I mean think about it. Since Tajiks have never been the ones in power, we have lost our major cities to either the Uzbeks or the Pashtuns. We were left with the small rugged terrain to call Tajikistan and meanwhile the true heartlands of the Tajiks, the cities that our ancestors built and made the cultural hubs they are have been given to the two tribes who hate us. I must say bravo to the Russians and the English. The USSR and the British did a fabulous job in ensuring that the power and security is always with the non-Persianite ethnic, extremely tribalistic groups due to them knowing the threat that the Persianite Tajiks can impose given their strong ties to their Persian culture.
They knew they can trust the Uzbeks and Pashtuns with ensuring that the Tajiks never get united due to how tribalistic and oppressive those two groups are. From changing the name of Farsi to Dari in Afghanistan to faking censuses about the size of the Tajik population. Tajiks of Uzbekistan had to sign themselves off as Uzbek on their IDs in order to remain in their ancestral homes of Bukhara and Samarqand. The Pashtuns and Uzbeks made sure that the majority Tajik regions became “Uzbekized” and “Pashtunized” by pushing their own people to move to cities that were indigenously Tajik.
The Tajiks have never been one to be power hungry, but we always valued our culture and history. The West felt threatened by our identity and divided us, and the damage has been immense. Our cuisine is labeled as Afghan or Uzbek. If we argue and claim our cuisine, they will claim we are being Tajik nationalists. Our historical figures such as Rumi, Avicenna, Al-Biruni, Al-Bukhari, etc. are quickly claimed as other things because they refuse to give any credit to the Tajiks. Pashtuns are mad Tajiks don’t speak Pashto, but fail to realize that 99% of Tajiks live in their ancestral provinces and cities and don’t need to speak a lick of Pashto because they don’t live in Pashto regions. The only reason why Pashtuns learn Farsi is because they have to since so many of them move North to the Tajik cities. From our clothing, designs and embroidery, architecture, literature, cuisine, culture, traditions, all have been robbed from us and when we claim it we get hurds of nationalists calling us nationalists. The truth is Tajiks are the backbones of the great Persianite Central Asian cities. Tajiks made those cities, Tajik culture made up the city culture, our regions were so esteemed and desirable that even the Turkic and Pashtun kings made our cities their own by planting their government buildings and headquarters in our cities. Instead of admiring us for our abilities to create cosmopolitan cities where everyone can admire it and live in it, we have Pastuns claiming Kabul, Mazar, Herat, and Uzbeks claiming Samarqand and Bukhara.
My point is so much of our identity is being robbed from us and I feel like the Tajik identity is falling dormant. I don’t believe in us becoming annoying tiktok ragebaiters constantly crying over fabric like the Pashtuns, but we should try hard to make our identity known. For so long our people for the sake of peace and nation building have put aside their own ethnic identity to build a nation for ethnic groups who hate us.
During the 20th century the Pashtun kings would enforce the Afghan dress to school girls to wear and parade around. He wanted to make the Pashtun Kuchi dress the national dress, which he did. He made sure all young school girls would wear it during cultural activities even if they weren’t Pashtun. That lead to the minority ethnic groups thinking that this truly is the “national” dress and all added to what was originally a very simple Kuchi dress. Cities like Kabul would get messages from the King to make more of these dresses. The Kabulis would and would add their own design, their own threading pattern, their own Tajik or Hazara styles and attributes to the dresses but now look. The Tajiks put their own craftsmanship to dresses that were never theirs because they wanted to be a part of a united nation. Now we have Pashtuns claiming we are stealing their clothes and that we have no culture, even going as far as to claim our own sewing patterns (zardozi, charmadozi) literal craftsmanship that has nothing to do with Pashtuns aside from being influenced from our own designs. We have put too much of our efforts and time on people who are ungrateful. I genuinely believe that the Tajiks need to learn from the two other groups and become more aware of their own identity and build up for ourselves rather than nations that want us erased and wiped out. I mean shit this r/tajikculture subreddit is dead because half of our people are under r/afghan which is ran by pashtun supremacists or r/uzbekistan.