Cultural cousins

We may have many colonial cousins because of the British, but with no other country on the planet do we have such ancient and abiding cultural ties as with Iran. It goes beyond rediscovering Persian manuscripts at the Khuda Baksh Oriental Library and the Parsis, to the very roots of Vedic culture, to sacred threads and honouring the fire as witness to all rites of passage and as a conduit of prayer. Every third word we speak in Hindi is Persian. The Iranians are ‘humdil’ and ‘hum-zubaan’ in ways we do not even realise any more, the permeation is so deep.

But such is the width and depth of Shia culture in Iran that they are able to keep and respect their ancient pre-Islamic heritage as part of their own identity and adapt themselves to changing times even while affirming the principles of their later faith as found in the Koran Sharief. No Bamiyans here. In fact the Iranians, even while embracing Islam, fooled the invading Arabs into sparing their cultural holy of holies, the tomb of Cyrus the Great, by saying it was the tomb of the mother of King Solomon.

It is only when you visit Iran yourself, as I did last week with a group of women journalists from the Indian Women’s Press Corps, that you discover how slack we Asians are in direct coverage. Our mutual perceptions come only through the filter of American or English journalists, do they not, making us mistakenly lump Iran together with Arab countries?

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But Iran is not Arab. It is Persian. It is a proud, old civilisation, centuries ahead of the Arabs in evolution. None of today’s ‘jihadis’ are Iranian. Ironic, then, that the Americans support a dictatorship in Saudi Arabia but not the democracy in Iran.

Meanwhile, it is touching beyond belief that there are Indians depicted in the surviving carvings at Apadana Palace in Persepolis (Alexander burnt it), while the tomb of Hafiz, dear to us, draws young and old in open affection. We clearly need an India Cultural Centre in Tehran as an article of mutual faith and political benefit: we cannot afford to miss out on Iran.