Home ›› 22 Feb 2023 ›› Opinion
The Kalasha community of Chitral district has long captivated the imagination of both visitors and researchers. But one aspect that to date eludes and confounds historians and archaeologists is their origin. Starting with the once popular and now discarded narrative of their descent from Alexander the Great’s Macedonian troops, various theories have been put forth to explain the enigmatic identity of the Kalasha. But some more recent studies now suggest that their lineage is perhaps more close to home than it seems at first glance.
The Kalasha community lives in three specific valleys of Chitral: Bumboret, Birir, and Rumbur. It is estimated that the community has a population of over 3,000 - making them the smallest minority group in Pakistan.
A Global Human Rights Defence paper titled, ‘Tribe of Kalash: The last Kafir’ describes the Kalash people as animists and nature worshippers who refuse to convert to Islam and states that their refusal to convert as the ‘root cause of their marginalisation in the region.’ The Kalash people who don’t even make up one per cent of the population in the region, are considered ‘ethnically marginal’ and demographically insignificant.’
According to that paper, the Kalasha are the last of the people of ‘Kafiristan’ – an area that once encompassed the entirety of northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan before being divided by the Durand line – who retain elements of their ancestral cultural identity.
“While some long believed them to be in some way linked to the Greeks who arrived in South Asia with Alexander the Great, there is little in the way of concrete evidence to support that suggestion,” shared Professor Noorul Amin of the Pashto Department at the Islamic College University. “Even so, the Kalasha themselves have come to believe that they descended from one General Shalakshah of Alexander’s army,” he said.
According to Professor Amin, the author of several Pashto books, the Kalasha hold onto their own religious beliefs, along with their own identity, way of life, and language. “The fair skin and blue eyes of the Kalasha people has resulted in a popular assumption that they were of Greek origin, specifically the descendants of Alexander the Great’s soldiers who followed him on his campaign to India. The hypothesis that the Kalasha people were originally Greek has also been promoted officially in Pakistan,” he noted.
Professor Amin explained that the Kalasha people settled in the Chitral region during the reign of Cyrus the Great, another conqueror whose campaigns match those of Alexander the great himself. “The Kalasha people had been living in the Chitral region for over four thousand years,” he said, adding that to him the assumption that they are the descendants of Alexander holds no credibility because they were already present in the area much before the arrival of Alexander the great.
Chitral-based senior journalist Gul Hamad Farooqi who has extensively covered all cultural festivals and other relevant aspects of the Kalasha people says these people are ‘Indian Aryans’.
According to Farooqi, the provincial Archeological Department with the assistance of international archelogy experts had recently discovered a 5,000-year-old graveyard in the Shindor area of Chitral. “The experts in their study of the graveyard had stated that the people inhabiting the region are Indian Aryans. However, the authorities do not force the Kalasha community to accept that they are not the descendants of Alexander the great. The Kalasha people take pride in associating themselves with the great conqueror,” he added.
T-Magazine