Nowruz : A manifestation of Iranian Culture

 Nowruz - A Manifestation of Iranian Culture

A miracle politics and swords cannot achieve

 

By: Fereydoun Majlessi, ex-diplomat, Tehran

 

Nowruz is not a tradition, nor a custom or ritual. It is culture. It is art proper. Nowruz, the first day of spring, the vernal equinox, is drawing, painting, music, blossoming, youth, love, and in one word, ‘LIFE.’ Ending the winter’s cold and darkness, a season of house-cleaning for one’s nest and self, including setting aside all rancor and bitterness towards others, it symbolizes the victory of good over evil. Nowruz is a time for freshness, smiles, happiness, and enriched relationships and friendships.

   

Buddhists impose much pain and agony on themselves by taking a long and laborious journey  to their places of worship so that their vows might be fulfilled! Hindus spend their annual savings for a trip to Benares, to bathe in the muddy waters of the Ganges, where they pour the ashes and leftovers of their dead, in the hope of cleansing their soul and reaching peace! These are traditions – rituals - remaining from the past; from the times immemorial when the knowledge and wisdom of mankind was much less and his delusions in full sway. Suffering was deemed a price to be paid for their wishes to come true! As if only pain and suffering satisfies the Merciful God!

 

Nowruz is not so. It does not involve this sort of transaction. It neither impregnates the barren, nor does it promise paradise to the wretched and the hapless. It never imposes pain and agony in anticipation of false hopes and aspirations! ‘Traditions’ everywhere are usually criticized as archaic and incomprehensible convictions and painful rituals imposed on the present ‘presumed holders’ of wisdom and knowledge. But Nowruz is like music and other forms of art. It is like a book and a report on the virtues and wisdoms of our antecedents rather than a reflection of challenges and indignations. No pain and loss, in any form whatsoever, is involved. The symbolic and decorative Haft Sin [Seven S] table of Nowruz contains no other message but a celebration of nature – life – jubilation, happiness, and hope.

 

As eloquently described by Dr. Eslami Nodushan, a prominent Iranian literary figure, "The  realm and expanse of the Iranian cultural borders spread as far and wide as Nowruz is being honored and celebrated." Iran symbolizes a cultural domain that transcends conventional political boundaries. Throughout history, there have been countless times when different Iranian and non-Iranian rulers have governed over one part or another of the ‘cultural Iran’ at one and the same time; but the people they ruled over were all Iranians, whether they were Turks, Turanians, Arabs, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Sistanis, Persians, Gilacs, Kurds or Kirmanis! It is the same culture that transformed the Moghul Nikolay Uljaytu - the grandson of Hulagu Khan and the great grandson of Genghis Khan, whose names still send shivers down one’s spine – into the Muslim-Shi’ite "Sultan Mohammad Khoda Bandeh" (King Mohammad ‘Servant of God’, 1280-1316 A.D.), who built the famous city Sultanieh and its glorious Dome. The elixir of this metamorphosis and transformation - the cherishing of gentleness out of violence, growing flowers in the swamp - is the miracle and the masterpiece that politics and swords cannot accomplish. Just as simple as that. This can only be the harvest of an old, rich, delicate, pulsating, and engaging culture – the Iranian culture – of which Nowruz stands out as an innocuous and encouraging manifestation.

 

If the hundreds of millions of residents of the vast cultural domain extending from western  China to the eastern Europe wish to make Nowruz an International symbol, it is only because they want to honor a celebration that simply heralds purity, beauty, goodness, equilibrium, friendship, flexibility, cooperation, moderation, and conciliation, and mind you, without conflicting with any religion, creed, or ideology. It deserves to be recognized as an international and world event.