|
|
|
|
Allama
Muhammad Iqbal
|
|
Famous As |
Great Poet
Of East |
|
Born On |
November 9,
1877 |
|
Born In |
Sialkot,
Punjab, British India |
|
Died On |
April 21,
1938 (Aged 60) |
|
Nationality |
Sub
Continent |
|
|
Allama Iqbal, great poet-philosopher and active political leader,
was born at Sialkot, Punjab, in 1877. He descended from a family of
Kashmiri Brahmins, who had embraced Islam about 300 years earlier.
Iqbal received his early education in the traditional maktab. Later
he joined the Sialkot Mission School, from where he passed his
matriculation examination. In 1897, he obtained his Bachelor of
Arts Degree from Government College, Lahore. Two years later, he
secured his Masters Degree and was appointed in the Oriental
College, Lahore, as a lecturer of history, philosophy and
English. |
|
|
He later proceeded to Europe for higher studies. Having obtained a degree at
Cambridge, he secured his doctorate at Munich and finally qualified
as a barrister. He returned to India in 1908. Besides teaching and
practicing law, Iqbal continued to write poetry. He resigned from
government service in 1911 and took up the task of propagating
individual thinking among the Muslims through his poetry. By 1928,
his reputation as a great Muslim philosopher was
solidly established and he was invited to
deliver lectures at Hyderabad, Aligarh and
Madras. These series of lectures were later
published as a book "The Reconstruction of
Religious Thought in Islam". In 1930, Iqbal was
invited to preside over the open session of the
Muslim League at Allahabad. In his historic
Allahabad Address, Iqbal visualized an
independent and sovereign state for the Muslims
of North-Western India. In 1932, Iqbal came to
England as a Muslim delegate to the Third Round
Table Conference. In later years, when the Quaid
had left India and was residing in England,
Allama Iqbal wrote to him conveying to him his
personal views on political problems and state
of affairs of the Indian Muslims, and also
persuading him to come back. These letters are
dated from June 1936 to November 1937. |
|
This series of correspondence is now a part of
important historic documents concerning Pakistan's struggle for freedom. On April 21,
1938, the great Muslim poet-philosopher and champion of the Muslim
cause, passed away. He lies buried next to the Badshahi Mosque in
Lahore. |
|
Works and Achievements:
His first book Ilm ul
Iqtisad/The knowledge of Economics was written in Urdu in 1903 . His
first poetic work Asrar-i Khudi (1915) was followed by Rumuz-I
Bekhudi (1917). Payam-i Mashriq appeared in 1923, Zabur-i Ajam in
1927, Javid Nama in 1932, Pas cheh bayed kard ai Aqwam-i Sharq in
1936, and Armughan-i Hijaz in 1938. All these books were in Persian.
The last one, published posthumously is mainly in Persian: only a
small portion comprises Urdu poems and ghazals. His first book
of poetry in Urdu, Bang-i Dara (1924) was followed by Bal-i Jibril
in 1935 and Zarb-i Kalim in 1936.
|
|
Bang-i
Dara consist of selected poems belonging to the three preliminary
phases of Iqbal's poetic career. Bal-i Jibril is the peak of Iqbal's
Urdu poetry. It consists of ghazals, poems, quatrains, epigrams and
displays the vision and intellect necessary to foster sincerity and
firm belief in the heart of the ummah and turn its members into true
believers. Zarb-i Kalim was described by the poet himself "as a
declaration of war against the present era". The main subjects of
the book are Islam and the Muslims, education and upbringing, woman,
literature and fine arts, politics of the East and the West. In
Asrar-i Khudi, Iqbal has explained his philosohy of "Self". He
proves by various means that the whole universe obeys the will of
the "Self". |
|
Iqbal condemns self-destruction. For him the aim of life
is self-relization and self-knowledge. He charts the stages through
which the "Self" has to pass before finally arriving at its point of
perfection, enabling the knower of the "Self" to become the
viceregent of Allah on earth/Khalifat ullah fi'l ard. In Rumuz-i
Bekhudi, Iqbal proves that Islamic way of life is the best code of
conduct for a nation's viability. A person must keep his individual
characteristics intact but once this is achieved he should sacrifice
his personal ambitions for the needs of the nation. Man cannot
realize the "Self" out of society. Payam-i Mashriq is an answer to
West-Istlicher Divan by Goethe, the famous German peot. Goethe
bemoaned that the West had become too materialistic in outlook and
expected that the East would provide a message of hope that would resuscitate
spiritual values. A hundred years went by and then Iqbal reminded
the West of the importance of morality, religion and civilization by
underlining the need for cultivating feeling, ardour and dynamism.
He explained that life could, never aspire for higher dimensions
unless it learnt of the nature of spirituality. |
|
Zabur-i Ajam includes the Mathnavi Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid and Bandagi
Nama. In Gulshan-i Raz-i Jadid, he follows the famous Mathnavi
Gulshan-i Raz by Sayyid Mahmud Shabistri. Here like Shabistri, Iqbal
first poses questions, then answers them with the help of ancient
and modern insight and shows how it effects and concerns the world
of action. Bandagi Nama is in fact a vigorous campaign against
slavery and subjugation. He explains the spirit behind the fine arts
of enslaved societies. In Zabur-i Ajam, Iqbal's Persian ghazal is at
its best as his Urdu ghazal is in Bal-i Jibril. Here as in other
books, Iqbal insists on remembering the past, doing well in the
present and preparing for the future. His lesson is that one should
be dynamic, full of zest for action and full of love and life.
Implicitly, he proves that there is no form of poetry which can
equal the ghazal in vigour and liveliness. In Javid Nama, Iqbal
follows Ibn-Arabi, Marri and Dante. Iqbal depicts himself as Zinda
Rud (a stream, full of life) guided by Rumi the master, through
various heavens and spheres and has the honour of approaching
Divinity and coming in contact with divine illuminations.
|
|
Several
problems of life are discussed and answers are provided to them. It
is an exceedingly enlivening study. His hand falls heavily on the
traitors to their nation like Mir Jafar from Bengal and Mir Sadiq
from the Deccan, who were instrumental in the defeat and death of
Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula of Bengal and Sultan Tipu of Mysore
respectively by betraying them for the benefit of the British. Thus,
they delivered their country to the shackles of slavery. At the end,
by addressing his son Javid, he speaks to the young people at large
and provides guidance to the "new generation". Pas Cheh Bay ed Kard
ai Aqwam-i Sharq includes the mathnavi Musafir. Iqbal's Rumi, the
master, utters this glad tiding "East awakes from its slumbers" "Khwab-i
ghaflat". Inspiring detailed commentary on voluntary poverty and
free man, followed by an exposition of the mysteries of Islamic laws
and sufic perceptions is given. He laments the dissention among the
Indian as well as Muslim nations. |
|
Mathnavi Musafir, is an account of
a journey to Afghanistan. In the mathnavi the people of the Frontier
(Pathans) are counseled to learn the "secret of Islam" and to "build
up the self" within themselves. Armughan-i Hijaz consists of
two parts. The first contains quatrains in Persian; the second
contains some poems and epigrams in Urdu. The Persian quatrains
convey the impression as though the poet is travelling through Hijaz
in his imaginatin. Profundity of ideas and intensity of passion are
the salient features of these short poems. The Urdu portion of the
book contains some categorical criticism of the intellectual
movements and social and political revolutions of the modern age. |
|
The Visionary: Iqbal
joined the London branch of the All India Muslim League while he was
studying Law and Philosophy in England. It was in London when he had
a mystical experience. The ghazal containing those divinations is
the only one whose year and month of composition is expressly
mentioned. It is March 1907. No other ghazal, before or after it has
been given such importance. Some verses of that ghazal are:
|
|
At
last the silent tongue of Hijaz has
announced to the ardent ear the tiding
That the covenant which had been given to the
desert-dwelles is going to be renewed
vigorously:
The
lion who had emerged from the desert and
had toppled the Roman Empire is
As I am told by the angels, about to get up
again (from his slumbers.)
You
the dwelles of the West, should know that
the world of God is not a shop (of yours).
Your imagined pure gold is about to lose it
standard value (as fixed by you).
Your
civilization will commit suicide with its
own daggers.
A nest built on a frail bough cannot be
durable.
The
caravan of feeble ants will take the rose
petal for a boat
And inspite of all blasts of waves, it shall cross
the river.
I
will take out may worn-out caravan in the
pitch darkness of night.
My sighs will emit sparks and my breath will
produce flames.
|
|
For
Iqbal it was a divinely inspired insight. He disclosed this to his
listeners in December 1931, when he was invited to Cambridge to
address the students. Iqbal was in London, participating in the
Second Round Table Conference in 1931. At Cambridge, he referred to
what he had proclaimed in 1906: |
|
I
would like to offer a few pieces of advice to the youngmen who are
at present studying at Cambridge ...... I advise you to guard
against atheism and materialism. The biggest blunder made by Europe
was the separation of Church and State. This deprived their culture
of moral soul and diverted it to the atheistic materialism. I had
twenty-five years ago seen through the drawbacks of this
civilization and therefore had made some prophecies. They had been
delivered by my tongue although I did not quite understand them.
This happened in 1907..... After six or seven years, my prophecies
came true, word by word. The European war of 1914 was an outcome of
the aforesaid mistakes made by the European nations in the
separation of the Church and the State. |
|
It
should be stressed that Iqbal felt he had received a spiritual
message in 1907 which even to him was, at that juncture, not clear.
Its full import dawned on him later. The verses quoted above show
that Iqbal had taken a bold decision about himself as well. Keeping
in view that contemporary circumstances, he had decided to give a
lead to the Muslim ummah and bring it out of the dark dungeon of
slavery to the shining vasts of Independence. This theme was
repeated later in poems such as "Abdul Qadir Ke Nam," "Sham-o-Sha'ir,"
"Javab-i Shikwa," "Khizr-i Rah," "Tulu-e Islam" etc. He never lost
heart. His first and foremost concern, naturally, were the Indian
Muslims. He was certain that the day of Islamic resurgence was about
to dawn and the Muslims of the South Asian subcontinent were
destined to play a prominent role in it. Iqbal, confident in Allah's
grand scheme and His aid, created a new world and imparted a new
life to our being. Building upon Sir Sayyid Ahmed's two-nation
theory, absorbing the teaching of Shibli, Ameer Ali, Hasrat Mohani
and other great Indian Muslim thinkers and politicians, listening to
Hindu and British voices, and watching the fermenting Indian scene
closely for approximately 60 years, he knew and ultimately convinced
his people and their leaders, particularly Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah that: |
"We
both are exiles in this land. Both longing for
our dear home's sight!"
"That dear home is Pakistan, on which he harpened like a
flute-player, but whose birth he did not witness."
|
|
Many verses in Iqbal's poetry are prompted by a similar impulse. A
random example, a ghazal from Zabur-i Ajam published in 1927
illustrates his deepseated belief:
|
The Guide of the Era is about to appear from a
corner of the desert of Hijaz.
The carvan is about to move out from this far
flung valley.
I
have observed the kingly majesty on the
faces of the slaves.
Mahmud's splendour is visible in the dust of
Ayaz.
Life laments for ages both in the Ka'bah and
the idol-house.
So that a person who knows the secret may
appear.
The laments that burst forth from the breasts
of the earnestly devoted people. Are going
to initiate a new principle in the conscience of
the world.
Take this harp from my hand. I am done for.
My laments have turned into blood and that
blood is going to trickle from the strings of the
harp.
|
|
The
five couplets quoted above are prophetic. In the
first couplet Allama Iqbal indicates that the
appearance of the Guide of the Era was just
round the corner and the Caravan is about to
start and emerge from "this" valley. Iqbal does
not say that the awaited Guide has to emerge
from the centre of Hijaz. He says he is going
to appear from a far flung valley. For the poet the desert of
Hijaz, at times, serves as a symbol for the Muslim ummah. This
means that Muslims of the Indian sub-continent
are about to have a man who is destined to guide
them to the goal of victory and that victory is
to initiate the resurgence of Islam |
|
In
the second couplet, he breaks the news of the
dawn which is at hand. the slaves are turning
into magnificent masters. In the third couplet
he stresses the point that the Seers come to the
world of man after centuries. He himself was one
of those Seers. In the fourth couplet he refers
to some ideology or principle quite new to the
world which would effect the conscience of all
humanity. And what else could it be, if it were
not the right of self-determination for which
the Muslims of the sub-continent were about to
struggle. After the emergence of Pakistan this
right became a powerful reference. It served as
the advent of a new principle and continues to
provide impetus to Muslims in minority in other
parts of the world such as in the Philippines,
Thailand and North America. |
|
In
the fifth couplet Iqbal indicates that he would
die before the advent of freedom. He was sure
that his verses which epitomized his most
earnest sentiments would stand in good stead in
exhorting the Muslims of the sub-continent to
the goal of freedom.
|
|
Iqbal and Politics:
These thoughts crystallised at Allahabad Session (December, 1930)
of the All India Muslim League, when Iqbal in the Presidential
Address, forwarded the idea of a Muslim State in India: |
|
I
would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Provinces,
Sind and Baluchistan into a single State. Self-Government within
the British Empire or without the British Empire. The formation
of the consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to be
the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of the North-West
India. The
seed sown, the idea began to evolve and take root. It soon assumed
the shape of Muslim state or states in the western and eastern
Muslim majority zones as is obvious from the following lines of
Iqbal's letter, of June 21, 1937, to the Quaid-i Azam, only ten
months before the former's death: A
separate federation of Muslim Provinces, reformed on the lines I
have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure
a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of
Non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India and
Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination
just as other nations in India and outside India are. |
|
There are some critics of Allama Iqbal who assume that after
delivering the Allahbad Address he had slept over the idea of a
Muslim State. Nothing is farther from the truth. The idea remained
always alive in his mind. It had naturally to mature and hence,
had to take time. He was sure that the Muslims of sub-continent
were going to achieve an independent homeland for themselves. On
21st March, 1932, Allama Iqbal delivered the Presidential address
at Lahore at the annual session of the All-India Muslim
Conference. In that address too he stressed his view regarding
nationalism in India and commented on the plight of the Muslims
under the circumstances prevailing in the sub-continent. Having
attended the Second Round Table Conference in September, 1931 in
London, he was keenly aware of the deep-seated Hindu and Sikh
prejudice and unaccommodating attitude. He had observed the mind
of the British Government. Hence he reiterated his apprehensions
and suggested safeguards in respect of the Indian Muslims:
|
|
In so far then as the fundamentals of our policy are concerned,
I have got nothing fresh to offer. Regarding these I have
already expressed my views in my address to the All India Muslim
League. In the present address I propose, among other things, to
help you, in the first place, in arriving at a correct view of
the situation as it emerged from a rather hesitating behavior of
our delegation the final stages of the Round-Table Conference.
In the second place, I shall try, according to my lights to show
how far it is desirable to construct a fresh policy now that the
Premier's announcement at the last London Conference has again
necessitated a careful survey of the whole situation.
|
|
It
must be kept in mind that since Maulana Muhammad Ali had died in
Jan. 1931 and Quaid-i Azam had stayed behind in London, the
responsibility of providing a proper lead to the Indian Muslims
had fallen on him alone. He had to assume the role of a jealous
guardian of his nation till Quaid-i Azam returned to the
sub-continent in 1935.
The League and the Muslim Conference had become the play-thing
of petty leaders, who would not resign office, even after a vote
of non-confidence! And, of course, they had no organization in
the provinces and no influence with the masses. |
|
During the Third Round-Table Conference, Iqbal was invited by the
London National League where he addressed an audience which
included among others, foreign diplomats, members of the House of
Commons, Members of the House of Lords and Muslim members of the
R.T.C. delegation. In that gathering he dilated upon the situation
of the Indian Muslims. He explained why he wanted the communal
settlement first and then the constitutional reforms. He stressed
the need for provincial autonomy because autonomy gave the Muslim
majority provinces some power to safeguard their rights, cultural
traditions and religion. Under the central Government the Muslims
were bound to lose their cultural and religious entity at the
hands of the overwhelming Hindu majority. He referred to what he
had said at Allahabad in 1930 and reiterated his belief that
before long people were bound to come round to his viewpoint based
on cogent reason. |
|
In
his dialogue with Dr. Ambedkar Allama Iqbal expressed his desire
to see Indian provinces as autonomous units under the direct
control of the British Government and with no central Indian
Government. He envisaged autonomous Muslim Provinces in India.
Under one Indian union he feared for Muslims, who would suffer in
many respects especially with regard to their existentially
separate entity as Muslims.
Allama Iqbal's statement explaining the attitude of Muslim
delegates to the Round-Table Conference issued in December, 1933
was a rejoinder to Jawahar Lal Nehru's statement. Nehru had said
that the attitude of the Muslim delegation was based on "reactionarism."
Iqbal concluded his rejoinder with: |
|
In conclusion I must put a straight question to punadi Jawhar
Lal, how is India's problem to be solved if the majority
community will neither concede the minimum safeguards necessary
for the protection of a minority of 80 million people, nor
accept the award of a third party; but continue to talk of a
kind of nationalism which works out only to its own benefit?
This position can admit of only two alternatives. Either the
Indian majority community will have to accept for itself the
permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the
East, or the country will have to be redistributed on a basis of
religious, historical and cultural affinities so as to do away
with the question of electorates and the communal problem in its
present form. |
|
Allama Iqbal's apprehensions were borne out by the Hindu Congress
ministries established in Hindu majority province under the Act of
1935. Muslims in those provinces were given dastardly treatment.
This deplorable phenomenon added to Allama Iqbal's misgivings
regarding the future of Indian Muslims in case India remained
united. In his letters to the Quaid-i Azam written in 1936 and in
1937 he referred to an independent Muslim State comprising
North-Western and Eastern Muslim majority zones. Now it was not
only the North-Western zones alluded to in the Allahabad Address.
There are some within Pakistan and without, who insist that Allama
Iqbal never meant a sovereign Muslim country outside India. Rather
he desired a Muslim State within the Indian Union. A State within
a State. This is absolutely wrong. What he meant was understood
very vividly by his Muslim compatriots as well as the non-Muslims.
Why Nehru and others had then tried to show that the idea of
Muslim nationalism had no basis at all. Nehru stated:
|
|
This idea of a Muslim nation is the figment of a few
imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the
Press few people would have heard of it. And even if many people
believed in it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.
|
|
Iqbal and the Quaid-i Azam: Who could understand Allama Iqbal better than the Quaid-i Azam
himself, who was his awaited "Guide of the Era"? The Quaid-i Azam
in the Introduction to Allama Iqbal's letters addressed to him,
admitted that he had agreed with Allama Iqbal
regarding a State for Indian Muslims before the
letters death in April, 1938. The Quaid stated
His views were substantially in consonance with my own and had
finally led me to the same conclusions as a result of careful
examination and study of the constitutional problems facing
India and found expression in due course in the united will of
Muslim India as adumbrated in the Lahore Resolution of the
All-India Muslim League popularly known as the "Pakistan
Resolution" passed on 23rd March, 1940. |
|
Furthermore, it was Allama Iqbal who called upon Quaid-i Azam
Muhammad Ali Jinnah to lead the Muslims of India to their
cherished goal. He preferred the Quaid to other more experienced
Muslim leaders such as Sir Aga Khan, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Nawab
Muhammad Isma il Khan, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Nawab Hamid Ullah Khan
of Bhopal, Sir Ali Imam, Maulvi Tameez ud-Din Khan, Maulana Abul
Kalam, Allama al-Mashriqi and others. But Allama Iqbal had his own
reasons. He had found his "Khizr-i Rah", the veiled guide in
Quaid-i Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was destined to lead the
Indian branch of the Muslim Ummah to their goal of freedom. Allama
Iqbal stated: |
|
I
know you are a busy man but I do hope you won't mind my writing
to you often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to whom
the community has right to look up for safe guidance through the
storm which is coming to North-West India, and perhaps to the
whole of India.
Similar sentiments were expressed by him about three months before
his death. Sayyid Nazir Niazi in his book Iqbal Ke Huzur, has
stated that the future of the Indian Muslims was being discussed
and a tenor of pessimism was visible from what his friends said.
At this Allama Iqbal observed: |
|
There is only one way out. Muslim should strengthen Jinnah's
hands. They should join the Muslim League. Indian question, as
is now being solved, can be countered by our united front
against both the Hindus and the English. Without it our demands
are not going to be accepted. People say our demands smack of
communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to
the defence of our national existence. |
|
He continued:
The united front can be formed under the leadership of the
Muslim League. And the Muslim League can succeed only on account
of Jinnah. Now none but Jinnah is capable of leading the
Muslims.
Matlub ul-Hasan Sayyed stated that after the Lahore Resolution was
passed on March 23, 1940, the Quaid-i Azam said to him:
Iqbal is no more amongst us, but had he been alive he would have
been happy to know that we did exactly what he wanted us to do.
But
the matter does not end here. Allama Iqbal in his letter of March
29, 1937 to the Quaid-i Azam had said:
While we are ready to cooperate with other progressive parties
in the country, we must not ignore the fact that the whole
future of Islam as a moral and political force in Asia rests
very largely on a complete organization of Indian Muslims.
According to Allama Iqbal the future of Islam as a moral and
political force not only in India but in the whole of Asia rested
on the organization of the Muslims of India led by the Quaid-i
Azam. |
|
The
"Guide of the Era" Iqbal had envisaged in 1926, was found in the
person of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The "Guide" organized the Muslims
of India under the banner of the Muslim League and offered
determined resistance to both the Hindu and the English designs
for a united Hindu-dominated India. Through their united efforts
under the able guidance of Quaid-I Azam Muslims succeeded in
dividing India into Pakistan and Bharat and achieving their
independent homeland. As observed above, in Allama Iqbal's view,
the organization of Indian Muslims which achieved Pakistan would
also have to defend other Muslim societies in Asia. The carvan of
the resurgence of Islam has to start and come out of this Valley,
far off from the centre of the ummah. Let us see how and when,
Pakistan prepares itself to shoulder this august responsibility.
It is Allama Iqbal's prevision. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
