Ibrahim Rashidi Savalan, Social Activist — March 21, 2018
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| Following the success of the constitutionalists and the signing of the Constitutional Decree by Muzaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, the first constitution of the Qajar protected territories was drafted. |
In an article written for BBC Persian, Ibrahim Rashidi examines the perspectives of Iranian politicians on the language of ethnic minorities across three periods: the Qajar (1789–1925), Pahlavi (1925–1979), and Islamic Republic (1979–present) eras.
Following the success of the constitutionalists and the signing of the Constitutional Decree by Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar, the first constitution of the Qajar-ruled territories was drafted. This article examines the scope of regional powers for the nations within the Qajar territories, as well as the freedom, opportunity for use, and development of minority languages, through the lens of laws passed in different parliamentary periods and governmental directives.
A. The Post-Constitutional Period
The approach of the constitutional constitution was centralized, granting minimal powers to the provinces. For this reason, Azerbaijani elites demanded the addition of a constitutional supplement to address these deficiencies. Sammad Sardarinia, the author of Azerbaijan: Pioneer of Civil Society, writes, “In February 1907, when the text of the constitutional constitution was published in Tabriz, the people found it unsatisfactory and rose up to demand its completion, calling for the drafting of a constitutional supplement from the parliament.”
In this regard, Mohammadreza Khoubrouy Pak emphasizes in his book A Critique of Federalism that “in the constitutional supplement, considering the unique cultural conditions of different regions of Iran, there was no mention of an official language for the country, and this freedom was preserved for the people.”
As a result of these efforts, Articles 29, 90, 91, 92, and 93 of the constitutional supplement moved away from centralization and outlined the powers of the provinces and districts as follows:
Article 29: The specific interests of each province and district are organized and settled by the provincial councils, in accordance with their specific laws.
Article 90: Provincial councils are established in all Qajar territories according to a specific bylaw.
Article 91: Members of the provincial councils are elected directly by the people.
Article 92: Provincial councils have full authority to make decisions on public reforms, within the boundaries of established laws.
Article 93: The budget reports of provinces and districts are published by the provincial councils.
As can be seen, the constitutional supplement granted broad powers to the provinces. The provincial councils held the authority to establish and approve their own laws and to exercise full oversight on reforms related to public affairs. The Law on the Formation of Provinces and Districts, passed by the First Parliament in Rabi' al-Thani 1325 AH (1907), divided the Qajar territories, in addition to the capital, into four provinces: Azerbaijan, Khorasan, Fars and Bandar, and Kerman and Baluchistan. Under such an approach, Mojtaba Maqsoudi, in his book Ethnic Developments in Iran: Causes and Contexts, considers the twenty-year period between the Constitutional Revolution and the rise of Reza Shah as a time of crisis and ethnic transformations, characterized by the rise of multiple ethnic and regional movements with separatist tendencies.
Homayoun Katouzian, author of The Political Economy of Iran, writes about Reza Shah's intense focus on centralization and, in contrast, the democratic forces’ efforts to establish justice: “The goal of most progressive revolutionaries (especially those from the provinces) was to reduce the authoritarian power of the center and to change the nature of power in the provinces by establishing permanent provincial councils. The unsuccessful revolt by the Azerbaijan Democrats, led by Sheikh Mohammad Khiabani, was the result of denying this legitimate right to the people of Azerbaijan (and other regions). However, many commentators, both biased and uninformed neutral ones, accused Khiabani, who was brutally killed after the rebellion was defeated, of separatism.”
It should not be overlooked that, despite the positive points in its supplement, the text of the constitutional constitution was centralist and opposed to the identities of peripheral regions. Article Three of the Electoral Regulations listed proficiency in reading and writing Persian as one of the requirements for candidates to the National Assembly. It is worth noting that this regulation only made proficiency in Persian mandatory for members of parliament, while no other government officials or public servants involved in printing and publishing were required to learn Persian.
Although this clause contradicted the provincial councils’ authority over the selection of candidates and representatives from the regions, it did not imply the formal elevation of one ethnic group’s language over other cultural groups. Among the laws passed by the Second Parliament, the law permitting the opening of nine primary schools was discriminatory against minorities and favored the Persian ethnic group. Of these schools, five were designated for Tehran, and one each for Shiraz, Mashhad, and Kerman. The only allocation for Iran's ethnic minorities was one school in Tabriz. The government allocated 250 tomans per school in Tehran (totaling 1,250 tomans) and 200 tomans for each of the provincial schools.
Chapter Two of the Supreme Council of Education’s charter, ratified on March 11, 1922, mandated that the council promote Persian and Arabic language and literature and disseminate public-benefit scientific articles, while completely disregarding the languages, scripts, and literature of other ethnic minorities, particularly Turkish, which was the language of the press at the time. The license to establish a matchstick factory in Azerbaijan, approved by the Fourth Parliament on January 5, 1923, was the only privilege granted to the major province of Azerbaijan by the four parliaments of that era.
B. The Pahlavi Era
All the powers that the constitutional supplement had granted to the provinces were annulled at once by the Statute of the Structure and Duties of the Ministry of Interior, ratified in 1931 during the Pahlavi era, pushing the country toward Persianization and stripping the provinces and national minorities of their authorities. According to this statute, the duties of governors were defined as follows:
Article 1: Governors supervise the officials within their jurisdiction and implement the general policies of the government.
Article 2: To ensure the smooth execution of affairs within the provincial jurisdictions and align the operations of government offices with the general policies of the government, the provinces have the right to oversee these operations and, when necessary, provide guidance. Government offices are also obligated to consider these directives.
Article 3: Specific entry requirements for the political and administrative staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs include proficiency in French or English to the extent that they can converse in and translate from that language to Persian and vice versa. Mastery of the Persian language, sufficient to draft and compose topics related to the specified qualifications in Section A, is also required.
Article 4: The Ministry of Interior has the following duties:
Supervising the governors and officials and ensuring the enforcement of the government's general policy in the provinces.
Studying and facilitating the means for implementing general reforms in each location according to the government’s program.
Article 6: Governors and officials within their jurisdictions have the right to oversee the flow of governmental and local affairs and are responsible for implementing the government’s general policy.
According to this statute, the regions had no autonomy and merely implemented the government's general policy, which adopted a unified approach. Moreover, fluency in Persian was mandated for all ministry employees, unlike in the constitutional law, which only required it for members of parliament.
During this period, the administrative divisions established under the constitutional law were also disrupted; Zanjan and Qazvin were separated from the province of Azerbaijan and annexed to the Northern Province, while Hamadan was attached to the Western Province. Although some positive developments, such as the establishment of provinces like Lorestan and Kurdistan, can be attributed to this period, these divisions were never based on the natural boundaries of ethnic minorities, and once again, the borders of minority regions were altered. The Ministry of Justice undertook the task of changing the names of cities, tribes, and geographical locations from ethnic languages to Persian, and no one dared to oppose the ministry's resolutions.
In 1927, the Ministry of Decentralized Education was transformed into a centralized ministry, where even the programs and details of school operations were dictated from the center, and non-governmental schools, including those of religious minorities, came under complete government control.
The forced change of the national dress for minorities was also implemented through repeated resolutions. The policies of displacement, forced migration, and exile of nomadic tribes were approved by parliament in the second half of 1930 and the first half of 1931.
This stripping of authority from the provinces and imposition of government programs on national minorities continued with the same intensity and power, except for the first ten years of Mohammad Reza Shah's reign. By 1955, centralization had reached a point where all imports had to be cleared through the customs in Tehran, making travel to Tehran necessary for administrative matters. Nevertheless, none of the laws enacted during the Pahlavi period specified the official status of the Persian language, and there was no requirement in the texts of that era’s resolutions for correspondence and government documents to be in Persian. The only resolution regarding this matter was the 1931 regulation, which mandated proficiency in Persian for government employees.