Articles on Sir Muhammad Iqbal
Muhammad Iqbal
Written by Khushwant Singh
Reproduced here for educational purposes only
Muhammad Iqbal
Iqbal wrote on a variety of subjects and his views changed with the times. It is not therefore wise to try to attach labels to him. To the Indian nationalist he appears a fervent nationalist who wrote, 'Of all the countries in the world, the best is our Hindustan, sarey jahan se accha Hindustan hamara, exhorted Hindus and Muslims to come together, build new shrines where they could worship together and who regarded every speck of dust of his country as divine. At the same time he considered Indian Muslims to be a people apart from other Indians. And while proclaiming that Islam did not recognise national boundaries, he supported the demand for a separate state for Indian Muslims. At one time Iqbal exhorted the peasantry to rise against its oppressors, uproot the mansions of the rich and set fire to crops which did not provide sustenance for them. At another time he wrote qaseedas (eulogies) in praise of kings and princes from whom he received patronage. It could be said that Iqbal sang in many voices: he was a nationalist as well as an internationalist, a Marxist revolutionary as well as a supporter of traditional Muslim values and a pan-Islamist. Iqbal was oblivious of these contradictions. If he was consistent in anything, it was in the quality of his compositions. Whatever he wrote was born of passion and executed with the skill of a master craftsman. Few poets of the world have been able to cram so much erudition and philosophy in verse; and fewer still use words both as colours on an artist's palette to paint pictures as well as deploy them as notes of a lute to create music. He was fired by a creative zeal which could only be explained as divinely inspired. It is no wonder that although a devout Muslim, Iqbal could not resist the temptation to bandy words with God. The poems here translated are only two examples of man the creator questioning the ordinances of the Creator of mankind and the universe.It would not be correct to explain the various facets of Iqbal's writing and his inconsistencies as the process of development of his personality. It is best to take what comes as it comes and if it appears to be at variance with something he had said before to shrug one's shoulders, relax and enjoy the poetry. Scholars talk of Iqbal's philosophy as if it were logically developed scheme of values. It is not. His earlier poems breathe a sense of disbelief in the world; like the Hindus he regarded it as an illusion(maya) and like them he spoke of the futility of striving. Three years in Europe (1905-1908) brought about a complete reversal in his beliefs. The world became real; life had a purpose to serve; latent in every man was a superman who could be roused to his full height by ceaseless striving to create a better world. This post-European phase has been designed as Iqbal's philosophy of khudi. It is yet another word that eludes exact translation. Khudi , is self khudi could be selfhood. Khud could be the ego; khudi, the super-ego. As used by Iqbal what comes closest to khudi is assertive will-power imbued with moral values. This is apparent from these oft-quoted lines:
Ki har taqdeer sey pehley
Khuda bandey ko khud poocchey
Bata, 'Teri raza kya hai?'
Endow your will with such power
That at every turn of fate it so be
That God Himself asks of His slave
'What is it that pleases thee?'
What exactly did Iqbal want human beings to strive for? Obviously towards some kind of perfection. But he does not care to spell it out in any detail. It would appear that for man ceaseless striving was not to be for material gains in this world or with an eye on rewards in life hereafter. It was to be utterly selfless and motivated by love for mankind. The world Iqbal uses for this kind of striving is faqr from which the word faqir is derived. For Iqbal it does not mean beggary but quite the opposite: it means pride in the little that comes from righteous endeavour(kasb-i-hilal). Thus to Iqbal a man who inherits wealth without having striven for it is worse than a beggar, while a poor man who works for the good of humanity is truly rich. Iqbal's combination of khudi and faqr comes close to the Hindu concept of nishkama karma (action without expectation of reward) lauded in the Gita. Iqbal writes:
Mohabbat fateh-i-alam;
Jehad-e-zindgani men
Hain yeh mardon kee shamsheeren.
In man's crusade of life these weapons has he:
Conviction that his cause is just;
Resolution to strive till eternity;
Compassion that embraces all humanity.
Jannat bhi jahannum bhi;
Yeh khaki, apni fitrat men
Na noori hai na nari hai.
'Tis how we act that makes our lives;
We can make it heaven, we can make it hell.
In the clay of which we are made
Neither light nor darkness (of evil) dwells.
Na karen to sarapa afsoon afsana.
If we nurture our will, life will have purpose;
If we fail to do so, it will be a tale of frustration from the beginning to the end.
Iqbal would have had little patience with the current obsession with meditation (transcendental or otherwise) to induce peace of mind, because he believed that anything worthwhile only came out of a ceaselessly agitated mind:
Key terey bahar ki maujon me iztirab nahin.
May God bring a storm in your life;
The sea of your life is placid, its waves devoid of tumult.
What was true of the individual Iqbal believed to be equally true of races and communities. According to him the real sign of vitality in races is that their fortunes change everyday:
Keh subah-o-sham badaltee hai inki taqdeeren.
In every age this alone marks a vibrant race
That every morn and eve its fortunes change.
It is strange that while Iqbal wrote so passionately of the need to struggle he gave the heart more importance than the head, and love a greater role in creativity than reason. In a poem the heart thus addresses the head:
Too khuda joo, khuda numa main.
Too makan-o-zaman sey rishta bapa
Tairey sidrah aashian hoon main.
From you comes knowledge, from me ecstasy;
You search for God, I show the way.
You are attached to time and place;
I am the bird that ascends to the seventh heaven.
Choon marg ayad, tabassum bar-lab-i-oost
You ask me of the marks of a man of faith?
When death comes to him, he has a smile on his lips.
Iqbal's poetry is largely didactic and exhortative. He hardly if ever bothered to write on the love of a man for a woman, and totally avoided romantic amorousness. He is said to have indulged in pornographic friends and has never been published.
The facts of Iqbal's life can be briefly stated. He was born in Sialkot on 9 November 1877, the youngest child of a tailor, Shaikh Noor Muhammad and his wife, Imam Bibi. The family had been Kashmiri Brahmins and had converted to Islam some generations earlier. Young Muhammad Iqbal was brought up as an orthodox Muslim and early in life taught the Koran and commentaries on the sacred text. He also learnt Persian and later English. As a boy he was keener on sport than on studies and had a passionate love for birds. Nevertheless he finished his school in 1892 winning a scholarship to the Scottish Mission College. He was only fifteen years old when he was married to Karim Bibi. Though the marriage was a mesalliance, Karim Bibi bore Iqbal three children. In 1895 (at the age of eighteen) having taken his intermediate examination, Iqbal joined Government College, Lahore, to study Arabic, English and philosophy. He took his degree two years later in 1899, winning the coveted Gold Medal for outstanding scholastic achievement.
Iqbal had begun to compose verses while still at school. But it was in college at Lahore that he first recited his compositions at various symposia (mushairah) in the old city. He was an instant success. After much persuasion by his friend Shaikh (later Sir) Abdul Qadir he agreed to let his poems be published in the literary magazine Makhzan. His fame spread to the Urdu speaking world. He had already attracted the attention of Professor (later Sir) Thomas Arnold, under whose guidance he took his Master's degree. For three years (1901-1904) he was Reader in Arabic at the Islamia and Government College and also studied law. He took the Provincial Civil Service examination, but was fortunately disqualified on medical grounds.
In 1905 Iqbal proceeded to Europe. He took a degree in philosophy from Cambridge University as well as a doctorate from Munich. Within a few months he had picked up enough German to be able to read, write and converse in the language. for a time he switched to writing in Persian and was avidly read by classical scholars.
Three years' sojourn in Europe brought about many changes in Iqbal's way of life and thinking. He had an affair with Atiya Faizee, a young uninhibited girl from a well-to-do Muslim family of Bombay. Whatever else this involvement did to Iqbal ( a married man and father of three children), he recoiled from what might be described as the beginnings of the women's liberation movement: his views of woman's place in society remained those of an orthodox Muslim. A similar contradiction appeared in his view of life. While he retained his admiration for the other-worldliness of Sufi mystics, he rejected their belief in the transitoriness of the world and the unreality f life. While he was nauseated by Wester commercialism and acquisitiveness, he lamented the loss of the Muslims' empire and was saddened by the decadence of Islam. It was in these years in Europe that he evolved his belief in the necessity of reinforcing one's will-power (khudi). It was to be at once passionate and compassionate, assertive but non-acquisitive. Power and wealth, he believed, were good only if acquired by effort by effort but not if it came through inheritance or effortless windfall of chance. Although he was undoubtedly influenced by European philosophers like Nietszche and Bergson and there were aspects of the Nietszchean vision of a world dominated by supermen, Iqbal's khudi remained closer to the Hindu concept of nishkama karma-doing one's duty without expectation of reward- than to the European concept which later found expression in the Nazi theory of the supremacy of the Aryan race. In Europe Iqbal became so convinced that a life of action was far superior to intellectual or poetic pursuit that he toyed with the idea of giving up writing. He was dissuaded from doing so and returned to Lahore to write some of his most powerful poetry, including Shikwa ('Complaint') followed a few years later by Jawab-i-Shikwa ('Answer to the Plaint').
Domestic happiness continued to elude Iqbal. In 1909 he contracted a second marriage to Sardar Begum, and without consummating the relationship took a third wife Mukhtar Begum. On Mukhtar Begum's death in 1924, he remarried Sardar Begum who bore him a son Javed (b. 1924) and a daughter Munirah (b. 1930). Five years after the daughter's birth, Sardar Begum died leaving Iqbal with the burden of two families including two grieving children.
Iqbal did not make much of a mark as a lawyer, but his fame as a poet reached its pinnacle during World War I and was given official accolade in 1924 by the conferment of a knighthood on him. Two years later Sir Muhammad Iqbal was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council, and in 1931 he was a member of the Muslim delegation to the first Round Table Conference in London. Thereafter politics began to take more and more of his time, and he became involved in a movement for a separate Muslim state. His health also began to deteriorate. Malfunctioning of the kidneys was followed by cataract in the eyes and then a septic throat that made his speechless. He knew his time was limited. A few days before the end he composed a verse in Persian lamenting his own departure. He died during the night of 20 April 1938. The next day he was buried beside the northern wall of the Badshahi Mosque. Since then his grave has become a place of pilgrimage for all lovers of the Urdu language
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