Written by Francesca Hotson

In the popular mind, the myth of a superior Aryan race is indelibly associated with Nazi ideology, with the German ‘Übermensch’, and anti-Semitism at its most murderously virulent. Nevertheless, the so-called Aryan race, as formulated in this myth, was not restricted to Germany or Europe: the theory embraced a far larger area and set of peoples. Nor has the Aryan racist ideology been restricted to Germany or indeed to Europe after Hitler: it has provided a powerful reinforcement of racist identities in other parts of the world as well.

Where and how did the Aryan myth originate and evolve? Given its powerful association with European racism, how was it assimilated by nations outside of Europe? Did these ideas develop autonomously elsewhere, or were they derived from European political and racial thought? How did this idea shape other countries’ perspectives on identity, heritage, and belonging? Consideration of these questions will reveal much about the presence of Aryanism in other nationalist discourses, which have gone largely unnoticed by mainstream historical narratives.

Let us explore how the echoes of Aryan race theory, reverberating first within Europe, spread to Iran and India.

European Origins

The origin of the Aryan myth is unquestionably European. It can be traced back to the eighteenth-century philologist and linguist Sir William Jones. After noting similarities between seemingly diverse languages such as Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, and Greek, Jones concluded that India, Persia/Iran, and Europe belong to the same linguistic family.^[1] His theory was sound: the ‘Indo-European’ family, which he discovered, remains fundamental to the study of linguistics today. 

This linguistic theory, however, developed a powerful political charge thanks to a few simple inferences. Languages are passed down, first and foremost, from mothers to children, so it was a simple matter to link language to race. The key figure who made this inference was the German philosopher Friedrich Schlegel, who argued that linguistic similarity should be interpreted as racial kinship.^[2] In this way, the scientifically valid categorisation of an Indo-European language family morphed into the idea of an Indo-European race otherwise known as ‘Aryan’. In this discourse, Indians, Persians (or Iranians), and Europeans were united in one large racial cluster. Ominously, this Indo-European racial group was defined in no small part by its superiority, not merely to other ethnic groups in general, but to the ‘Semitic peoples’ in particular, who included Arabs as well as Jews, and other ancient peoples such as Akkadians and Phoenicians.^[3] The widespread use of these racial distinctions is what accounts for the even wider exploitation of the Aryan myth as a buttress to racially defined nationalism across regions far broader than Europe. 

It was only natural that such theories should have provided an appealing model of history for ideological nationalists. Alan De Benoist’s The Indo-Europeans: In Search for the Homeland and Arthur Kemp’s March of the Titan: The History of the White Race both developed a promised land story in which a group of people found their way to the space while addressing the primordial issue of why they deserved it more than others. In the case of Arthur Kempt, this story stretched all the way to modern colonialism: The British Empire deserved South Africa because they could make better use of the land they had claimed. De Benoist focussed more on defending the homeland as an exclusive cultural space to thrive. In this way, language and race were joined with ideas of movement, hierarchy, and belonging.

Here, we have the essential ingredients of nationalist ideology. Still, they cannot be deployed without first constructing an ethnic backstory. How could these and other nationalists argue that their Indo-European language and Aryan race create better civilisation? How could they legitimise both their superiority and the removal of impurities that jeopardise superiority? Here, the Iranian case is particularly revealing.

Iran

The classic example is the large country known formerly as Persia and today as Iran. The adoption of Aryan race theory is a fundamental pillar of Iranian nationalist discourse.^[4] It’s important to note that the interpretation and usage of these concepts in Iran differed significantly from the racialised and supremacist connotations so familiar in the West. In Iran, the application of these ideas revolved around three categories: a sense of cultural pride rooted in their Persian heritage, the adoption of “anarchic nostalgia” for a pre-Islamic Iran, and a profound rejection of non-Persian identities. 

Iranian nationalists claim to Indo-Europeanism is rooted in the belief that they were the original Aryans. They claim this is manifested in the superiority of Persian high culture, which they set apart from and above their Arab neighbours in the Middle East.^[5] In addition, following their crushing defeats by Russia and Britain in the nineteenth century, the idea that Iranians shared an alleged Aryan brotherhood with the powerful Europeans became very appealing.^[6] Aryan race theory provided the basis for Iranians to refer to white Europeans as a claim to their own greatness. To nationalists, power and intelligence come from a culture rooted in language, which in turn entitled them to a share in the beginnings of modern, powerful civilisation (i.e. Europe) through their common Aryan blood.

Nationalist intellectuals such as Kermani and Akhundzadeth sought to explain Iran’s state of decline by conceptualising the advent of Islam as a racial invasion by Semites. The Semitic’ other’ in this case refers to the Arab Muslims.^[7] From this, it followed that nationalists regarded the introduction of Islam into Iran as a foreign imposition, which was the source of all of Iran’s misfortunes in the subsequent period of state repression, foreign occupation, and rebellion.^[8] In early nationalist texts, Arabs were described as “naked, bare-ass, … hungry vagabonds” and “savage lizard-eaters.”^[9] It is clear from these texts that the bitter resentment harboured against non-Persians for destroying their once glorious legacy is a fundamental aspect of Iranian nationalist ideology. In order for nationalist discourse to unite Iran under one culture and history and to include Europeans as distant cousins, they had to explicitly contrast their Aryan characteristics with a distinct Semitic other that stood in the way of the centralisation of power and modern social order. Nationalists in Iran thus prioritised the national unity under one people by deeming other ethnic identities a danger to the state.

India

Much like Iran, India was inadvertently confronted with the problem of their relation to the West both by their shared origins in Aryan race theory and by their defeat and subjugation under Western influence. As in the Iranian case, ancient occurrences of the term Arya in Vedic texts were used to give credence to modern ideas of race.^[10] From this, the Aryan race theory took root in India in the nineteenth century in three distinct ways: as an application of a racial binary, as an opportunity to use the same racial theories that were established by British colonial rule, this time in the native’s interest, and as a reinforcement of Hindutva ideology over non-Hindus. 

The Aryan model of Indian history often involves the story of the supposed migration and settlement of the Aryans invading the sub-continent from the north. These stories of Aryan migration and their encounter with non-Aryans in India are depicted in the Vedic texts, a collection of Sanskrit hymns composed around 2000 BCE. On several occasions, the texts refer to colour: fair-skinned, civilised, Sanskrit-speaking Aryans heroically vanquished the darker, barbarous dasas of India.^[11] Thanks to their victories, the Aryans developed basically everything that is great in Indian civilisation. 

Much like Iranians, Indian intellectuals selected those aspects of Aryanism that could serve their purposes, and this led them to pursue several different strategies. Most notable, however, were the nationalists who used the Aryan race theory in an endeavour to bring about a sense of Indian nationhood against the colonisers.^[12] This was often done by praising the achievements of the Vedic civilisation (much like what the Iranian Aryanists did). Even more typically, Indian nationalists asserted the superiority of the Hindu Aryan civilisation over its European offshoot.^[13] This was fundamentally rational in its philosophical outlook. It is from this that Indian nationalists would claim that the best scientific and technological achievements of ‘white culture’ – such as surgery and anaesthetics – had been anticipated by ancient Hindu Aryans.^[14] Anything superior about modern Europe, they claimed as a representation of Hindu superiority. Here, we see that, within Hindutva, there is a hidden ethnic element to a supposedly religious movement. Indian nationalists establish a permanent normative superiority and hierarchy. The claim is that the Hindu Aryan civilisation have always been superior. It also means that the presence of a different culture will make them less superior. 

What holds this system of nationalist myth together and gives it a purchase among different groups across vast and various areas? In essence, the discovery of linguistic kinship was seized on as justification for speaking of racial kinship, which legitimated claims of cultural and ethnic superiority, which justified claims to political dominance over territory. The final element in the chain of inferences was provided by the demonstrable military and technological superiority developed by Europeans in the nineteenth century. These theories represent a fight over the spoils of European superiority. From Europe’s desire to establish a homeland that an ethnic nation can claim as its own to India’s nuanced relationship with the Vedic Aryan past, to Iran’s emphasis on cultural ties, these concepts continue to take on diverse forms long after the horrors of European racism were revealed at the close of the Second World War. 

Bibliography

Aghaie, Kamran. ‘Islam and Nationalist Historiography: Competing Historical Narratives of Iran in the

Pahlavi Period’, Studies in Contemporary Islam 2, no. 2 (2000): 33-40.

Ballantyne, Tony. Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire. Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Bryant, Edwin. ‘Aryan Origins and Modern Nationalist Discourse’. In The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. New York: Oxford Academic, 2001.

De Benoist, Alain. The Indo-Europeans: In Search of the Homeland. Arktos Media Ltd, 2016.

Elling, Rasmus Christian. Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Kemp, Arthur. March of the Titans: A History of the White Race. Ostara Publications, 2006.

McCulloch, Tom. ‘The Nouvelle Droite in the 1980s and 1990s: Ideology and Entryism, the

Relationship with the Front National’, French Politics 4, no. 2 (2006): 158-178.

Motadel, David. ‘Iran and the Aryan Myth’. In Perceptions of Iran: History, Myths, and Nationalism

from Medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic, edited by Ali M. Ansari, 119-145. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, ‘Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the “Aryan” Discourse in Iran’, Iranian Studies 44, no. 4 (2011): 445-472.

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation. Columbia University Press, 2016.

Thapar, Romila. ‘The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics’, Social Scientist 24, no. 1/3, (1996): 3-29.

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^[1] Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, The emergence of Iranian nationalism: Race and the politics of dislocation (Columbia University Press, 2016), 149. 

^[2] David Motadel, ‘Iran and the Aryan Myth’, in Perceptions of Iran: History, Myths, and Nationalism from Medieval Persia to the Islamic Republic, ed. Ali M. Ansari (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 121.

^[3] Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, ‘Self-Orientalization and Dislocation: The Uses and Abuses of the “Aryan” Discourse in Iran’, Iranian Studies 44, no. 4 (2011): 448.

^[4] Zia-Ebrahimi, ‘Self-Orientalization’, Iranian Studies, 445. 

^[5] Zia-Ebrahimi, Iranian nationalism, 74-8. 

^[6] Zia-Ebrahimi, ‘Self-Orientalization’, 446. 

^[7] Kamran Aghaie, ‘Islam and Nationalist Historiography: Competing Historical Narratives of Iran in the Pahlavi Period’, Studies in Contemporary Islam 2, no. 2 (2000): 33-40. 

^[8] Zia-Ebrahimi, Iranian nationalism, 129. 

^[9] Zia-Ebrahimi, ‘Self-Orientalization’, 466. 

^[10] Romila Thapar ,‘The Theory of Aryan Race and India: History and Politics’, Social Scientist 24, no. 1/3, (1996): 6.

^[11] Ibid, 5. 

^[12] Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 169.

^[13] Thapar, ‘Theory of Aryan Race’, 10. 

^[14] Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, 182.