Nowruz is not merely a festivity. What appears in the calendar is not just a date. Some moments carry more than numbers; something beyond chronology moves through them. Nowruz is one such moment - a current of memory that, through centuries of dust and blood, has survived what sought to erase it. This webinar was not a ceremonial tribute. It opened a window onto meanings buried under time, onto battles forgotten or denied, onto the silenced stories built - or broken - around Nowruz.

On Sunday, March 23, 2025, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies and Radio Nowruz hosted a virtual gathering under the title: “Nowruz and Politics: From Ritual Appropriation to Identity Reclamation.” Historians, poets, academics, and political voices from Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan came together - not to celebrate Nowruz, but to revisit it: to speak of the ways it has been distorted, denied, or reclaimed. The host opened the event with pointed verses - a reminder that Nowruz is not merely a holiday but an answer. An answer to those who begrudged it and rose against its memory.

The program began by outlining three prevailing understandings of Nowruz. One which links it to the very beginning of creation. Another, scattered across Persian verse, offers a poetic, vibrant reflection of Nowruz as movement and renewal. And the third - born of religious institutions - which, with almost surgical precision, has tried to reduce Nowruz to a faint, irrelevant relic of a pre-Islamic world. Yet despite their efforts, Nowruz remains - not as a memory imposed by authority, but as a memory sustained by people.

History Does Not Stand With the Taliban

Dr. Mohaiuddin Mahdi, historian and linguist, addressed the opening question on the historical fate of Nowruz and the origins of this hostility. He made it clear: “Nowruz is not a gift of rulers, nor a product of religious power. It is a natural rhythm. And contrary to what the Taliban claim, history holds no trace of hostility between Islam and Nowruz.” Dr. Mahdi carefully mapped the record, noting that even Ali ibn Abi Talib received Nowruz with generosity, not rejection. His words, “May every day be our Nowruz”, are not only a blessing but a witness that the day was welcomed, not forbidden.

Dr. Mahdi spoke of the Abbasid court, where Nowruz was not only accepted but celebrated with grandeur. Numerous works in Arabic literature have been dedicated to Nowruz. The Taliban, he argued, are not guardians of faith but agents of erasure. Their war on Nowruz and the solar calendar that accompanies it - is part of a wider campaign to deny the memory of others under the guise of religion.

Nowruz as Myth, and Myth as Defiance

Dr. Aasso Jawahiry, Kurdish writer and researcher, spoke of Nowruz not as it exists in the calendar but as it lives in the streets of Kurdistan - in fire, in the mountains, in defiance. Nowruz, for her, is a myth but not one frozen in the past. In Kurdistan, especially after the bans imposed by the Turkish state, Nowruz has been reimagined, not only in meaning but in form. She called it an invented tradition, not false, but consciously remade by oppressed peoples as a vessel for resistance. A way to turn memory into defiance.

Nowruz, she said, has become both a cultural inheritance and a symbolic weapon. Even the Islamic Republic has tried to reframe Nowruz as part of its own ideological project, branding it as part of its “Axis of Nowruz” alongside the so-called “Axis of Resistance.” Power, she argued, recognizes that Nowruz, even in its gentlest expression, carries a quiet threat to domination. She closed with a reminder: Nowruz can gather people beyond borders, but only if it escapes ownership - only if it becomes not an instrument of power but a stronghold of resistance.

Nowruz as a People’s Memory in Tajikistan

Rodmehr Solaimani, a Tajik poet and writer, spoke from within a society where Nowruz is not observed but is lived. In Tajikistan, he said, Nowruz is not a state ceremony. It belongs to the people. “It begins with March 8 and continues beyond the New Year,” he said. During Soviet rule, efforts to erase Nowruz failed; people preserved it under other names. It endured because it was never imposed from above.

Solaimani called Nowruz “the greatest human celebration” — beyond religion, beyond borders, beyond lineage. In Tajik verse, it becomes a language of hope, affection, and return. “No authority can take Nowruz from the people,” he said. “Because it was never theirs to begin with.”

Nowruz as Memory, Not Possession

Dr. Abed Akbari described Nowruz as a moment of equal standing, free from domination, free from exclusion. He warned that states attempt to control Nowruz in two ways: by banning it outright or by claiming it as the exclusive property of one nation or people. He urged the thinkers of the Nowruz region to safeguard this shared memory through continued conversation. When poets and thinkers are trapped in narrow labels - when Saadi becomes only Iranian, or Nezami only Azeri - the shared memory begins to fade. He offered the example of Gilan, where Nowruz, once unknown, took root in people’s lives, a sign of its power to gather, not divide.

Nowruz, Not as Creed, But as Continuity

Dr. Omar Sharifi, an anthropologist, spoke from both research and lived experience. In Afghanistan, he said, Nowruz is the only celebration that has endured across communities, beyond language, beyond sect. In Mazar-e Sharif, people mark Nowruz at Ali’s shrine, not against religion but through it. For them, Nowruz is part of faith but not of ideology.

He traced Taliban hostility not to theology but to the colonial imprints absorbed in Pakistan. The Taliban, he said, does not belong to the country’s memory. Their rejection of Nowruz is not against belief, it is against the people’s recollection of themselves. “Nowruz is where faith, culture, and time are not at odds, but in union,” he said. It is a mirror held against the Taliban’s stark, colorless vision, a vision that recognizes only erasure.

This gathering laid bare the truth that Nowruz is not merely the arrival of spring. It is the memory of those who would not forget. Dr. Mahdi showed that the Taliban’s war on Nowruz has no foundation in belief, but it is part of a political purge. Dr. Jawahiry revealed Nowruz in Kurdistan as a living defiance, reshaped under fire. Solaimani spoke from within a society where Nowruz belongs to no ruler, only to the people. Dr. Akbari called for Nowruz to remain a space of encounter, not conquest. Dr. Sharifi bore witness to Nowruz as faith without doctrine, continuity without ideology. In the end, the speakers returned to one certainty: Nowruz is not a day. It is what remains and refuses to disappear.