The occasion of International Mother Language Day, Feb 21, warrants a look at one of the most beautiful and important languages Persian or Farsi since it receives a lot of the wrong kind of attention despite appreciation by some of the world’s greatest poets; among them Goethe the great German poet who drew on Persian verse for his works.
The wrong kind of attention, on the other hand, has historically come from ill-wishers trying to divide and rule this strategically located and rich land that connects the Indian Subcontinent to Europe and is strategically placed along the Silk Route.
The latest attempt at mischief, however, has arisen closer to home under the guise of the hashtag #ManoFarsi or Me&Persian.
What can be said of Persian? Persian is as sweet as sugar, Persian is the language of poetry and culture; it has been widely used in India and was once considered the language of science.
Most importantly though it is a common Iranian language, unifying and uniting the Iranian peoples.
But now with new hashtags, people abroad are trying to convince us to bin it or lock it up at best!
Manofarsi claims to Highlight Language Discrimination in Iran
Mohsen Rasooli, a so-called Anti-racism activist has said: “We want to raise awareness about the suffering of living in a monolingual system, within a multilingual society”
If a country is multilingual the implication is that many languages and dialects are alive, so they haven’t been suppressed or repressed, although Iran is a sovereign state and needs a state language.
Persian is not an adversary to local languages and dialects
It’s in the nature of the Farsi language and Farsi speakers throughout history that they don’t consider the language a superior one.
They don’t consider a poem in another language as inferior or primitive compared to Farsi. That’s what I mean when I say they’re all part of a larger corpus.
The more we focus on strengthening them, the main corpus gets stronger, it won’t be weaker. Farsi isn’t harmed if Kurdish poetry is strengthened.
Hosseini Rahimi, Academy of Persian Language and Literature
France and Germany need a state language, or lingua franca, so does Iran, a land united by a Persian king over 2500 years ago. And indeed, Persian has not destroyed or overshadowed its sister languages and dialects.
Those dialects and regional languages have always existed, but speakers of those languages have chosen to recite poetry in Persian, therefore making Persian their own.
So why would they give it up, together with their Iranian nationality and claim on the whole of Iran, by separating from the mainland and adopting their own provincial language or dialect as the lingua franca in their new country, which would actually be no more than a province?
That is the course of action suggested by the #manofarsi and the like.
First of all, even separation as united or federal states does not mean scrapping a common language facilitating relations. Look at America and Germany.
Secondly, why divide a country at a time the whole world is becoming one just because Israel or Saudi Arabia thinks it’s a good idea?
It’s interesting to know that for example in France, since 2018, all dialects other than the standard language are banned. Why aren’t the enemies (of Iran) targeting that? Following Brexit, 17 British, 38 German, and 2 Italian dialects were totally banned there.
This shows that the issue of identity and a shared language is pretty significant. Farsi is the standard language here. But, as you know, Kurdish and Turkish are being taught in our schools. The parents speak their local language to their children at home.
We’ve never run into any problems in that regard. But the enemy invests energy on such issues because it wants to target our culture.
Morteza Similar, Political Analyst
The #manofarsi hashtag spread like wildfire at the hands of Persian-language UK -based news channels, such as Iran International, a channel funded through a secretive offshore entity and a company whose director is a businessman from Iran’s regional rival, Saudi Arabia, with close links to the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Turkey has also been working on its pan-Turkism aspirations; Israel has said the middle-east should be split down into small states, and the west still holds to the principle of divide and rule, given their interest in Iran.
The colonists’ policy in dealing with Muslim nations and third-world countries, in general, is that of Divide and Rule. They’ve devised a whole slew of plans for that too.
Take Africa, for example. Taking a look at the map of the continent, you’ll see thousands of kilometers of straight border lines. That obviously hasn’t been natural, they’re hand-drawn.
But somewhere along the borders, you’ll see the lines moved a little. What is that? It’s where they’ve divided an ethnic community into two parts to turn that into a dispute for both countries.
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Or they may have left some parts of the borders open so both sides have territorial claims on the land and are in constant opposition to each other. Or they may have sowed religious discord among the people, calling one group Shia and the other Sunni. They’ve even created divisions among Shia Muslims. This is while all those people believe in Islam.
They’ve started ethnic disputes and fomented racist ideas. For example, they told Iranians that their race is superior to Arabs and Turks. They told the latter two the same thing. The latest move is an extension of that.
Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, Former Iranian Diplomat
Sevil Suleyman, the co-founder of the End of Monolingualism campaign, complained to IranWire about having been in a class of 35 non-Persian speakers when she was in the first grade of primary school in Iran.
The complaint was that these 35 non-Persian speakers had to study in Persian.
In Ardebil, where she spent her early life, of course, the whole class will have learned their first few words at home in Azeri Turkish, as it is spoken without restriction, is taught at school in Azerbaijan province, and is broadcast on local TV stations.
Now, who wouldn’t want their child to study in the state language at school? Apparently, Suleyman, who said:
“The Iranian education system is not designed for language-learning. The system is geared toward high literacy, assuming that all children know Persian. About 50 percent have no idea.”
That is in fact why they go to school, to learn.
