For informed analysis

If you have wrestled with profound ideas on revolution encapsulated in the seminal works of scholars like Hanna Arendt, Barrington Moore or Theda Skocpol, you have good reason for being disappointed by the manner in which the idea of revolution is now trivialised in contemporary political and economic discourse""as if it is happening every two minutes in some fashion in some corner of the world.

But one event that can be recognised as revolution bereft of any reservations is the Iranian Revolution of 1979. That turbulent event shook the Islamic world, dethroned King Shah and created a new wave of hope for the people of Iran and to some extent the wider Islamic world. The most enduring gain that emerged from that event was the decisive challenge it lurched at Iran's monarchy. The most troubling result was the opportunity it created for Islamic fundamentalists to grab power and set the agenda.

The book under review, Iran Today: Twenty-five Years After The Islamic Revolution, revisits that earth-shattering event and the consequences thereof. Its editor, Hamid Ansari, is a well-known Indian diplomat, now a key advisor to the UPA government on foreign policy matters, and also a fellow of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a Delhi-based thinktank.

The book contains insightful articles on various aspects of Iran's political, economic and cultural life, and some of them have deployed Iran's history with great profit. The editor has done an excellent job in the selection of experts from assorted fields to address the reader's curiosity of the country's society, culture, women, domestic politics and foreign policy. There is, of course, an essay on Iran-India relations as well.

Iran today, like the Iran of the past, seems to be standing at the crossroads of a great global power game, and that too, without being adequately certain of its allies or adversaries. A deep ambivalence is evident in the way it positions itself vis-à-vis the West, the Islamic world and the rest of the world.

One key actor in Iran's contemporary politics is its former president Mohammad Khatami, a leader who articulated the widely felt need for a "dialogue of civilisations" in the international intellectual arena while in office. M Arjomand's chapter on Khatami in this book traces the factors that led to the failure of the reform movement he launched, in the wider context of the perennial struggle between hardliners and reformers. However, the essay does not detail Khatami's (1997-2004) attempt to present a new Islamic face to the West, an exercise I consider necessary for the latter to stop viewing the Islamic world through the lens of Arab royal elites, power wielders like Saddam Hussain and Gaddafi, or rebels like Bin Laden.

Without doubt, Khatami and his reformers' loss of electoral support"" analysed by Mark Gasiorowski in another chapter""has deeper implications that many observers and analysts realise, especially under circumstances of a fraction of far-right Western elites having the tools to push Iran towards anarchy, a prospect fraught with dangers worse than those of chaotic Afghanistan.

The encouraging part is that Khatami might have lost the election but not his relevance, and he is still a force to reckon with in Iran's domestic politics. Yet, this force bears a symbiotic tie with the West's restraint in picturing and portraying Iran as just another fundamentalist hotbed. No other player could be more credible in the project than the political force represented by Khatami, and this is a lesson that leaderships everywhere in the world, including India, ought to bear in mind. The significance of this could grow as foreign policy makers of all nation states acknowledge that in a fast-globalising world, any idea premised on serving instant "national interest" might imperil humanity in unpredictable ways.

This book's contribution on social change offers evidence of many perceptible changes taking place in post-revolution Iran. The two essays on women recognise their enhanced role in the public sphere, even as women's activism continues to challenge the unfair terms meted out by men to women in the name of Islam. The life story of Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace prize winner, is inspiring new generations of women. Yet the struggle has a long way to go before it can claim success. This provocative book can serve as a rich resource for any policymaker or scholar interested in the constant struggle between modernity and tradition. IRAN TODAY
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

Edited by Mohammad Hamid Ansari
Rupa & Co in association with
Observer Research Foundation (ORF)
Price: Rs 450; Pages: 385