M. Jamil Hanifi

Michigan State University

“The Absence and Presence of Mountstuart Elphinstone in Kabuli Elite Writings About Afghanistan”

Mountstuart Elphinstone’s 1809 visit to the “Kingdom of Caubul” produced two lasting results. The treaty with Shah Shuja’ provided the cradle for the three Anglo-Afghan Wars and the foundation for Afghanistan as a British and subsequent American crypto-colony. Elphinstone’s 1815 (1819, 1839 [1842, 1967, 1972]) encyclopedic An Account of the “Kingdom of Caubul” (AAKC) became the ethnographic bible for Euro-American writings about Afghanistan. Virtually all Euro-American academic and political writings during the last two centuries are informed and influenced by Elphinstone’s AAKC. Through this biblical encyclopedic effect Mountstuart Elphinstone will always be present in the scholarship dealing with the cultural and political terrain of Afghanistan.

However, for a variety of academic, historical and political reasons, one cannot find consciousness or explicitly cited awareness of AAKC in the Afghan government-sponsored Farsi and Pashtu writings of the Kabuli elite dealing with Afghanistan. These writings are obsessively preoccupied with the 1809 British treaty with Shah Shuja’; invariably they briefly and descriptively cite this treaty and the European made gifts given to the Durani ruler of Kabul by Elphinstone. With two exceptions (published after the overthrow of the Kabuli monarchy during the early 1980s) the ethnographic content of AAKC and mere reference to it is totally absent in the academic, political and literary Kabuli discourse about Afghanistan. This paper will discuss the cultural and political reasons for the presence of the 1809 British treaty with Shah Shuja’ and the absence of AAKC in official and private Kabuli writings, including the government produced textbooks (including those provided by the American occupation forces) used in the schools of Afghanistan.

Bio

M. Jamil Hanifi was born in Sorkhab, Logar Province, Afghanistan. Farsi and Pashtu are his “native” languages. Hanifi is a cultural anthropologist with extensive institutionally sponsored ethnographic research experience in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Tajikistan. He graduated from Ghazi High School, Kabul in 1954. With the support of a scholarship from the government of Afghanistan he attended Michigan State University from where he received a B.Sc. in Social Science (1960) and M. A. in Political Science (1962). Hanifi received his Ph. D. in anthropology from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (1969). He has taught anthropology at California State University-Los Angeles (1968-69) and Northern Illinois University (1969-1982). From 1990-present Hanifi has been an adjunct research professor of anthropology at Michigan State University. Hanifi has published a number of books, several chapters in edited books and numerous articles in professional journal. All his writings deal with the ethnology and politics of Afghanistan. About thirty five of his essays are posted on Zero Anthropology and Khorasan Zameen blogs.