NATIONALISM FROM THE MARGINS: A CRITICAL STUDY OF ELITIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POLITICS IN MĀWARĀʾ AL-NAHR AND KHURĀSĀN (LATER UZBEKISTAN, TAJIKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN), 1800-1950.

Abstract

This dissertation traces the history of national ideas in Māwarāʾ al-Nahr and Khurāsān, later known as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan, from the margins. This study follows the transformations of ideas of differences from the early nineteenth century when tribal, clan, sectarian, and regional affiliations prevailed in Māwarāʾ al-Nahr and Khurāsān to the time when Uzbek elites and Soviets in Bukhara, Khwārazm, and Russian Turkistan, and Pashtun nationalist elites in Kabul, laid the foundation of ethnonational-territorial identities of “Uzbek,” “Tajik,” and “Afghan,” and enforced boundaries between them. Furthermore, this dissertation pays particular attention to the de-Persianization projects (in the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic/later Uzbek and Tajik SSRs and Afghanistan), which met with the insubordination of Tajiks. The existing literature on nation-formation in Central Asia and Afghanistan is either written or indirectly influenced by elite sources. The prevalence of methodological nationalism has contributed to the reification of state-led and elitist nationalisms bearing the interests of the ruling groups in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. Consequently, non-dominant/marginalized groups are represented as either passive or non-existent. Elite nationalism, backed by methodological nationalism, has contributed to the misrepresentation, misinterpretation, and erasure of the history of non-dominant/subaltern groups in the official national historiographies and politics of Māwarāʾ al-Nahr and Khurāsān (later Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan). This dissertation aims to better understand “non-elite/non-dominant nationalisms” in these countries by bringing enormous materials to light, arguing that it is the elites’ manipulation and control of state resources, media, statistics, and their suppression of non-dominant languages and non-dominant language groups that ensure the triumph of “majority-formation” and early nationalization projects in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. This dissertation approaches Tajik national consciousness from the position of “subalternity,” considering that Tajiks have been subjects of Uzbek and Afghan khanates for centuries and distinguishes Tajik consciousness from the formation of the Tajik SSR. It is also the dominance of pro-Uzbek Khujandī elites throughout the history of the Tajik SSR and their failure to promote the Tajik cause addressing the interests of Tajiks of the Uzbek SSR and Afghanistan, which adds to the marginality of the Tajik cause. Among other factors, the territorial and ideological constraints imposed by the Soviet regime, the indifference of Khujandī elites to the Tajik cause, and de-Persianization policies of the Uzbek SSR and Afghanistan contributed to the failure of Tajik national consciousness. The comparative and transnational perspective not only helps us rectify iii Anglo-Russian historiographies, which often separates Afghanistan from Central Asian studies but also challenges elitist historiographies that reduce discussions on the Tajik people to the territory of Tajikistan, leaving off the Tajiks of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan unattended. Moreover, this study will place nationalist movements in broader historical and geographical contexts to explain how Tajik national consciousness failed and how Afghans and Uzbeks met with relative success. Furthermore, drawing upon the extensive research of primary sources such as court chronicles, local histories, Western travelogues, and the writings of leading pioneers of nationalism Maḥmūd Ṭarzī, Ṣadr al-Dīn ʿAynī, and ʿAbd al-Raʾūf Fiṭrat, this dissertation argues that the position of indigenous elitist sources (be it the feudal or nationalist one) towards non-dominant group is indistinguishable from the ruling class, pushing non-dominants to the margins. It is in European sources, in contrast to Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism, that non-dominant groups find a voice at times.