Afghan Nationalism: State-Elites and Historiography:
1901-1929
Jawan Shir, Fall 2010, History Department, James Madison University
Definition and Existence of Nationalism in Afghanistan:
Benedict Anderson (1991) states that concepts such as nation, nationality, and
nationalism are “notoriously” difficult to be defined leaving aside their analysis.1 However,
nationalism is interpreted by different authors in various ways. Two definitions, one from
Benedict Anderson and other from Ernest Gellner, will be considered in this paper. Anderson
defines nationalism as “an imagined political community, [which is] imagined as both inherently
limited and sovereign.”2 Gellner defines nationalism a “political principle, which holds that
political and national unit should be congruent.”3
Considering these two definitions, I argue that nationalism existed in Afghanistan during
the first three decades of the twentieth century. It should be noticed that this paper’s temporal
focus is between and around 1901-1929, which hereafter referred to as the first three decades of
the 20th century Afghanistan.
Issues in the first three decades of the 20th century Afghanistan:
There were a number of issues involved in Afghanistan during the first three decades of
the 20th century in relation to nationalism. First, Afghanistan was independent in its political
status as a polity between the British Raj, on its southeastern boundaries and Czar Russia on the
northeast, though the foreign affairs of the polity were still under British control. Second, when
emir Abdur Rahman Khan died in 1901, Afghanistan entered into new eras. World War one
broke and the Bolsheviks took over of Russia along with other regional-global events.
Afghanistan—though a subaltern polity—was still part of these changes.4
1
Anderson (1991) See page 3.
Ibid, 6-7. Nationalism is “imagined” because not everybody knows or meets every other individual in his
community, though he imagines himself as part of that community. Nationalism is “limited” to a community
because there are other communities beyond the border of a particular community. For example, a Chinese
nationalist cannot be an Iranian nationalist. Nationalism is “sovereign” because it came into being in a time of
humans’ history when communities desired to be ruled directly and freely by themselves. Nationalism is “imagined”
as a community because individuals identify equally themselves in one collective-whole (community), though even
if there inequality and exploitation are visible in the community.
3
Gellner (1983) pages 1-3. By having congruency between political and national unit, Gellner means, that there is
going to be established a political legitimacy, which itself is nationalism.
4
Gregorian (1969) pages 210-220.
2
1
In order to perpetuate and legitimize Afghanistan as a separate sociopolitical polity with
its own nationality between the two colonial powers, both Habibullah Khan and Amanullah
Khan needed to have “a sense of loyalty and identification”5 from the inhabitants of the
kingdom. As Gellner argues that nationalism is ultimately a “theory of political legitimacy,” it
becomes clear that both Habibullah and Amanullah gained it by demanding to create a national
idea in Afghanistan during the first three decades of the 20th century.6
In the year 1919, Afghanistan became politically independent as a result of the Third
Anglo-Afghan War.7 Amanullah Khan was determined to establish a new relationship between
the Afghan state and the mass populace, as what Benedict Anderson called “the territorial base
for new imagined communities.” The territorial base for new imagined communities is “the
interlock between particular educational and administrative” groups and populace.8 According to
Anderson, the purpose of the territorial base is to create a space in which mass populace or in the
case of a colonized country natives can come to see themselves as nationals. Both Habibullah
and Amanullah strived for establishing this territorial base and that only, through a
modernization of the state and the country.9
Modernization & Nationalism
It was common for both colonial and non-colonial states to modernize in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries often with foreign influences playing a significant rule. So, Afghanistan is
not exceptional in its modernization’s experience during the first three decades of the 20th
century. However, the locus of and audience for modernization during the first three decades of
5
See page 1-2 of Gellner’s article “Scale and Nation” (1973) where he argues that all sociopolitical units such as
modern states in order to survive and self-perpetuate, they rely on and need a sense of loyalty and identification
from their people upon whom they rule. Habibullah’s father, Abdur Rahman, is usually recognized as the “Iron”
emir because it is argued that he used force to take loyalty and identification from the people. When he died, his son
and grandson—Habibullah Khan and Amanullah Khan—continued ruling Afghanistan between the years 19011929.
6
See Gregorian (1969) pages 181-183 for description on political legitimacy of Habibullah’s reign, and pages 228239 for description on political legitimacy of Amanullah Khan: full independence, establishment of foreign
relations, pan-Islamism, and reforms.
7
Gregorian (1969) argues that “various schools of thought” can describe the cause of Third Anglo-Afghan War.
But she suggests that “the genesis of the Third Anglo-Afghan War must be found in the development of Afghan
nationalism and the rising social and political expectations in the country.” See page 229.
8
Anderson, page 140. The interlock means here that in the late 19 th and early 20th centuries’ state-building and
nation building process across the colonized and non-colonize worlds, a state was establishing a school where few or
a group of individuals—often elites or their children—studied modern state-bureaucratic education. Upon their
graduation, they were hired by the state-agencies to carry on bureaucratic services. This way, the state was not only
expanding its power upon the population, but also was legitimating its actions through these elitist individuals.
9
Gregorian (1969) page 229.
2
the 20th century in Afghanistan are important considerations to keep in mind. These
considerations identify that modernization took place in Kabul and for Kabul-based elites,
recognized as Afghan nationalists.10
State & Elite: space and printing
State:
When in 1901 Habibullah Khan ascended to the throne, Afghanistan lacked a coloniallybased modern administrative system and or a class of intelligentsia as of Persia and India. As a
result, the kingdom could not maneuver the mass population to come to see themselves as
nationals. According to Gregorian (1969), in order “to undertake reformist and modernist
measures” for the state, Mahmud Tarzi—an intelligentsia—and his associates put forward a
nationalistic claim that the monarchy, patriotism, and religion are one institution.11
This association of the trilateral elements was intended for the idea that if people of
Afghanistan could become state agents such as bureaucrats, they were not only fulfilling God’s
command on earth—serving the emir—but also they were serving the fatherland, which needed
to be modernized. So, one way to materialize this kind of mental nationality in Afghanistan was
through education by creation of an elite class.
Elite-class
Habibullah established a modern-based college, Habibiya in 1904, which then became a
space for state-elite interaction. Gregorian (1969) writes that by the time Amanullah became the
emir, there were two goals that Amanullah and his father-in law, Mahmud Tarzi, followed: “to
cultivate an enlightened intellectual class in Afghanistan…and to provide a group of able
administrators for the monarchy.”12 Therefore, it can be noted that education was for elites who
were residing and working in one way or another in Kabul for the state.
The state supported Habibiya both materially—paid salaries and provided books—and
non-materially, hired teachers both foreign such as Indian Muslims and Afghan natives. In
10
Popular studies (Dupree 1964, Gregorian 1967, 1969, Schinasi 1974, and Nawid 2009) on emergence of
nationalism in Afghanistan assign nationalism to those individuals who lived in one way or another either in Kabul
or abroad. But the question to ask is whether or not all people of Afghanistan knew about or wanted or had access
to modernization and its benefits in the first three decades of the 20 th century Afghanistan. Therefore, it is important
to revisit and reread nationalism during the first three decades of Afghanistan. In other words, it was not Afghan
nationalism, but rather, Kabuli-nationalism.
11
Gregorian, page 182.
12
Gregorian, page 240.
3
return, the graduates of Habibiya were legitimizing the states’ acts, expanding its authority upon
the mass populace, and providing bureaucratic services.13
So, it can be observed that in less than one generation from 1904-1919, Habibiya College
turned into a state-elite assembly where not only the state’s objective was slowly materialized,
but also a new elite class was born. Ghobar calls this new elite-class roshanfekran, [enlightened
ones]. He writes that there were three types of roshanfekran in the first three decades of the 20th
century: the court-liberals who asked for reforms in the regime, the non-court young immature
democrats, and the individual roshanfekran who were neither in the court’s circle nor in
Habibiya.14
Printing:
Habibullah’s ascendency to the Kabul-throne facilitated a joint “coalition between printcapitalism”15 and state-elite, which together created an atmosphere for them to express their
reflections on Afghanistan’s status: history, identity, progress, backwardness, religion, and
etcetera. It should be noticed that by 1929, the state-elite interaction took a new form under
Habibullah and Amanullah from Abdur Rahman’s time. 16
In October 1911, Habibullah allowed the publication of Seraj al-Akhbar-e Afghaniyad
[the torch of Afghan news]. Mahmud Tarzi, an Ottoman educated Afghan, became the chief
editor. It became the first major print platform for the elites to foster Afghan-ness.17Upon the
publication of Seraj al-Akhbar, it was a necessary and also an admired task to nationalize
Afghanistan for Afghans. For Tarzi and his associates, the nationalization was viewed to be
materialized through modernization in which Tarzi and Ghulam Muhammad Ghobar played
significant role.
13
See Gregorian (1969) where he writes that “Habibiya graduates had provided the main body of Afghan civil
administrators in the World War One period and were in effect in charge of the political machinery of the
government.” page 248.
14
See Ghobar (1967) pages 716-727. He writes a detailed description on how this class came into being, who were
its members—he lists them all—and what they were doing.
15
Print-capitalism is from Benedict Anderson’s argument that publishing and printing in forms of books and
newspapers can establish a spatial ground for interaction among natives of a country that can then make those
people feel pride, loyal, and united. Pages 44-45. See Gregorian (1967) page 345, and Gregorian (1969) pages 244246, for printing or print-capitalism’s argument in relation to state-elite relationship in Afghanistan.
16
Gregorian (1969) writes that Habibullah in his coronation speech “promised” reform and also offered amnesty to
both individuals who were exiled under his father and home-jailed individuals such as tribal chiefs and khans in
order to win popular support. Page 181. So, Habibullah created a new elite-class that was different from his father’s
ones.
17
Gregorian (1967)
4
Take as example the following. In order to emphasize the role of printing and publication
in Afghanistan, Tarzi writes in the first issue of Seraj al-akhbar: that it is obvious that
newspapers have become “the language of nations and peoples, and all nations have newspapers
at this time, except the savage tribal nations”.18 Tarzi continues writing in the next sentence,
“that akhbar is the plural form of khabar.”19 Therefore, it can be noticed that Tarzi’s and his
associates’ ambitions for Afghanistan were the influences of his exposure to global, especially
European, state-nation building processes. Ghobar, himself a state-elite, writes later in his
“famous” book Afghanistan dar masir-e tarikh that “generally all of the enlightened ones inside
the darbar, court, were studying foreign [published] books and magazines and were becoming
interested in foreign and domestic social and political issues.”20
The print-capitalism and state-elite coalition under Amanullah Khan was expanding in
numbers of individuals and institutions until 1929 when an uprising disrupted it first, and then
stopped it until Mohammad Nader became Shah.21
Language:
In the print-capitalism and state-elite interaction towards fostering national idea during
the first three decades of the 20th century Afghanistan, the role of language is downplayed and
treated scantly by available works on nationalism in Afghanistan. Compared to other institutions
of nation-state building processes in Afghanistan, the major works such as Gregorian (1967 and
1979), Schinasi (1976), and Nawid (2009) pay little or no attention to the role of language in
relation to the emergence of nationalism in Afghanistan.
Institutions such as the army, serving the state’s purposes, and modern education, for the
Kabul-based elites, are primarily dealt with.22 For instance, Gregorian (1969) names four major
newspapers in Kabul, Jalalabad, and Herat. Then, he says that “all four of these papers were
written in Persian, though they occasionally carried articles and poems in Pashto.” But, he does
18
Tarzi (1911) page 1
Ibid, the Arabic’s singular noun for news is khabar, and Akhbar becomes plural noun in Arabic which means not a
single news, but more than one news. So, Tarzi by differentiating between Akhbar and khabar is trying to emphasize
that there is no single news but several news from both domestic and foreign events. In other words, he is
advocating institutionally for publication and printing of newspapers in Afghanistan.
20
Ghobar, page 716.
21
See Gregorian pages 244-246. There, he lists the names of 15 privately or governmentally owned newspapers and
magazines from Kabul and countrywide including Aman-e Afghan, new name of Seraj al-Akhbar during
Amanullah’s reign.
22
See Gregorian (1969) chapter seven (reforms: administrative and military, Royal Military College and Habibiya
College 1904-6). And pages 183-184 where the reforms are treated in large portion compare to little attention to
language’s role in nationalism.
19
5
not continue to explain how and why Pashto appeared occasionally. Was that because
nationalism was purposed to safeguard and modernize Kabul, a Persianate metropolis center, or
the newspapers’ audience was only Kabul-based Persianate elites? Considering the dominance of
Persian in relation to occasional appearance of Pashto poses several questions to previously
assumed historiographical theses of Afghanistan and the polity in a general.
For instance, Hyman (2002) completely rejects the existence of nationalism historically
in Afghanistan. His argument derives from the thesis that Pashtons have dominated historically
Afghanistan, which he calls this domination “internal colonialism” of other ethnic minorities.23
Therefore, he concludes that a “national idea remained very weak” and this was caused by the
Pashton ruling class. In one way, his argument can be challenged because one can question how
one people can dominate when they can’t speak their own language.24 In another way his
argument is true because he makes a difference between a small Kabul-based Pashton ruling
class and the mass Pashton populaces outside Kabul. In this sense, one study has argued that the
former group displayed no social, linguistic, and or cultural similarities with the latter.25
Therefore, considering the modernization of Afghanistan and development of nationalism
during the first three decades of the 20th century, it can be argued that nationalism was an elitistKabuli idea for the elites in Kabul. This is especially evident from the teaching of foreign
languages such as Urdu, German, French, and Turkish at Habibiya, Estiqlal, and Amani (Ghazi)
high schools. It can be further argued that the facilitation of teaching foreign languages in the
state-supported schools in Kabul was an advanced step for children of the elites who could then
work in the foreign services of the Afghan state at home and or be appointed as ambassadorships
abroad.26
23
Hyman (2002)—page 1-2.
Dari, as a “comfortable” language and Pashto, as an “unpleasant” language, were in different interaction. Pashto’s
occasional appearance versus consistent and periodical appearances of Dari language in newspapers such as Amanie Afghan or Ittihad-e Mashriqi is a key element to be considered in study of the emergence of nationalism in
Afghanistan. This is so because all countries desire to modernize, and economically want to progress, but many of
them don’t share language. Therefore, it is important to notice the role of language in a bilingual-multilingual
society as such Afghanistan in relation to nationalism.
24
25
See page 305 M.J. Hanifi where he writes that the royal lineage had been persianized who displayed no cultural
features of Paxton identity such as the language, Pashto: they forgot to speak it.
26
See Gregorian (1969) page 242 on education of children elites in Kabul.
6
A review of Afghan Nationalism Historiography:
There are a number of major available and previously produced historiographies of
Afghanistan that place prominent emphasis on modernization in relation to the emergence of
nationalism during the first three decades of the 20th century in Afghanistan. For instance, some
of these studies are from different individuals such as Dupree (1964), Gregorian (1967, 1969),
Schinasi (1974), and Nawid (2009).
One other commonality among these studies is that they periodize the emergence of
nationalism in Afghanistan at the first three decades of the 20th century and in large portion, to
one individual: Mahmud Tarzi. This periodization is in contradiction to some traditional studies
that have dated the emergence of modern Afghanistan 1747, and some have dated it 1880.
Another commonality is that these studies on nationalism in Afghanistan are conducted in large
proportion by foreigners not by Afghan individuals, though the latter have adopted them as their
own.27
It can be argued that epistemological accounts of a people and or an event by foreigners
can have biases such as misrepresentation and manipulation of the facts and data.28 For instance,
Schadl (2007) argues that “Western sources relating to Afghanistan between [the years] 17501950...misperceive and misrepresent” what and how these individuals observed Afghanistan, its
inhabitants, and the events.29 Therefore, limiting the study of nationalism in Afghanistan only to
those three points can be major obstacles in conceptualizing nationalism in Afghanistan. This is
particularly noticeable because there has been no comparative study of nationalism in and of
Afghanistan by previously produced studies.
In order to interpret conceptually rather than to translate nationalism during the first three
decades of the 20th century, it is very much significant to distinguish that nationalism in
Afghanistan was different in temporality and spatiality from other countries, at least from its two
immediate neighbors: India and Persia. During the first three decades of the 20th century India
was still under the colonial rule in both forms, domestic and foreign. But, she unlike Afghanistan
experienced an earlier period in the rise of nationalism. An institution, Indian Congress Party,
was institutionally already formed in 1885 representing an “educated middle class” composed of
27
Hanifi, 2010 (Stanford Workshop)
Although it should be clear that individuals or a people who write their own history by themselves can also
manipulate and exaggerate the facts and date about their history and nationality [Nazism, Fascism, and Zionism).
29
Schadl, pages 89-90
28
7
merchants and professional men, and latter also intellectuals—students.30A similar situation is
also true of Persia, modern Iran.31
It becomes clear to observe that Afghanistan’s nationalism was not established at the
same time as that of its two most cultural-socio-political neighbors in both forms: nationalistic
and modernistic. Spatially, Afghanistan was also different from both Persia and India; for
instance cut off from the Indian Ocean. Therefore, studying nationalism in and of Afghanistan
comparatively can help to enrich the epistemological account about the polity. This is especially
true because like many other socioeconomic and political institutions of Afghanistan as a country
and people of Afghanistan as a nation, nationalism has been studied poorly.32 This unavailability
of scholarly materials, therefore; limits both theoretical and also non-theoretical approaches in
conceptualizing nationalism in and about Afghanistan.
Conclusion:
Keeping in mind nationalism’s definitions by Benedict Anderson and Gellner,
nationalism existed in Kabul during the first three decades of the 20th century. Nationalistic ideas
such as nationhood, modernization, patriotism, and allegiance to monarchy were fostered
through state-elite coalition, educational facilitation, and print-capitalism in Kabul by Kabulbased elites.
Therefore, the major consideration in regards to Afghan nationalism during the first three
decades of the 20th century is to identify the demand and supply of nationalism. In other words,
one has to really distinguish the status of nationalism between the years 1901-1929 in
Afghanistan: nationalism for whom [Kabuli elites or mass uneducated population?], where [only
in Kabul or also nationwide?], and by who [state to buy political legitimacy or elites to influence
political decisions and hold power].
30
Friedman (1940), page 17. The article discusses Indian nationalism’s relationship to the Far East (especially,
Japan and China). Friedman argues that Indian nationalists in the struggle to independence were affected (inspired)
by independent Japan’s power and progress in Asia, and they were hoping for a Pan-Asiatic Movement. See page
18-19. It is useful to mention that Afghanistan’s Kabul-based elites and monarchies were also much influenced by
Japanese independent status from the West and its economic and military advancement. For instance, Gregorian
writes that Russo-Japanese War’s books were translated into local language, Persian, in Kabul so that Afghanistan
can learn from an Asian nation defeating a European country. See pages 208-210.
31
Abadi (2001) argues that nationalism as an ideological past was “imported” in the 19th century to Iran by those
Iranians who were educated in the West. Pages 51-53.
32
Gregorian (1967) page 345. Hanifi (2010, Stanford Workshop) pages 1-2.
8
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