The struggle against religious superstition and the effort to sever the bond between religion and power have deep roots in Iran. Contrary to the widespread belief that secularism is purely a Western or modern phenomenon, Iranian history is rich with Enlightenment-driven efforts that have criticized religion not as a matter of faith, but as a political apparatus for suppressing and stupefying the masses. From the anti-clerical movements of the Constitutional Revolution to the intellectuals of the Reza Shah era and into contemporary struggles, opposition to religious obscurantism has consistently stood in direct confrontation with ruling power—because in Iran, religion has not been at the margins but at the very heart of the apparatus of domination.
Among these efforts, Sadegh Hedayat stands out as one of the most brilliant and merciless figures of this tradition of enlightenment. A writer who did not merely challenge superstition, but clashed with the religious institution itself, the entrenched social classes, and the corrupt political structures—and did so not through manifestos, but through novels, short stories, and dark satire. His works, especially during the 1940s, reflect a deep crisis between the desire for social rebirth and the enduring dominance of superstition, poverty, and theocracy.
Sadegh Hedayat is one of the most prominent Iranian writers of the twentieth century, whose works have consistently reflected a sharp, bitter, and pessimistic view of society, religion, institutions of power, and human nature. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not pursue moral reform or revolutionary idealism; rather, with a precise and at times terrifying gaze, he explored the hidden structures of domination, humiliation, and subjugation embedded in Iranian language, tradition, and politics.
Among his numerous works, the novel Haji Agha holds a special place. More than a narrative-driven story, it is a raw and unsettling monologue and dialogue from within the mind and language of a distinct social type: a class that grew out of tradition, religion, the bazaar, and the security apparatus in Iran, embodied in figures such as “Haji Agha.” This novel is not only one of Hedayat’s most political and outspoken works, but also stands as one of the most ruthless critiques of the structure of power in modern Iran.
The novel was written in 1945, a decisive moment in Iran’s contemporary history—right after the fall of Reza Shah following the Allied occupation during World War II, and before the rise of nationalist and democratic movements during Mossadegh’s era. This period brought a relatively open political climate and press freedom, but it was also marked by intense rivalry among monarchists, the clergy, the bazaar, feudal forces, and the left and progressive groups. Hedayat, with a perspective that sanctified none of these blocs, focused instead on those forces that, behind all these struggles, sought to reproduce domination, ignorance, and poverty.
It was under such conditions that the Tudeh Party was formed in Iran. The founders of this party were survivors of the group known as “the Fifty-Three,” who had been arrested and imprisoned during Reza Shah’s rule. In the elections for the 14th session of the National Consultative Assembly, 23 Tudeh Party candidates received 200,000 votes—more than 13 percent of all votes cast nationwide. At that time, Iran’s population was approximately 12 million. As Ervand Abrahamian notes, “For the first time in Iran’s history, a radical non-religious organization gained popular support.” The Tudeh Party also held significant influence in the cultural sphere, with many of the country’s writers and poets in some way affiliated with it.
Sadegh Hedayat never joined the Tudeh Party, but many of his close friends—such as Bozorg Alavi, Abdolhossein Noushin, Khalil Maleki, Ehsan Tabari, and Jalal Al-e Ahmad—were members. Hedayat also allowed party members on several occasions to hold their secret meetings at his residence, though he himself rarely took part in the discussions. In 1945, he became a contributor to Payam-e Now, a journal affiliated with the Iranian-Soviet Cultural Relations Society, and served as an active member of its editorial board.
Haji Agha is not merely the name of a fictional character—it is a title that embodies a social type deeply rooted in Iran’s historical class structure. The term “Haji” refers to someone who has completed the pilgrimage to Mecca, often associated with religious respectability, while “Agha” is a title denoting status, authority, or seniority. Combined, Haji Agha represents a figure who blends religious piety, social conservatism, and economic influence—typically a bazaar merchant, landlord, or local notable who uses the appearance of faith and tradition to secure power and protect privilege.
Haji Agha should be seen not merely as a character, but as the representative of a social order—an order that Hedayat depicts clearly, unflinchingly, and mercilessly. In his conversations with “Hojjat-ol-Shari’eh,” a kind of historical alliance emerges between religion, the bazaar, violence, and the state apparatus, whose goal is to suppress public awareness, preserve class hierarchy, and sustain exploitation. Before the modern political vocabulary of terms like “populism,” “ideology,” or “propaganda” became widespread, Hedayat had already exposed the foundations of such mechanisms in this work.
The Institution of Power and Class Order in Haji Agha’s Dialogue
In the long and revealing monologue of Haji Agha, the main character does not appear as an individual, but as the voice of a system of domination and class hierarchy. His speech is full of blunt confessions that expose how a particular class of merchants, clerics, and local elites deliberately rely on the reproduction of poverty, illiteracy, and the humiliation of the masses to preserve their place at the top of the social pyramid.
For Haji Agha, knowledge and awareness are direct threats to power. He speaks in purely instrumental terms, stating that if the son of a herbalist or Mashdi Taghi becomes literate, he can no longer be deceived; he would start questioning their words and move beyond them. This view reflects the upper classes’ fear of the social mobility of the lower classes—a fear that is managed through tools such as censorship, distortion of education, religious indoctrination, and institutionalized corruption. The preservation of ignorance and hunger is not a sign of failure, but a deliberate policy. Here, poverty is not only an economic weapon but a condition for the rulers’ survival.
Haji Agha’s mindset is clearly aligned with the logic of the feudal–clientelist system and comprador capitalism. In the feudal order, there exists a relationship of emotional dependency and economic control between the landlord and the peasant: the peasant is helpless and grateful; the landlord, paternalistic and all-knowing. But in this novel, that structure merges with the reality of Iran’s political economy during a period when the country’s gates had been opened to foreign capital and imports. The result is a class that neither produces nor develops, but feeds off state rent, smuggling, and dependence on foreign powers. This is the very class Hedayat astutely identifies as the merchant–cleric–state nexus: parasitic and secretive.
One of the key concepts Hedayat presents with dark humor and through a direct confession is the idea of “the people as a milking cow.” This metaphor makes it clear that this class does not view the people as participants or equals, but as sources of continuous and permanent exploitation. Haji Agha openly declares that reforming society would mean the end of his and his class’s domination; therefore, society must not be allowed to improve. This view represents the unmasked language of a repressive ideology—one that not only profits from the subjugation of the people but sees it as necessary for its own survival.
In this part of the novel, Hedayat, in a style that can be called a “reversed narrative of power,” removes the mask from a class that publicly portrays itself as a servant of the people and a guardian of values, but whose very survival depends on the backwardness of the masses. Haji Agha’s speech reveals a worldview in which even the people’s vote, education, healthcare, or hope for a better life are seen as threats. In this view, class order is not something natural, but the product of active political strategies designed to “keep the people ignorant.”
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The Role of Religion, Superstition, and the Clergy as Political Instruments
One of the most fundamental—and at the same time, most explicit—critiques in Haji Agha is Hedayat’s denunciation of the institution of religion and the clergy in Iran. This is not a philosophical critique of the existence of God or religion, but a political exposé of the historical role of religion in reproducing domination. In this novel, Hedayat draws a sharp and unmatched distinction between “piety” and the “useful fanatical believer.” For Haji Agha, society does not need Muslims or believers in the moral sense, but rather a mass of superstitious, chest-beating, self-flagellating, mourning, and demon-possessed individuals—people who are distanced from reason, doubt, and intellectual independence, and who can be easily mobilized and manipulated.
This point is made explicitly in the dialogue between Haji Agha and Hojjat-ol-Shari’eh: religion is not meant to reform the people, but to keep them backward. Statements like “We don’t want you to go around fixing people’s prayers and fasts” or “We must promote old customs in the name of religion” show clearly that, within this machinery, religion is not a source of spiritual guidance but a tool of social control. What Hedayat critiques is the instrumental use of religion—a religion reproduced not for its truth, but for its utility in maintaining power.
This instrumental view of religion is crystallized in a well-known statement by Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, when he declared: “We will build both this world and the hereafter. One of the things that must happen is precisely this, and it will happen.” On the surface, this appears to be a promise combining material prosperity with spiritual salvation. Yet at its core, it carries the same dual logic that Hedayat exposes in Haji Agha: the use of religious language to legitimize political power, and the transformation of religion into an ideological cover for domination. Like Haji Agha, Khomeini did not invoke religion merely for worship or salvation, but as a tool to “govern” the people—a form of governance in which the hereafter is promised, while the present is managed through repression, ignorance, and inequality. This fusion—ranging from the spread of superstition to a charity-based economy, from clerical authority to mass mobilization—is precisely what Hedayat, with prophetic precision, had already laid bare in the language of Haji Agha, long before it came to pass.
Here, religion becomes a medium of deception. What is promoted is not faith or morality, but belief in the miracle of a shrine, exorcisms, the inauguration of mourning halls, and the spread of self-flagellation. The goal is to create a society incapable of protest—its logic mythical, its mind clouded with fear and magic. This is the materialization of a deliberate policy of “superstition propagation”: a strategy aimed at promoting religious and ritual superstitions to divert public consciousness from social analysis, class awareness, and historical understanding.
Hedayat does not offer a merely literary or cultural analysis here; rather, he precisely reveals how superstition and a clergy allied with power function as tools to block the emergence of social movements, struggles for freedom, and collective awareness. When Haji Agha says, “Only through spreading superstition and creating unrest in the name of religion can we stop these new movements,” he is, in fact, exposing the mechanism of authoritarian survival. In this logic, religion is not just a means of physical repression; it is far more effective than the police or the military—it acts as an ideological weapon, one that occupies the mind and silences the tongue.
Thus, in Haji Agha, the clergy is not the guardian of the people’s faith but a co-conspirator in anti-awareness policies. The fanatical mourner is more useful to this order than the critical teacher. And this is the reality that Hedayat, unflinchingly and with dark irony, places at the center of his novel: the alliance between power and superstition as a strategic bond for the survival of domination.
Reza Shah and the Reconstruction of Nationalism in the Eyes of the Upper Classes
One of the most subtle and significant parts of Haji Agha is the way this class confronts the phenomenon of Reza Shah. On the surface, Haji Agha appears critical of Reza Shah—but his critiques are shallow, tactical, and calculated. He accuses Reza Shah of changing superficial aspects—such as clothing and headwear—and claims he “didn’t know what he was doing” and “acted on orders.” Yet, in the same breath, he adds that Reza Shah’s actions can be justified in terms of “Islamic unity” and broader political-security interests. This dual position is key to understanding the relationship between the upper classes and Reza Shah’s nationalism: embracing the image of a modernizing dictator while rejecting its social consequences.
For Haji Agha and his class peers, Reza Shah represents both a threat and an opportunity—a threat because his schools, press reforms, and superficial modernizations offered the masses a narrow window into awareness; an opportunity because his centralized, militarized order allowed them to consolidate trade, patronage, and religious hypocrisy under the shield of security. Haji Agha openly says, “Reza Shah must be turned into a shirt of Uthman”—meaning he should be publicly cursed while his repressive and conservative legacy is used to suppress social progress. This paradox captures the exact position many of Iran’s powerful classes found themselves in after Reza Shah: outwardly opposing the dictator while inwardly supporting his authoritarian order.
Within this framework, Reza Shah becomes an ideological instrument for reproducing class power. Instead of guiding society toward social modernity, justice, and literacy, figures like Haji Agha convert his reforms into tools for mass control, the preservation of instrumentalized religion, and the suppression of emerging movements. What unfolds is not a genuine transformation, but a reconstruction of power relations—wrapped in the language of nationalism and modern authoritarianism.
Hedayat, in this section, without directly praising or criticizing Reza Shah, astutely highlights one of the central traits of Iran’s “authoritarian modernization”: a modernization process driven not by public participation, but by top-down control, spectacle, and the elimination of rooted social forces. For this reason, the traditional upper classes—despite their displeasure with certain features of Reza Shah’s rule—supported his overall project. Authoritarian modernization, far from threatening the class order, served as a means of renewing it.
From this angle, Haji Agha’s criticism of Reza Shah is not moral or principled—it is an expression of class anxiety. For him, nationalism holds value only insofar as it unites religious and political elites while blocking the consciousness and uprising of the masses. That is why he defends “Islamic unity” under the cover of nationalism, while simultaneously insisting on maintaining Sunni-Shia divisions for internal control. Here, religion and nationality are not values—they are instruments. And this is precisely what Hedayat, in an unflinching and ruthless tone, exposes.
The Politics of Mass-Making: From Instrument to Confession
One of the most distinctive features of Haji Agha is the raw clarity of its confessions. Instead of offering justifications or illusions, Haji Agha speaks plainly and without hesitation about his class’s structural need for poverty, superstition, and ignorance. This bluntness, though laced with irony, is terrifying—for it reveals how power does not arise by accident but invests deliberately in the fabrication and stupefaction of the masses. “We need the beggar more than the beggar needs us,” he says—a stark expression of the moral inversion at the heart of power.
In his speech, Haji Agha lists a series of public cultural elements he finds useful: beggars, mourning rituals, self-flagellation, opium dens, exorcisms, chest beating, shrines, prayer veils, and foul-mouthed clerics. These are not merely fragments of religious or traditional culture—they are political instruments for suppressing thought, reinforcing passivity, and controlling collective behavior. What we see here is a fusion of religion and violence, of fear and spectacle, all in the service of maintaining class order. Haji Agha speaks of a “monster” that must be crafted to frighten the masses and keep them obedient. This monster could be a cleric, a policeman, a demon, or even “God” himself—whatever it is, it must prevent people from living in the present or understanding their own condition.
In this section, Hedayat portrays a society turned theatrical—a stage filled with religious performances, alms-giving, miracles, sermons, and hypocrisy. A society where the people are not doomed by fate or natural law, but are transformed into spectacle by the calculated design of those in power. Everything seems to be for the people—the mourning for comfort, the shrine for solidarity, the charity for relief—but in truth, all of it serves to soothe the conscience of the ruling class, to preserve power, and to dull the masses.
Hedayat’s black humor reaches its peak in these scenes. It does not provoke laughter, nor is it playful—it is a weapon for cutting through appearances. What he exposes is not merely religious hypocrisy or political corruption, but the structural link between the two in producing a society that endlessly reproduces itself while imagining it is changing. He shows how religion, violence, and superstition—rather than remaining personal, spiritual, or traditional—have become cold, precise tools for manufacturing the masses: a machinery in which the people are not actors, but blind and powerless spectators.
Here, power operates not only through force, but through ritual and myth. And Hedayat, with a voice that resembles an internal report from the machinery of repression itself, draws out a political truth from within these relations: “The transformation of society means the death of us and those like us.” That single sentence is the key to understanding the system mobilized against change, awareness, and hope.
Foreign Power and the Justification of Domestic Despotism
In the final section of Haji Agha’s dialogue, we hear confessions that go beyond internal politics and point to a hidden, intricate relationship with foreign powers. Haji Agha, bluntly and with unmistakable confidence, declares: “We are not alone; a powerful apparatus supports us… the wealthy, wherever they are, will blindly back us—because they have a sharp nose and can sense danger.” This sentence opens a window into understanding a particular form of despotism in Iran and the broader peripheral world—one that does not exist in a vacuum but is reproduced in connection with the interests of global capital and transnational institutions.
Contrary to those who sometimes portray Hedayat as an inward-looking cultural writer, in this work he clearly outlines a portrait of dependent despotism: a form of authoritarianism that survives not only through violence, religion, superstition, and domestic poverty, but also through structural support from foreign powers—be it in the form of embassies, financial institutions, or international bourgeois classes and traders. This despotism safeguards the global order of inequality, and a figure like Haji Agha, despite his feigned ignorance, is knowingly complicit in this larger equation.
In this framework, the domestic ruling class fully understands that global capital, in exchange for “stability,” is willing to support any corrupt or fascistic order. Here, “stability” does not mean justice or development, but the suppression of deep transformation and the prevention of popular and revolutionary forces from emerging. Hedayat captures this class consciousness in the colloquial voice of Haji Agha: “The words of the freedom-lovers and revolutionaries will come to nothing.” What must be crushed is not just the people, but the very horizon of change.
Another crucial point is how foreign threats are used to justify domestic repression. Haji Agha refers to Islamic unity, Sunni-Shia divisions, Reza Shah’s policies, and even headwear and clothing as tactics against “neighboring countries” and foreign powers. This dual logic seeks legitimacy by invoking the foreign enemy, while simultaneously collaborating with it to repress its own people. As would be repeated many times in Iran’s political history, the external enemy becomes a tool for strengthening internal suppression. Hedayat, with sharp awareness, lays bare this “double language of power.”
In this light, what appears to be “traditional” or local—mourning rituals, self-flagellation, exorcism, shrines, and charity—is, in fact, part of a global order. An order in which backwardness, illiteracy, and despotism are not the result of error or ignorance but the product of class coordination between domestic forces and global interests. In Haji Agha, dependent despotism is not a political slogan—it is a cold, precise, and confessed mechanism; as feudal as it is global.
Hedayat, foreseeing the moral and structural decay that still shapes contemporary Iranian politics, confronts us with a chilling truth: that without a structural and popular transformation, the ruling power will always have its backers—from within, from without, and from a class that finds its place in any regime.
Hedayat’s Bitter Irony and the Foretelling of Catastrophe
Reading the dialogue of Haji Agha today—over seventy years after it was written—feels like looking into a mirror across time. Hedayat does not predict the future; he captures the present with such precision and clarity that it seems as though time has frozen, and the structure of domination continues to repeat itself—embedded within archaic institutions and spoken through modern tongues. In a world where the “beggar” still serves the interests of power, where “superstition,” “exorcism,” and “belief in miracles” remain political tools, and where the masses are still spectators without agency, the voice of Haji Agha sounds eerily familiar.
Hedayat’s irony is not playful or mocking. It is dark, sharp, and merciless—because it speaks not of the people’s foolishness, but of the system’s intelligence. Haji Agha is not a caricature of a religious man or a corrupt merchant; he is the distilled logic of dependent authoritarian rule—a logic in which religion, poverty, violence, foreign capital, and superstition are simultaneously instruments and ends. This conversation, without ever mentioning terms like “modern state,” “ideology,” or “national security,” outlines the structure of a late authoritarian state—both in Iran and across much of the Global South, where political order is reproduced through a combination of domestic repression and foreign allegiance.
The resemblance between Haji Agha’s discourse and the language of power in today’s Iran—and in many regional governments—is no coincidence. Wherever politics becomes performance rather than participation; wherever religion is weaponized to strip people of rights and render them passive; wherever capital and “security” are used to silence demands for change, the voice of Haji Agha echoes. He is not merely a fictional character but a behavioral model of a dominant class that fears reform, transformation, and equality.
In the end, Sadegh Hedayat must not be seen as a reformer or a bearer of hope, but as a witness to collapse. He sits in the middle of the fire—not with water or a fire extinguisher, but with words that meticulously describe the flames. Rather than offering to fix the world, he exposes it—stripped of illusion and disguise. And in a world built on lies and deception, that act alone is radical.
Haji Agha is not merely a literary text—it is a political document. Though written in a tone of bitterness and irony, it remains one of the clearest and most enduring accounts of how power operates in modern Iran—and far beyond.
Featured Photo by Emir Bozkurt from Pexels
