tajikistanweb.com

Regionalism is an old well-known fact in Tajikistan, but less scrutinized. It was a tool to govern the Central Asian country from Moscow for over seven decades by appointing representatives of certain Tajik regions in certain posts. Moscow favoured Khojandi clans as the main rulers of the republic. However, with the fall of the Soviet Union there was no other puppet master to apply the mechanism in a certain way. Many believe that when the mechanism was left idle by Moscow skirmishes started erupting that ended up in 1992-97 civil war.

Dawlat Rahmanian, a Tajik journalist who triggered the debate with his article provocatively titled "A Regional Hero Cannot Be a National Poet", has brought about new formerly unheard terms to define Tajik regionalism:

"During last century Tajik literature has developed a regional local character. From the very first day when "the Tajik Soviet literature" was introduced, poets and writers with a "burgess mindset" have dominated their counterparts with a "nomadic mindset". This influence has left its negative imprint in the Tajik literary language that has not been wiped off so far… It was impossible to produce utterly national literature by means of the Bukharan literary language that was based on Turkic articulation and could not represent the All-Tajik mentality".

Rahmanian goes on describing "a bloody struggle between urban and nomadic intellectuals in 1930s" and adds:

"The process lost its course only after the World War II. In other words, Ustad Mirza Tursunzade came to power in the literary realm and nomadic intellectuals won the fight. Tursunzade himself had suffered under the yoke of the civilized "troika" (presumably, he means Tajiks from Khojand, Bukhara and Samarqand-twc). Little by little Northern and Southern intelligentsia replaced their urban and nomadic predecessors and literature shifted from larger regions to smaller locations. Tursunzade was not leading the process; he was busy looking for new talents. But his pupils stepped on a different path. Regionalist fanaticism was brought about by nomadic mindset. This fanaticism appears in different colours and names like zarafshani, hissari, gharmi and kulabi and I’m afraid they will remain like this."

In the very article Rahmanian shows a perfect example of the regionalist passion by lashing Laiq and Gulnazar (from one region) and praising Mumin Qanaat (from another region) as the only admirable poet of the country and taunts him for not securing his position against poets of other regions.

Laiq Sher-Ali and Mumin Qanaat are the most celebrated Persian literary figures of Central Asia. The former was born in Panjakent, Soghd region and died in Dushanbe in 2000. The latter was born in Qal’ai Khumb district of Badakhshan region and lives in Dushanbe.

The article that seems like a totally biased ill-informed piece of writing caused a huge uproar among Tajik intelligentsia with many relevant topics being discussed in different papers. The editor-in-chief of Farazh weekly responded to D. Rahmanian’s article as an annoyed warrior and threatened to leave the country. He wrote:

"Even a dead Laiq disturbs them and they want to confront the poet who’d served the Tajik nation all his life through establishing authority for persons who never said anything more than praising the Soviet occupying empire… You just admit that our presence in the country does not allow your "great personality" to be known and praised by others. In a jungle that lacks lions and tigers a female fox will claim the reign."

The hostile exchange between intellectual representatives of different regions went on in a new thread of articles and interviews initiated in the hope to change the present national anthem of the country. Its lyrics were written by Gulnazar 13 years ago and won the competition. Many believe that the main cause of the debate that started with such a long delay is Gulnazar’s place of birth in Zarafshan valley.

The music of the anthem was composed by Sulaiman Yudakov of Jewish origin in Soviet times and it didn’t change after independence. Central Asian Jews were very well integrated into local life and their contribution to the Tajik culture has been notable. Their native language even in Uzbekistan and other parts of the region remains the Bukharan accent of Persian.

However, some journalists and composers cite Yudakov’s ethnic origin as the main reason to change the national anthem music. A Tajik composer Sharofiddin Sayfiddinov believes that 13 years ago Tajikistan was not ready to choose its national anthem and the competition should take place again, so that Tajik composers could defend their reputation by writing a better piece than S. Yudakov’s composition. There are fewer arguments based on the literary and musical values of the national anthem and most of cons and pros derive from regional preferences of writers.

Regionalism in Tajikistan does not fall along ethnic fault lines with linguistic, ethnic, religious or cultural differences that could contribute to the mosaic. All the sides of the debate are known as Tajik, speak different dialects of the same language, mostly belong to the same Hanafi school of Islam (with exception of the Ismaili minority) and by and large, share same cultural values and tradition.

However, Tajikistan’s extremely mountainous terrain has kept its inhabitants apart for centuries. Soviet international manifest and dictatorship had muted regionalist sentiment among the public and regionalism was a taboo for Tajik Soviet press, but main positions belonged to the North. Nowadays the South constitutes the main body of Rahmon’s government.

According to observers in Tajikistan, ordinary people are less interested in regionalist topics, but Tajik intelligentsia is stirring a verbal war in media outlets and demonstrating totally new and unseen angles of the issue, that could result in a wider discord and confrontations. Suhrob Sharifov, a Tajik expert, points out that there is a direct link between regionalism and intelligentsia:

"The ideological basis for regionalism is closely connected with the problems of the alienation of the intelligentsia from the people and the government. At the present time the majority of the intelligentsia acts as the basic spiritual force of Tajikistan, which to a certain degree directs politicians and the political process towards supporting regionalism in the country."

Tajikistanweb.com will try to discuss the topic of political regionalism and its destructive consequences in a series of articles coming up soon.