The Return of the Aryan Myth: Tajikistan in Search of a Secularized National Ideology

Abstract

For more than a decade, the five Central Asian republics have been “readjusting” their academic institutions in response to the new borders created by the fall of the USSR and subsequent independence in 1991. Both the university system and the Academy of Sciences have been called on to rethink their research policy in order to meet the new national stakes and current political demands. Thus, the elaboration of a national discourse is a particularly relevant object of study in order to observe the different modes of legitimization of the new Central Asian states and the scholarly tools they deem necessary for their political ratification. Consequently, in retracing the genealogy of the contemporary historical analyses we must pose a question regarding the development of the academic disciplines and the data concerning their political environment. Does Tajik independence in 1991 involve rethinking the genesis of the nation and the scholarly fields linked to the elaboration of the national narrative? Why have the political authorities declared 2006 the “year of the Aryan civilization”?