Defining a Modern Persianate Self: The Indian Friend as Ethical Interlocutor in the late 19th-century

This paper examines the figure and role of the Indian friend in late 19th-century Persian language modernist writings, specifically by Fath ‘Ali Akhundzadah, Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani,” and the Calcutta-based Persian newspaper, Habl al-Matin. These writings drew on older Persianate ideas of the central role of friendship in moral refinement and ethical behavior to put forth modern visions of self and collective association. This process posed a self that was Iranian but identifiable according to Persianate notions of collectivity, allowing for simultaneous broader affiliations with Muslims, Indians and Asians. That the intimate friend involved in this process of Persianate self and collective constitution was Indian suggests the need to consider Iranian and Indian modernity as part of an interconnected process informed by the lingering memory of a shared Persianate past and new modes of engagement up to the early 20th-century.