THE DEHGANS OF KUNAR: PAST AND PRESENT
A recent conversation of mine with Hayatullah Towhidi — President of the Dehgan Congress of Kunar, Afghanistan — revealed some intriguing facts.
The Dehgans (or Dehqans) are fragments and relics of the ancient pre-Islamic social order of imperial (Sassanian) Persia. Now disenfranchised, diminished and forgotten, their community has acquired a tribal structure and they speak only Pashto of the Ningarhari variety. They exist most numerously in Kunar, which boasts the largest Dehgan community in Afghanistan. The numerous dialects of extinct Middle Persian they are known to have spoken into early modern times have since been extirpated. Their present status is that of a minority Pashtun community relegated vaguely to the peripheries of the tribal society. This does not at all accord with their glorious past, and the last Dehgan rulers of society were the Swatis of northern Pakistan and north-eastern Afghanistan. Only the Dehgan name has miraculously survived the ravages and tumults of time — together with a sense of pride in roots and being special which only a true Persian aristocrat can possess. But beyond that very few of them now know why they feel this way. Many ignorant and unscrupulous people arbitrarily lump them as a Dardic tribe without knowing the true provenance of the term “Dehgan”. In this, such rascally types are assisted by the general decrepitude and neglect which has befallen the Persian historical narrative and its legacy outside of modern Iran.
Towhidi mentioned the various “khels” or clans now existing among his community of Kunar Dehgans such as: Saifullah Khel, Baba Khel, Mullah Khel, Isaw Khel, Shaabi Khel, Nani Khel, etc.
He also mentioned a very remarkable fact that among the Kunar Dehgans lives a clan termed the “Buzurg Khel” (or clan of the superiors). This clan considers itself above the rest of the Dehgans and keeps to itself in matters such as marriage, etc. It traditionally does not even consider itself as Dehgan.
At this point it needs to be remembered that in the Sassanian Persian social order, below the royal princes and military generals, there were four other major lower aristocratic tiers or social ranks that existed:
1. Buzurgan (or Wuzurgan) = “grandees”
2. Azadgan = “freemen”
3. Kadag Khodayaan = “householders”
4. Dehganaan = “farmers and landowners”
Although there are many other, related aspects to an otherwise complex ancient social structure that we obviously cannot address here — it seems that from among these ranks nowadays only the Dehgans have survived in these parts — and that also nominally speaking. However it is my contention that the remnants of other tiers superior in rank to Dehgan also mixed in and merged with this community after they disintegrated with the dimunition of imperial power which was needed to sustain and justify their existence. This is what strongly seems to have happened in the example of Kunar, which is one of the largest Dehgan communities having retained its name and sense of separate identity.
The fact that this community chose to associate itself so wholly with Pashto is also very interesting and its causes are as yet indeterminate — but need exploration. It is evident that the Dehgans performed a superior social and administrative role with regard to the Pashtun-Afghan ethnicity, before the tables were turned on them by these people. Something however tells me that the association of Dehgans with the Saka language is not at all new -- and dates far back and long ago to the now forgotten times of ancient Sistan which was regarded as the tumultuous political powerhouse of Parthian and Sassanian Persia.
