The imposition of Pashto on the predominantly Farsi-speaking population of Afghanistan

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It is little secret that Farsi (Persian), which is spoken by over half the population as their first language, has and continues to serve as the de facto lingua franca of Afghanistan as well as one of the official languages, the other being Pashto. 1/30

There have been persistent endeavours to undermine Farsi and marginalise Farsi-speakers under the guise of opposing Iranian cultural imperialism in order to assert the Afghan individuality. Farsi is often considered a foreign language and is seen as deserving of oblivion. 2/30

Historically Farsi has been the lingua franca of the territory starting with the Samanids in the 9th century and continuing with the Durranis. Though Farsi is the native language of Tajiks, Hazaras and Aymaqs, Pashtuns and Turks have used and contributed to its enrichment. 3/30

Since the emergence of modern Afghanistan as a nation-state, a policy of linguistic assimilation has been pursued relentlessly by exclusively patronising and enforcing Pashto. 4/30

The earliest attempt was made by Amir Sher Ali Khan in late 19th century when he created technical Pashto terms for use in administration and military. 5/30

Later on, Amanullah Khan who spoke Pashto as a second language, began to promote the language as an essential part of the Afghan identity. His efforts to officialise the language were met with resistance due to the practicalities of everyday life. 6/30

Under the Musahiban dynasty (1929-73), harsher measures were introduced to replace Farsi with Pashto and essentially eliminate Farsi. A period when systematic efforts were undertaken to repress and even forbid Farsi in favour of the language of the dominant political power. 7/30

The first of such measures came in 1936 when the then Prime Minister issued a decree to enforce Pashto as an exclusive official language, forcing civil servants to take Pashto lessons and students to do their schooling in Pashto for a decade. 8/30

This policy failed miserably as few students and staff members could understand Pashto; the resulting chaos in classrooms set the country back academically 10 years and proved costly in the development of Afghanistan, while antagonising Farsi-speakers. 9/30

Another example of the discrimination and cultural crimes of the Musahiban era. 10/30

Daoud Khan, who is perhaps erroneously remembered and reminisced as an unprejudiced, competent and fair-minded ruler, was a radical ethno-nationalist and a driving force behind the government’s policy of racial superiority. 11/30

The following list shows names of localities and places converted from Farsi and Turkic languages to Pashto. This is further evidence of an authoritarian cultural assertion of ethno-political purpose and goes against the grain of a multicultural pluralistic society. 13/30

As a continuation of the aforementioned policy, the country’s leaders wanted to cement the status of Pashto by declaring it as the sole official language of Afghanistan in the 1964 constitution. 14/30

But realising that it would alienate the Farsi-speaking majority (Pashtun and non-Pashtun), they agreed on a superficial name for Farsi and so opted for Dari in order to make a distinction. 15/30

This achieved three goals; firstly it bolstered Afghan nationalism by exaggerating distinctions between Afghan Farsi and Iranian Farsi and in doing so asserted an independent linguistic identity for Afghanistan. 16/30

Secondly, it caused disconnect between Afghans and the rest of the Farsi-speaking world. Thirdly, it nominally equated Pashto to Farsi. 17/30

The renaming exercise is contested by the daughter of the former King Amanullah Khan. 18/30

Farsi (Persian) is based on the same literary standard and is therefore mutually intelligible in its many forms but for political reasons, it is named differently in every country. Dari in Afghanistan and Tajiki in Tajikistan. 19/30

This distinction in Farsi is absurd considering some forms of Arabic aren’t mutually intelligible at all and a Maghrebi Arab would often need an interpreter to understand a Gulf Arab. Yet Arabic is official in 26 countries and Arabs acknowledge they speak the same language. 20/30

To further point out the idiosyncrasy of distinguishing Dari from Farsi, here are two BBC tweets from two supposedly different languages. 21/30

The legacy of this racially divisive and preferential political culture has continued post 2001. E.g. a number of institutions in Afghanistan are assigned Pashto names irrespective of language. For instance ‘pohantun’ is used for university instead of the Farsi ‘doneshgah’. 22/30

Another example is the use of ‘darmaltun’ (=pharmacy) in lieu of the Farsi ‘darux̌ana’. The Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information even hands out punishments to users of the word ‘doneshgah’, who are often accused being of pro-Iranian. 23/30

The Minister in charge, Karim Khurram, was often accused of double standards. He encouraged the use of English words so long as they served to replace Farsi and not Pashto. He saw Iranian cultural influence a bigger threat than western linguistic influence. 24/30

It becomes very clear that the overall interests of Afghanistan and its citizens have never been placed ahead of partisan prejudice and racial supremacy. The repeated attempts and subsequent failures of... 25/30

...forcing Pashto on the non-Pashtun (as well as Pashtun) population of Afghanistan have proved to be an obstacle to achieving a more inclusive social, political and economic order in the country and at times have been a source of unrest and instability. 26/30

One might point to the demise of Pashto and the fact that a significant number of Pashtuns have adopted Farsi as a first language as evidence to the contrary. But when the abandonment of Pashto in favour of Farsi corresponds... 27/30

...to the will of the Afghan population, the state must remain neutral as languages evolve and communities are best served by a language that transcends borders, tribes and ethnicities (i.e. Farsi), and more importantly one that is spoken by the majority. 28/30

And if the state cannot remain neutral, then incentives should be created in order to preserve the desired language and protect linguistic diversity, but not at the price of progress, social cohesion and national unity. 29/30

Every language is unique and helps us to identify who we are as a society and as an individual. However, forcing a language on a people not only curtails the motivation to learn it, it also encourages people to nurture a distaste for that very language. 30/30