An event that happened in Tehran two weeks ago should have generated some ripples around India—and the subcontinent—but curiously did not. Under the beady eyes of the Ayatollah-led regime in Iran, a statue of the Roman Emperor Valerian cravenly bowing before the 3rd century CE Sasanian king Shapur I was unveiled in Revolution Square. Titled Kneel Before Iran, it is said to be aimed at drumming up nationalism to counter the recent US and Israeli onslaughts.

Valerian was indeed defeated by Shapur I in 260 AD at Edessa and captured. And this landmark event was immortalised in the famous rock-cut reliefs at Naqsh-i-Rustam, 800 km from Tehran. But as it was pre-Islamic, the theocratic regime in Iran has studiously downplayed it ever since it captured power. Now, however, the ancient tableau is being touted as a link between Iran’s “glorious past" and its “hopeful present", asserting that “Iran has always been a land of resistance".

‘Resistance’, of course, has had a changing meaning for Europe and the rest of the world in the past 100 years. It was a word used for the civilian groups that fought the Nazi regime during World War II and went on to encompass many popular movements. But of late it has been associated with Palestine and Muslim “resistance" to what is posited as the Israeli hegemony and “illegal occupation". So Iran’s use of the word ‘resistance’ is not without deliberate connotation.

However, harking back to Iran’s Zoroastrian past is a major shift in modus for an Islamic regime, given the traditional refusal of Muslim hardliners to concede that any........

© News18