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Iran: Which
way will the camel sit?
By K Gajendra
Singh
The recent visit of Iranian President Syed
Mohammed Khatami to India, where he was the chief guest
at India's Republic Day celebrations on January 26 in
New Delhi, highlights the growing warmth in relations
between the two countries in a fast changing strategic
international environment.
Before Ayatollah
Khomeini's Shi'ite revolution, which shook the world in
1979, India's relations with the Shah of Iran, a Cold
War ally of the West and Pakistan, had fluctuated from
correct to cool, sometimes becoming even acrimonious.
During India's wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, Iran
helped the latter with military hardware.
At a
time when this writer took a delegation to Tehran and
Iran's industrial centers in 1977 to discuss the
country's need for Indian engineers, skilled workers and
doctors for a fast expanding economy and social services
as a result of the October 1973 four-fold increase in
oil prices, multinational chiefs used to line the skiing
slopes of St Moritz to show off their wares to Iran's
Reza Shah Pahlavi on vacation. How the world has changed
in the past 25 years.
While world leaders such
as South Africa's Nelson Mandela and Algerian President
Aziz Bouteflika have graced Indian Republic Day
celebrations in recent years, Khatami was the first
leader from the Gulf to be so honored, although Iranian
president Hashemi Rafsanjani visited India in late 1995.
Khatami, unlike many other Gulf rulers, is
moderate, well read and modern in his world view, a
reason for his re-election last year and for a thumping
victory in the 1997 elections. The majority of the
Iranian electorate, especially the young and women,
clearly feel stifled by the stranglehold of the
conservative mullahs on power.
Khatami received
a warm welcome from eclectic Indian president A P J
Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the
latter with memories of a similar welcome he was
accorded in Iran a few years ago. On January 25, Khatami
and Vajpayee signed the "New Delhi Declaration" which
identifies the main areas of bilateral cooperation. Six
agreements covering economic, scientific, info-tech,
educational and training cooperation were also signed.
The two leaders in addition signed a statement calling
for a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis under UN
auspices.
On Kashmir, a sensitive issue and
litmus test for India, mindful of a statement made by an
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran that the
issue should be resolved within the framework of the
United Nations resolutions, Iran's Foreign Minister
Kamal Kharrazi contended that it was a misquote. "It is
true that there are resolutions adopted by the UN, but
basically this issue has to be resolved through direct
talks between India and Pakistan. We have no role there
and we do not wish to compound the issue."
Khatami advised Indian Muslims to "participate
actively in the progress and development of the land
they live in". They "should also help contain extremism
and communal tension". On the whole, Shi'ite Muslims
appear to give less trouble in India compared to Sunnis,
who suffer from manipulation with money and other
inducements by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others.
During his visit to Hyderabad, fast becoming
another hub of Indian information technology, Khatami
said that Iran had the potential to become a flourishing
market for Indian IT goods. Iran also "had a huge bank
of young and creative talent and a large number of
extremely active and efficient companies and
institutions already functioning there", he said.
It is true though that IT cooperation could be
mutually beneficial if more Urdu/Persian script-based IT
programs were created for general use. Urdu still
remains the mother tongue of many tens of millions in
India. India has made considerable progress, and
entrepreneurs from the two countries could join hands in
this.
For Iran, cooperation with India remains
its best bet for progress in computers and IT as the US
is unlikely to give any assistance in this sector.
Hyderabad has a large Iranian population, many of whom
have lived there for generations, it has an Iranian
consulate and Iranians run scores of hotel and bakery
businesses.
Numbering perhaps 25 million, India
has the second largest Shi'ite population in the world.
Oudh, Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Golconda were its kingdoms
in the past. Shi'ites are now concentrated in Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Ismaili Khojas in
Mumbai. (Incidentally, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder
of Pakistan, was an Ismaili Bohra).
While trade
between India and Iran has risen from $120 million in
1991 to $500 million in 2002, the potential is much
greater. Iran's easy access to Central Asia and Europe
and the conclusion of a transit agreement on a
North-South corridor between India, Russia and Iran
should give impetus to more trade and opportunities for
joint projects and investment. Iran has nearly 9 percent
of the world's oil reserves and 15 percent of the known
gas reserves, while India, with a billion-plus
population, is deficient in this raw material for its
petro-chemical and fertilizer industries, apart from its
use as an energy source.
Khatami observed that
India was "one of our best customers". But only the
creation of a free trade bloc or an economic community
for South and Central Asia will be able to usher in
prosperity for the region, as have the European Union
and ASEAN for their members. Such a bloc would help
change the agendas in Afghanistan, Pakistan and
elsewhere from the opium cultivation and heroin refining
of a Kalashnikov culture to the creation of a crossroad
for trade, oil and gas pipelines.
The US,
though, remains a major constraint in India drawing
closer to Iran. It forced India to renege on its promise
to build an experimental nuclear reactor in Iran -
Russia subsequently moved in. It has classified Iran as
part of an axis of evil, along with North Korea and Iraq
(which has been a supporter of India on Kashmir, but
India is not fully supporting Iraq so as not to
displease the Americans). It may be recalled that when
now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld joined the US
administration, relying on past memories, he even
bracketed India with North Korea as a rogue state.
After the Shi'ite-Sunni split following the
Iranian revolution, it was natural that Iran would move
away from Sunni-dominated Pakistan (where Shi'ites and
Sunnis engage in regular secular violence). It took some
time to sheathe the excesses of revolution in Iran (even
then, Iranian mullahs were pleading with Indian doctors
to stay on in the country). When US energy interests
were playing their games of coddling up to the Taliban,
Russia, Iran and India were the major supporters of the
opposition Northern Alliance, even when it was reduced
to only a pocket of resistance in Afghanistan.
Then September 11 happened. The US learned to
its dismay that the fundamentalist tiger it had fed and
nursed against the USSR had grown into a Frankenstein
monster and was behind the stunning events. The current
administration in Kabul, in which the Northern Alliance
has a major say, has created a situation where Delhi and
Tehran can jointly work on projects towards rebuilding
the war-ravaged nation.
But it will depend
largely on the US. Washington has not been happy at
India's expansion of consular offices, because Pakistan,
which the US still needs, looks askance at the return of
Indian influence in Afghanistan. Traditionally,
Afghanistan and India have had close relations, except
during the Taliban regime of the latter half of the
1990s.
The glitter of Tehran during this
writer's 1977 visit amid booming industrial
construction, with its streets clogged with cars and
flush with hustlers, turned out to be the boom before
the big bang and the bust - the Ayatollah Khomeini-led
Islamic revolution, which made the world sit up and take
note of the cataclysmic stage in the evolution of the
Shi'ite sect of Islam, which unlike the main Sunni
stream had kept open the ijtihad interpretation
of Sharia law to meet new situations. Most people in the
West did not even know the difference between a Shi'ite
and a Sunni and the historical enmity between them.
Old linkages between India and
Iran
India's
linkages and relations with Iran are ancient and almost
umbilical. Not far from Iran's western border, around
the junction of Turkey, Syria and Iraq in the upper
reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, a chariot-riding
Indian-Iranian military aristocracy, embedded among
indigenous Hurrians, ruled its Mitanni kingdom between
1500 BC to 1200 BC. It used pre-Vedic Sanskrit phrases,
worshipped common Daivya and Assura gods like Indira,
Nasatya and Varuna, Mithra. The Mitannis had apparently
separated from the main Aryan body, which after many
centuries in the region of Amu and Syr Darya had moved
on to Iran. Then after some acrimony there was a split
into factions: Vedic with Daivya gods and Avestan with
Assura gods, with the Vedic stream going on to the land
of Sapt Sindhu, ie northwest India and beyond. On a
theory based on linguistic, cultural, religious and
other similarities, Iranian and Indian Aryans are, if
not racial cousins, at least linguistic and cultural
ones.
During the Muslim rule, Persians came as
bureaucrats with the Turkish rulers in India and left a
deep influence on Indian culture, civilization and
languages; Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi. From Akbar's
time, the Persians formed the majority of the Muslim
Amir ul Umra, that is, courtiers and civil servants. To
get in with Persian and its derivative Urdu as the
language of the court and administration (even during
the British era), even the Hindus took on some of their
traits, like Moghului cuisine (Persian cuisine is the
mother of most cuisines, except French and Chinese) and
meat eating. Also adopted were a love of music and
dance. Kayastahs dominated the civil services during the
British rule.
Iran: A cradle of
civilizations
Situated at the crossroads and
itself a cradle of many great civilizations, Iran has
exercised great civilizing influence since ancient
times. Whosoever (King of Kings, Sahanshah in Darius's
words, its Hindu equivalent being Maharajdhiraj) ruled
what now constitutes Iran, they exercised great
political and cultural influence not only in the
neighborhood but also in far-off places.
During
the classical Greek political and social evolution in
western Asia Minor which Turkey was then called, the
Persian Achaemenid dynasty had its satrapies and
outposts on the Aegean coast, known as Ionia, from which
the word Yunan for Greece entered the eastern lexicon.
In 517 BC it was Persian Emperor Darius who ordered
Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (western Turkey) to
survey the river Indus from Peshawar to its exit into
the sea, part of his empire. And for the first time, the
West became acquainted with India. Herodotus's chapters
on Indian history were based on records of that
exploration.
The Persians routinely crossed over
to European Thrace and a Greek victory over the Persians
in 490 BC at Marathon, perhaps the first of the West
over the East, is still commemorated as an athletic
event in the Olympics (showing Western bias in sports).
The Trojan war of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey was a small
event militarily and a storm in tea cup. Troy was a
marginal appendage of the huge Hittite empire in Asia
Minor ruled from Bogazkoy, northeast of Ankara.
Later, even in defeat, the Persians civilized
Alexander the Great and his Macedonian and Greek hordes,
introduced the small town boys to the protocol,
trappings and grandeur of an imperial power and
implanted the strongly held belief in the divine right
of the kings, later adopted by Alexander's military
commanders and successors. On these beliefs were laid
the foundations of the structure for the Roman and
Byzantine empires. The Islamic Omayyed Caliphate in
Damascus and later the Abbassid Caliphate in Baghdad
also borrowed from the same state structures and
ceremonies. Up to the 7th century, the Persians disputed
with the Romans control of Asia Minor and Syria, which
exhausted them both, making them easy prey for the
Muslim Arabs. Persians then acted as a civilizing sieve
to nomad Turks, Mongols and others from the horse-riding
nurseries of the Eurasian steppes who played such havoc
for centuries in Asia and Europe alike. Whoever ruled
Persia, Seljuk rulers in Anatolia (Turkey) or even
Delhi's Turkish Sultans and early Moghuls, for them the
Iranians were the bureaucrats without equal.
Persia's conversion to Islam, which forced
Zoroastrian Parsees to migrate to India in the 7th
century, disrupted mutual interaction and enrichment of
Indian and Persian social and cultural streams in place
since Achemenean days, if not earlier. It isolated and
weakened Hindustan, when the likes of Ghajnavi, Nadir
Shah and Abdali could raid Hindustan with impunity.
But Islam did not liberate the sophisticated and
evolved Persians, deeply influenced by spiritual and
speculative Avestan, its excessive rituals and love for
the intoxicant soma having been curbed earlier by
Zoroaster's reforms (Buddhism was a similar attempt
against Brahmanical rituals and excesses in India around
the same time). Then the Persians lost their language,
Pehlavi, which emerged a few centuries later as Persian
in modified Arabic script. Having been ruled by Arabs,
Turks, Mongols and Tartars for eight-and-half centuries,
there emerged the Sufi-origin Persian Safavids, who
became finally masters of their own land, which more or
less comprises present-day Iran. At the same time, to
preserve their sect and survive, Iranians after
centuries of foreign rule developed an uncanny ability
not to bring to their lips what is on their minds, and
have institutionalized it as takiyya, ie
dissimulation.
They had modified simple Arab
Islam into a more sophisticated and innovative Shi'ite
branch, with the direct descent of Imam Ali's progeny
from Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, echoing
their deeply ingrained sense of the divinity of rulers.
They strengthened (against the Arab caliphs and Turkish
sultans) the status of the imams, who among more
egalitarian Sunnis are no more than prayer leaders, in
line with the Indian-Iranian tradition of placing
priests higher than rulers (as are Brahmins in the
Indian caste system). By tradition, Azeri (Turkish)
speaking Iranians become chiefs of the armed forces.
Ayatollah Khomeini was an Azeri speaking Iranian.
The status of the imam evolved into the
doctrines of intercession and infallibility, ie, of the
faqih/mutjahid. (Somewhat like Hindu shankracharyas and
the fraternity of learned pandits). The speculative
Aryan mind fused the mystic traditions into Sufi Islam,
bringing out the best in Islamic mysticism and softening
the rigors of austere and crusading Islam which had
emerged from the barren sands of Arabia. There were
unparalleled contributions by Rumi, Hafij, Attar,
El-Ghazali, Firdaus, Nizami, El-Beruni, Omar Khayyam and
others to Islamic philosophy and civilization. Their
answer to interminable Islamic theological arguments on
free will v predetermination was that the opposites were
the obverse and reverse sides of the divine mind,
similar to the concepts in Hindu philosophy. Hindustani
poetry, music, painting and architecture owe much to
their Iranian cousins. Sufis played more than an equal
role in the conversion to Islam of India as did the
sword or material inducements. Sufi pirs are
still as revered as Hindu or Sikh holy men in India.
From Shi'ite variants like the Ismailis emerged
the "assassins" from the mountain vastness of Iran and
later Syria, representing an individuals' ultimate and
sublime sacrifice for a cause (or his master) against
the tyranny of the absolute or collective power of the
caliphs and sultans, inspired by Imam Hussein's
martyrdom. The assassin's modern-day versions, the
suicide bombers of the Hizbollah, Hamas, Sikh or Tamil
Tiger, have become the terrors of mankind.
The
Iranian hostage-taking of US diplomats certainly tilted
the 1980 elections against US president Jimmy Carter,
who was made to look impotent. It left a visceral desire
for revenge, like against Vietnam and its ally Russia,
after its humiliation. The poor Iraqis paid for this in
the 1991 war - as much was said by George Bush Sr. US
policies and relations with Iran are still biased by
that skewed experience.
After the unraveling of
the USSR, both the US and Russia were worried about
Iranian machinations in the newly-independent Central
Asian states, as were their new rulers, the former
communists turned "democrats".
With a population
of over 65 million, just a fourth India's size in area
and strategically located, Iran's reach to influence
regional and world events remains as durable as ever.
But Iranians, now an ethnic mix, may not easily stand
the test of territorial and linguistic loyalty. Only
half speak Persian, a quarter, like Kurds etc, allied
languages, the rest mostly Turkic Azeri. Iran has twice
the number Azeri speakers as Azerbaijan. It has one
fourth the number of Turkomens compared to Turkmenistan.
Then there are Arabs and others, even Dravidian
Brahui-speaking Balochis.
Iran has many worries
of its own, with Islam, perhaps, a major cementing
factor, which must be guarded and strengthened to
maintain its unity. The excesses of the Khomeini regime,
which stunned the West in the early 1980s, now pale in
comparison with what the Sunni Algerians are still doing
to each other, what the Taliban did in Afghanistan, the
Sudanese to their Christians in the south, apart from
killings between Sunnis, Shi'ites, Mohajirs and others
in Pakistan.
The Khomeini
revolution
From the beginning, not all Iranians
fully supported the Islamic revolution (in which
skillful use was made of Karbala - where Imam Hussein
and his army and family fought and died for Islam - and
other Shi'ite imagery), its agenda and implementation.
Khomeini was a rallying point for all against the Shah
(caricatured as the sultan or the caliph), the corroding
corruption, the excesses of the Savak secret police and
its backers, the CIA, the hopes and aspirations of the
youth for social justice, the masses suffering from
inflation and sudden oil wealth inequities.
Khomeini provided that unflinching moral and
spiritual bulwark against the Shah's armed-to-the-teeth
military machine and his capacity to deny whatever
concessions were demanded, and what was held out in the
end was too little too late. Many Iranians who opposed
the hardline clerics and their killjoy agenda were
eliminated, forced to flee or went underground. Even in
1980, disenchanted, only one fourth of Iranians went to
the parliamentary polls. Expectedly, not all clerics,
some even senior to Khomeini, like Shariatmadari,
favored political parties and more freedoms. But by
sheer force, the radical conservatives took over power,
sometimes in spite of Khomeini.
Then the
Iranians laid low and dissimulated. When the big chance
came in May 1997, they voted massively in favor of Syed
Mohammed Khatami. He started slowly but surely
implementing his agenda, like appointing a woman vice
president. But the radical conservative elements would
not give in. When elected, Khatami was called a man with
an aura around him and a twinkle in his eyes, but some
of that aura has been eroded by the mullahs, who still
maintain their control over the levers of power in the
judiciary and the higher Islamic councils, and they can
bring out religious goons to intimidate students and
others. And in spite of moderates being in the majority
in the majlis (parliament), the country has failed in
relaxing the stranglehold of the conservatives.
The situation has not been made easier by US
policies. The radicals accuse the moderates and
modernizers of being pro-US or its puppets. Iran did
make many moves to ease relations with the US, with
Khatami calling for a dialogue between civilizations.
But after September 11, in spite of Iran's limited
support to the US in its war in Afghanistan, the US now
has its eyes fixed on Saddam Hussein and a regime change
in Iraq. The US is having serious problems with North
Korea, and Iran still remains the other member of the
axis of evil. A US war on Iraq will involve the presence
of massive numbers of US troops in the region, most
likely on a long-term basis.
The US was
vehemently opposed by Iran even in 1990-91. So there is
a critical need now for all Iranians to remain united,
which would of course work in favor the status quo, ie
the mullahs in control. But as and when change comes,
most experts forecast an incremental soft landing.
However, violence should not be ruled out. It is a part
of the Islamic history and psyche, specially of
Shi'ites. Through ceremonies of martyrdom and funeral,
recalling Karbala, the tactics used against the Shah
could be repeated.
In the final analysis, what
has the post-revolution period brought to the Iranian
masses? Suffocating social curbs, little freedom and
dwindling living standards in an oil-rich country. It
has been made worse by a moribund US policy of embargo
(to manipulate oil prices for its allies and to keep
Israel the strongest power in the region) and isolation,
to teach Iranians a lesson.
Can the Iranian
soul, after all this, undergo a cathartic and
cataclysmic rebirth, liberate itself further and give a
contemporary meaning to its Islamic-molded psyche which
could serve as an example to other Muslims. For, in an
overall war between conservative Islam and modernism,
not necessarily of the Western type, the Iranian
conflict is one of the major battles, and a very vital
one, being waged all over the Islamic world and
elsewhere, through revolutions and evolutions, spread in
time and space over large areas.
But the Muslim
ummah, which agrees on little, at different stages of
tribal, social, political and economic development, is
now watching, almost helplessly, the unfolding of US war
preparations against Iraq, an ancient center of Islamic
culture and civilization, in the heart of the Islamic
world, next to the sacred soil of Arabia. Add to this
the US's avowed declarations of bringing democracy to
the ummah, and convulsions await the Islamic world.
No one knows how and which way the camel will
sit.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian
ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey
from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served
terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He
is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies.
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