As Iran prepares to welcome the Persian New Year this week, an ancient festival has become the stage for a current political contest. On the eve of Chaharshanbe Suri — the fire festival that heralds Nowruz — Reza Pahlavi’s call on the Iranian people to celebrate with vigour was as much a political intervention in a fraught moment as it was a cultural invocation. Pahlavi, the son of Mohammad Reza Shah, who was ousted by the Islamic Revolution of 1979, cast the flames of Chaharshanbe Suri as a force that could dispel the darkness of what he called an “un-Iranian” regime. For nationalist critics, the Islamic Republic marks a break from Iranian civilisation and culture.

Nowruz is best understood as a fusion between Diwali, Holi, and Ugadi (or Gudi Padwa, Vishu, Puthandu) — marking renewal, light, and the arrival of spring. Celebrated on the vernal equinox, Nowruz predates Islam by centuries and reflects the Zoroastrian worldview of ancient Persia, where fire symbolised truth, purity, and cosmic order. Chaharshanbe Suri, observed on the last Wednesday before Nowruz, is its most evocative prelude. Across Iran, people light bonfires in courtyards and streets, jumping over them in the belief that the fire absorbs sickness and misfortune and returns vitality. Like Holi, it is exuberant and public; like Diwali, it invokes light against darkness.

The Islamic Republic was never at ease with Nowruz. The 1979 revolution, like the Taliban’s later project in Afghanistan, sought to subordinate inherited cultural traditions to a universalist Islamic ideology. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dismissed pre-Islamic practices as relics of “fire-worshipping”, and the early........

© Indian Express