over Persian, rather than preserving it as a historic and unifying language across diverse ethnicities, have evolved into one of the most contentious issues in the nation’s recent history, gaining prominence in less than a century.
Since the inception of the geographical entity known as “Afghanistan,” Pashtuns have predominantly ruled. Nevertheless, Persian has concurrently held sway as the dominant language in politics, society, and culture. Despite some Afghanistan rulers hailing from powerful Pashtun lineages, many were not proficient in Pashto. Almost all pivotal historical documents in Afghanistan, such as the “Taj al-Tawarikh,” attributed to Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, the King of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901, were scripted in Persian. Abundant historical records in the country affirm that Persian served as the official language of Afghanistan governments and, until less than a century ago, never sparked ethnic or political discord. The divergence surfaced with attempts by certain political and cultural figures in Afghanistan (Pashtun) to construct a “national” or Afghan identity for all ethnicities residing in the country.
The chosen approach by Afghanistan politicians to shape this identity was exclusionary. They sought to execute the nation-building project through assimilation, stripping other ethnic and linguistic identities of their cultural and linguistic heritage, assimilating them into an “Afghan” identity. In their pursuit, they resettled Pashtuns in Persian-speaking areas, translated the names of historical places from Persian to Pashto, and endeavored to reshape the demographic and cultural landscape. This initiative culminated in the establishment of a department within the Afghanistan government known as the “Directorate for the Promotion of Pashto.” Subsequently, King Zaher Shah of Afghanistan officially advocated for the promotion and revitalization of the Pashto language.
In a decree issued on March 3, 1937, he stated, “As Persian is indispensable in our beloved country, and, on the other hand, the majority of our people speak Persian, while officials are largely unfamiliar with Pashto, we have decided to continue teaching and promoting Pashto to eliminate this deficiency and facilitate official and administrative transactions, much like Persian, the language of teaching and writing in Afghanistan.” The wording of this decree indicates that Persian was not only the official language in Afghanistan but was explicitly referred to by that name. Conversely, Pashtun elites attempted to confer a national character on the language “Pashto” by relabeling it as the “Afghan language.” Although, in practice, except in their limited circles, no one else referred to it as the “Afghan language,” the efforts of various Afghan (Pashtun) governments to compel government officials to learn Pashto yielded no results. Even today, most correspondence between various Afghanistan government offices is conducted in Persian.
The language now acknowledged by Afghanistanis as “Pashto” and formerly as the language “Afghan,” in cultural and official discourses, has metamorphosed into a tool for fracturing the unity of the Afghanistani people and fueling decades-long conflicts. This ideology, born of Amir Habibullah Khan’s supremacist and fascist thinking, first entered the official domain under the name and identity of the language “Afghan,” based on his decree in 1915. This work, the “Afghan Book,” was officially included in the Ministry of Education in 1917 and distributed throughout the country for educational purposes.
The author of the inaugural book in the Afghan language, Saleh Mohammad Kandahari, a teacher at the Habibiya School, acknowledges in the introduction to this work, written in Persian, the desperate and dying state of the Afghan/Pashto language in the country. A meticulous examination of this work reveals that the terms “Lisah and Pashto” were not prevalent in the country until that time, and the identity of “Pashtuns” was defined with the term “Afghan or Afghani.”
The author of the “Afghan Book” in the introduction explicitly acknowledges, with a full understanding of the situation of the Afghan language in the country, that “until today, there has been no book for teaching the Afghan language, and the Afghan language is helpless, dying, and facing complete destruction.” Following the murder of the treacherous Afghanistan’s Shah (Nadir Shah), political efforts to eradicate Persian and alter the educational curriculum to align with the interests of the Barakzai family and the inclinations of their supporters intensified.
According to contemporary Afghanistan history, during the tenure of Sardar Naim Khan, all Persian books available in the Ministry of Education at that time were incinerated in Kabul’s Zarnegar Park, akin to the fascist policies of Nazism. Simultaneously, Sardar Naim Khan, the Minister of Education at the time, issued a decree stating that in Persian-speaking areas of the country, students should not be taught in their mother tongue but in Pashto. The trend of imposing an Afghan identity and Afghanization of the country persists to this day. Grounded in this biased policy, the majority of the country’s children, devoid of a Pashtun/Afghan identity and lacking knowledge of the new Afghan language, have been deprived of modern education and scientific knowledge.
