Special report: The enduring vision of Iqbal 1877-1938
Allama Muhammad Iqbal was a distinguished poet, a brilliant scholar and a gifted philosopher, but, above all else, he was a true visionary. Pakistan was fortunate to have him as its ideological founder. It was at the Allahabad session of the Muslim League in 1930 that Iqbal became the first politician to articulate the two-nation theory that ultimately led to the creation of Pakistan on August 14, 1947. | Photo: The Allama Iqbal Collection in the possession of Muneeb Iqbal
The name, not the philosophy, lives on
By Khaled Ahmed
PAKISTAN’S ideological journey has reshaped the great poet-philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal into a patron of its hardening worldview. Reviewing how he has been ‘reinterpreted’ into an ideological platitude is now hazardous because of his state-approved and clerically-backed identity as an orthodox thinker opposed to all modernist revision. At times, secular commentators longing for an identity rollback consign him to the category of ‘orthodox’ while praising Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as the true modernist. There is, however, steady evidence from his life that defies this orthodox labelling.
The climactic moment in Iqbal’s relationship with Pakistan came on December 25, 1986; some 48 years after his death. It happened during a national seminar presided over by General Ziaul Haq in Karachi on the birth anniversary of the founder of the state, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The topic of the seminar was, What is the Problem Number One of Pakistan? Present among the invitees was the son of Allama Iqbal, then a sitting judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. In his speech on the occasion, Justice Javed explained why his father was opposed to Hudood (Quranic punishments) which Gen Zia had promulgated in Pakistan.
The controversial phrasing from the Sixth Lecture in Allama Iqbal’s book, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, was: “The Shariat values (Ahkam) resulting from this application (e.g. rules relating to penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations.”
The reaction from Gen Zia was dismissive of Allama Iqbal rather than the Hudood he had imposed to appease his vast hinterland of clerical support. He had gotten into trouble with the clergy when his Federal Shariat Court decided that since stoning to death (Rijm) was not mentioned in the Quran it could not be a Hadd, that is, a punishment in the Penal Code. He had to change the Court to retain Rijm.
But Iqbal was prophetic: Pakistan has not stoned a single woman to death despite Rijm being on the statute book, nor has it been able to chop off hands for stealing. More literalist Iran gave up the ghastly practice of Rijm in 2014.
Pakistan is disturbed today by the continuing practice of bank interest after the Federal Shariat Court banned it in 1991 as Riba (usury) specifically mentioned in the Quran as also by Aristotle in his Nicomachian Ethic. Islamic banking which actually excludes the taking of Riba does so under a policy of complex self-confessed Heela (subterfuge).
In his publication Ilmul Iqtisad (1904), Iqbal’s first book in Urdu as an introduction to how a modern economy worked, he explained and clearly accepted bank interest as the lifeblood of commerce, knowing that it was considered banned by the clerics and accounted for so few Muslims in India’s commercial sector. He did so by accepting Sir Syed Ahmad Khan’s view that “interest-banking was not the same as Riba/usury”.
HUDOOD AND IJTIHAD
Iqbal couldn’t have found approval in the Pakistan of today, much like Jinnah himself after he declared his preference for the Lockean state on August 11, 1947. To extend the argument, Iqbal was also opposed to the Fiqh (case law) favouring the Law of Evidence that discriminated against women and the non-Muslim citizens of the state. That he was unhappy with and scared of the traditionalist Ulema is testified by his arguments in the Lectures; there is also evidence that he inclined to a ‘liberal’ version of Islam in the new state.
Towards the end of his life he was collecting material to write on Fiqh and had been corresponding with the traditionalist Ulema to elucidate points that he presumably wanted discussed in his new work. He was not a trained scholar (Aalim) and was not accepted as such by the ulema, but he thought himself qualified to produce a work of Ijtihad (reinterpretation).
His son, the late Justice Javed Iqbal, wrote: “The Jinnah-Iqbal correspondence, discussing shariah, points to the establishment of a state based on Islam’s welfare legislation; it does not propose that in the new state any laws pertaining to cutting of the hands (for theft) and stoning to death (for fornication) would be enforced.”
According to Javed Iqbal’s biography of Allama Iqbal, Zindarood (1989), Allama Iqbal read his first thesis on Ijtihad in December 1924 at the Habibya Hall of Islamia College, Lahore. The reaction from the traditionalist Ulema was immediate: he was declared Kafir (non-believer) for the new thoughts expressed in the paper. Maulavi Abu Muhammad Didar Ali actually handed down a Fatwa (edict) of his apostasy. In a letter written to a friend, Iqbal opined that the Ulema had deserted the movement started by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and were now under the influence of the Khilafat Committee from which he (Iqbal) had resigned.
Allama Iqbal’s intent in reinterpreting Hudood becomes clear when he quotes Maulana Shibli Numani, who had written Seerat-un-Nabi, his renowned multi-volume biography of the Holy Prophet: “It is therefore a good method to pay regard to the habits of society while considering punishments so that the generations that come after the times of the Imam are not treated harshly.”
LIKE NO OTHER
Allama Iqbal was a prodigy. In 1885, he stood first in grade one in Scotch Mission School, Sialkot, and began to be tutored in Persian and Arabic in a mosque. He was in class nine when as a teenager he started writing his juvenile poetry in Urdu. He passed matriculation in first division, winning a medal with scholarship. In his first year at Scotch Mission College, he started versifying under the pen-name of Iqbal and was published in literary journals.
He passed his BA exam in first division and won medals in Arabic and English. Three years later, though he passed his MA Philosophy in third division, he was the only one who passed and received the gold medal. He was appointed professor of Philosophy at the Government College, Lahore, chosen by Professor Thomas Arnold – the British orientalist who wrote a book proving that Islam was spread in the subcontinent not by the sword but by humanist preaching – who became his patron.
Iqbal was additionally appointed as the Macleod Arabic Reader at Oriental College, Lahore, on a monthly salary of 72 rupees and one anna. Later, he took time off from Oriental College to teach English at the Government College. His poems had started showing influence from Spinoza, Hegel, Goethe, Ghalib, Bedil, Emerson, Longfellow and Wordsworth.
He couldn’t disagree with Sir Syed Ahmad Khan whom he regarded as the Baruch Spinoza (d.1677) of Islam, rationalising and demystifying the scriptures. His job description at Oriental College included the teaching of Economics to the students of the Bachelor of Oriental Learning in Urdu, and translating into Urdu works from English and Arabic.
PIONEER OF SEPARATION
Lahore lionised Iqbal as the thinker-poet of the city who could spellbind in a Mushaira while publishing erudite papers on such mystics as al-Jili whose concept of Insan al-Kamil was reborn in him with the help of Nietzsche and his ‘superman’ and ‘will to power’ but without Nietzsche’s rejection of morality – his “not goodness but strength” slogan. This was before he went to Europe (1905-08) doing his Master’s and Bar at Cambridge and his PhD with his thesis, ‘The Evolution of Metaphysics in Iran’ at the Munich University, becoming unbelievably proficient in German within three months.
The period 1908-25, back in Lahore, saw him produce some of his Urdu masterpieces while practising law at the Lahore High Court. Reacting to Hindu revivalist movements, he journeyed from his pluralist view of India to a ‘preservative’ posture, advocating separate electorates and developing the first geographical map of ‘separation’ of the Muslim community in the northeast and the southeast within the subcontinent. All-India Muslim League courted him as the leading Muslim genius and listened to his ‘separatist’ thesis at its Allahabad session in 1930.
He contended that his idea of an autonomous Muslim state was not original but had been derived from the Arya Samaj Hindu revivalist vision of Lala Lajpat Rai of Punjab who first recommended ‘separating’ the Muslims. The view he put forward in his address remained pluralist which Pakistan neglected in 1949: “... [N]or should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states”.
As for Iqbal’s Nietzschean yearning for self-empowerment, Jinnah was made a practical example of it, as noted oddly by none other than Saadat Hasan Manto in one of his sketches.
Jinnah said this at the 1937 Lucknow session of the League: “It does not require political wisdom to realise that all safeguards and settlements would be a scrap of paper, unless they are backed up by power. Politics means power and not relying only on cries of justice or fair-play or goodwill.”
It was this separate empowerment of Muslims in the face of such Hindu revivalist movements as Shuddhi (purification) and Sangathan (unification) that made Iqbal disagree with the Deobandi scholar Husain Ahmad Madani over the idea of India as a nation-state where Muslims and Hindus would live as one nation.
Like Lala Lajpat Rai, another Indian genius, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s constitution, wanted Muslims to be given a separate state and wrote his book Thoughts on Pakistan (1941) which was welcomed by Jinnah who then asked everyone to read it to legitimise the League’s campaign for Pakistan.
ON THE SAME PAGE WITH JINNAH
Iqbal’s legally trained mind and his ability to write scholarly tracts quite apart from his ability to write the long poem or masnavi – abandoned by most poets of note after him – qualified him for all the three Round Table Conferences in London to present the case of the Muslims. His Allahabad address at the All-India Muslim League conference in 1930 was actually a learned survey of the nature of the modern state as imagined by such Western philosophers as Rousseau and could not have been comprehended by most Muslim Leaguers still basking in the afterglow of a doomed Khilafat Movement.
Noting that Pakistan’s non-Muslims observe the Independence Day of Pakistan three days earlier, Dawn editorialised on August 11, 2017, on how Pakistan first tried to suppress, then set aside, the August 11, 1947, message of the Quaid-i-Azam at the Constituent Assembly: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed. That has nothing to do with the business of the state.”
It is not only the founder of the state, Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah, that Pakistan has set aside; it is also the philosopher of the state, Allama Mohammad Iqbal, who has been rejected. Seventy years after its foundation, the state is malfunctioning and religion is a major cause of the shifting of its writ to the non-state actors. Denigrated are human rights – of the minorities and women – on the basis of a coercive interpretation of religion. So much so, that the faith-based but unexamined constitutional provisions in Articles 62/63 have finally destabilised governance by causing conflict between state institutions.
The writer is Consulting Editor at Newsweek Pakistan.
This story is the eleventh part of a series of 16 special reports under the banner of ‘70 years of Pakistan and Dawn’. Visit the archive to read the previous reports.
*HBL has been an indelible part of the nation’s fabric since independence, enabling the dreams of millions of Pakistanis. At HBL, we salute the dreamers and dedicate the nation’s 70th anniversary to you. Jahan Khwab, Wahan HBL.*
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The life and times of Allama Iqbal
SIR Muhammad Iqbal was as much an amazing dreamer as he was a well-grounded politician. The way he constantly walked the fine line separating the two entities was in itself a tribute to a great mind.
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Convergence and divergence of views
By Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed
ALLAMA Muhammad lqbal and Quaid i Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah are undoubtedly the two most important and influential leaders of the 20th century Muslim India. Their mutual relationship, as such, is a subject of substantial significance. Quite in contrast to what official historiography portrays, the two cannot be stereotyped as one and the same. An objective insight would suggest that they had their respective positions, and points of convergence and divergence, on issues of significance.
They, for sure, had a relationship of great respect for each other. Jinnah called lqbal the “sage philosopher” and the “national poet of Islam”, and Iqbal, in a letter to Jinnah, said: “Your genius will discover some way out of our present difficulties”. The divergence of views related to their perceptions of the Muslim community’s interests in India; lqbal seems to be focused on the north western region as the base for the expression of Muslim power, while Jinnah seems to have an all India strategy.
The correspondence between the two is little in terms of volume, but speaks volumes about their reliance on each other, particularly in the context of the Punjab, and also on their respective thrusts. Iqbal wrote to Jinnah 13 letters between May 1936 and November 1937. These were published after lqbal’s death with a foreword by Jinnah. Unfortunately, the replies sent by Jinnah are not available anymore as the trustees of lqbal’s estate, much to Jinnah’s disappointment, could not trace them. Introducing Iqbal’s letters, Jinnah wrote that lqbal’s “views were substantially in consonance with my own”.
The immediate context of the letters is the politics of the Punjab. Following the 1935 Act, elections had to be held in the province. The Unionist Party had already been in power. League contested the elections but lost. Jinnah got into an agreement with Punjab’s premier, Sir Sikandar Hayat, as a result of which League accepted to reduce its role in the Punjab, while the Unionists accepted Jinnah as the representative of the Muslim-majority province in negotiations with the government for the realisation of the central part of the constitution on which Indian organisations had yet to agree.
Jinnah wishes to accord a role to Iqbal in making the League effective. Iqbal takes great interest in the task. He emphasises the need to make the League a mass organisation and also speaks forcefully for addressing the economic problems. However, Iqbal also thinks that Muslim cultural protection and expression had priority over economic considerations. Despite his reservations about the Communal Award, he accepted it for it recognised the separate political existence of the Muslims.
Iqbal also thought that the redistribution of the country should be done in a manner that may consolidate Muslim-majority areas. Earlier in his 1930 Allahabad address, he had denounced the Lucknow Pact, which, to him, “originated in a false view of Indian nationalism and deprived the Muslims of India of chances of acquiring any political power in India”. None else but Jinnah was the architect of the Pact which had brought to him the title of the ‘Ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity’. Iqbal criticised the Pact because it gave weightage to non Muslims in the Punjab and Bengal in return for getting in the Hindu-majority provinces weightage for the Muslims.
Iqbal thought that this compromise hindered the realisation of Muslim power in their majority provinces. Now in his correspondence, he goes to the extent of saying that “the Muslims of north west India and Bengal ought at present to ignore Muslim-minority provinces”. This he thought would be in the interest of the Muslim-majority provinces. One does not actually know what precise replies Jinnah gave to him, but it seems that at least at that stage Jinnah continued with his all India strategy for the resolution of the communal issue and making a convincing case for the Muslims of India.
Reproduced below is a selection of lqbal’s letters, generally beginning with “My dear Mr. Jinnah” and ending with “Yours sincerely, Muhammad lqbal”:
AUGUST 23, 1936
My dear Mr. Jinnah,
There is some talk of an understanding between Punjab Parliamentary Board and the Unionist Party. I should like you to let me know what you think of such a compromise and to suggest conditions for the same. I read in the papers that you have brought about a compromise between the Bengal Proja Party. I should like to know the terms and the conditions.
MARCH 20, 1937
It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view, cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem.
APRIL 22, 1937
As the situation is becoming grave and the Muslim feeling in the Punjab is rapidly becoming pro-Congress for reasons which it is unnecessary to detail, I would request you to consider and decide the matter as early as possible. The session of All-India Muslim League is postponed till August, and the situation demands an early restatement of the Muslim policy. If the Convention is preceded by a tour of prominent Muslim leaders, the meeting of the Convention is sure to be a great success.
MAY 28, 1937
Our political institutions have never thought of improving the lot of Muslims generally. The problem of bread is becoming more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that it is equally due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him. But it is bound to come. The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal [Nehru] is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is: how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure that Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before.
After a long and careful study of Islamic Law, I have come to the conclusion that if this System of Law is properly understood and applied, at least the right to subsistence is secured to everybody. But the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim State or States. This has been my honest conviction for many years and I still believe this to be the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India. If such a thing is impossible in India, the only other alternative is a civil war which as a matter of fact has been going on for some time in the shape of Hindu Muslim riots.
It is clear to my mind that if Hinduism accepts social democracy, it must cease to be Hinduism. For Islam the acceptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam. The modern problems therefore are more easy to solve for the Muslims than for the Hindus. But in order to make it possible for Muslim India to solve the problem, it is necessary to redistribute the country and to provide one or more Muslim States with absolute majorities. Don’t you think that the time for such a demand has already arrived? Perhaps this is the best reply you can give to the atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal Nehru.
JUNE 21, 1937
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. I tell you that we are actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would become universal in no time.
I have carefully studied the whole situation and believe that the real cause of these events is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political, i.e., the desires of the Sikhs and Hindus to intimidate Muslims even in the Muslim-majority provinces. And the new constitution is such that even in the Muslim-majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non Muslims.
The only thing that the Communal Award grants to Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India. In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is a redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, linguistic affinities.
Personally I think that the Muslims of north west and Bengal ought at present to ignore Muslim-minority provinces. This is the best course to adopt in the interest of both Muslim-majority provinces. It would therefore be better to hold the coming session of the League in the Punjab, and not in a Muslim-minority province.
AUGUST 11, 1937
Events have made it abundantly clear that the League ought to concentrate all its activities on the north west Indian Musalmans. The enthusiasm for the League is rapidly increasing in the Punjab, and I have no doubt that the holding of the session in Lahore will be a turning point in the history of the League and an important step towards mass contact.
OCTOBER 7, 1937
I suggest that the League may state or re state its policy relating to the Communal Award in the shape of a suitable resolution. In the Punjab and I hear also in Sind attempts are being made by misguided Muslims themselves to alter it in the interests of the Hindus. Such men fondly believe that by pleasing the Hindus they will be able to retain their power.
NOVEMBER 1, 1937
For the present I request you to kindly send me as early as possible a copy of the agreement which was signed by Sir Sikandar and which I am told is in your possession. I further want to ask you whether you agreed to the Provincial Parliamentary Board being controlled by the Unionist Party. Sir Sikandar tells me that you agreed to this and therefore he claims that Unionist Party must have majority in the Board. This as far as I know does not appear in the Jinnah-Sikandar agreement.
NOVEMBER 10, 1937
After having several talks with Sir Sikandar and his friends I am now definitely of the opinion that Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than the complete control of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board. In your pact with him it is mentioned that the Parliamentary Board will be reconstituted and that the Unionists will have majority in the Board. I wrote to you some time ago to enquire whether you did agree to the Unionist majority in the Board. So far I have not heard from you. I personally see no harm in giving him the majority that he wants but he goes beyond the pact when he wants a complete change in the officeholders of the League, especially the Secretary who had done so much for the League. He also wishes that the finances of the League should be controlled by his men. All this to my mind amounts to capturing of the League and then killing it. Knowing the opinion of the province as I do I cannot take the responsibility of handing over the League to Sir Sikandar and his friends. The pact has already damaged the prestige of the League in this province; and the tactics of the Unionists may damage it still further.
Yours sincerely Muhammad Iqbal Bar-at-Law
Correspondence has been excerpted from Letters of lqbal, edited and compiled by B.A. Dar, and published by Lahore-based Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 1978.
The writer is Adjunct Professor, Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi.
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Jawab-i-Shikwah – The message of Iqbal
Translation by Altaf Husain
Complain ye not of heart unkind! Nor speak of tyranny! When Love no bondage knows, Why should Beauty not be free?
Each stack and barn it sets on fire, This lightning-like New Age, Nor howling wild nor garden gay Escapes its flaming rage;
This new fire feeds on fuel old,— The nations of the past, And they too burn to whom was sent God’s Messenger, the last.
But if the faith of Abraham There, once again, is born, Where leaps this flame, flowers will bloom, And laugh its blaze to scorn.
Yet, let the gardener not be sad To see the garden’s plight, For soon its branches will be gay With buds, like stars of light;
The withered leaves and weeds will pass, And all its sweepings old; For there, again, will martyr-blood In roses red unfold. But look! a hint of russet hue, Brightening the eastern skies, The glow on yon horizon’s brow, Heralds a new sunrise.
In Life’s old garden a nation lived Who all its fruits enjoyed, While others longed in vain, while some The winter blasts destroyed;
Its trees are legion; some decay, While others flush with bloom, And thousands still their birth await, Hid in the garden’s womb;
A symbol of luxuriance, The Tree of Islam reigns, Its fruits achieved with centuries Of garden-tending pains.
The robe is free from dust of home, Not thine such narrow ties, That Yousuf thou, whose Canaan sweet, In every Egypt lies;
Thy Qafila can ne’er disperse; Thou holdst the starting bells; Nought else is needed, if thy will Thy onward march impels. Thou candle-tree! thy wick-like root Its top with flame illumes, Thy Thought is fire, its very breath All future care consumes.
And thou shall suffer no surcease Should Iran’s star decline, ‘Tis not the vessel which decides The potency of wine;
‘Tis proved to all the world, from tales Of Tartar conquerors, The Kaaba brave defenders found In temple-worshippers.
On thee relies the bark of God, Adrift beyond the bar, The new-born age is dark as night, And thou its dim pole-star.
The Bulgars march! The fiend of war In fearful fury breathes; The message comes: “Sleepers, awake! The Balkan cauldron seethes.”
Thou deemest this a cause of grief, Thy heart is mortified; But nay, thy pride, thy sacrifice, Thus, once again, are tried. Beneath thy foes if chargers neigh, Why tremblest thou in fright? For never, never, shall their breath Extinguish Heaven’s light.
Not yet have other nations seen, What thou art truly worth, The realm of Being has need of thee For perfecting this earth.
If aught yet keeps this world alive, ’Tis thine impetuous zeal, And thou shall rise its ruling star. And thou shalt shape its weal.
This is no time for idle rest, Yet much remains undone; The lamp of Tauheed needs thy touch To make it shame the sun!
The translator was the editor of Dawn. This translation was first published in Dawn on April 21, 1948, on the 10th death anniversary of Allama Muhammad Iqbal.
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Chughtai & Iqbal: Poetry made visible
By S.A. Rehman
WHEN Chughtai was only 29, he brought out a superbly illustrated edition of the Divan of the famous Urdu Poet, Ghalib, and named it ‘Muraqqa-i-Chughtai’. Iqbal contributed a foreword to that publication and described it as “a unique enterprise in modern Indian painting and printing”. Now that the artist and his art have both reached maturity, he has conjured up the practical idealism of Iqbal by the magic of his brush, in what bids fair to be his magnum opus.
The question may well be asked – why has Chughtai devoted the fullness of his artistic genius to this reverential tribute to Iqbal? The answer is plain. Iqbal was the apostle of Muslim renaissance and the ideological inspirer of Pakistan, though he did not live long enough to witness the translation of his dream into reality. He was the Poet-Philosopher of the East and in his time, the best representative and symbol of that culture in which Chughtai has his roots and with which he has maintained a vital contact in his life-work. It was he who quickened the Indian Muslims to [have a] sense of their high destiny.
Iqbal’s versatile genius was equally at home in three languages – Urdu, Persian and English. In the former two, he has left us volumes of exquisite verse that ensure him a place among the immortals of literature. The first collection of his Urdu poems, Bang-i-Dara, came out in 1924. The Bal-i-Jibril (his acknowledged masterpiece in the Urdu language) and the Zarb-i-Kalim, were published in 1935 and 1936 respectively while the Armughan-i-Hijaz (which also included some Persian verse) appeared posthumously in 1938. His central philosophical theme found expression in poetical form in his Persian poem, the Asrar-i-Khudi (1914) and its supplement, the Ramuz-i-Bekhudi (1918). The Persian Payam-i-Mashriq, was written in response to Goethe’s West-Osterliche Divan (1922). The Zabur-i-Ajam and Pas Chih Bayad Kard Cum Musafir, followed in 1927 and 1936 respectively, and his major work, the Javid Nameh – the Divine Comedy of the East – in 1932.
Among his English prose works, pre-eminence belongs to ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ which has been published by the Oxford University Press – a monumental book which reveals the immense sweep of his scholarship extending from a profound study of Eastern religious literature to a critical appreciation of modern thought. There is also his Doctorate thesis titled, ‘The Development of Meta-physics in Persia’ (1908).
Iqbal, in his younger days, had passed through the phase of ardent nationalism and sung the songs of a united India marching to freedom from the alien yoke. Though he retained his abhorrence of Colonialism and Imperialism right till the end of his life, he soon outgrew the shackles of territorial nationalism as a political creed. He also condemned blood-relationship as a basis of human unity, describing it as earth-rootedness and a form of barbarism.
“Humanity,” he declared, “needs three things today – a spiritual interpretation of the Universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual and basic principles of a universal import directing the evolution of human society on a spiritual basis.”
These principles he found embodied in the Islamic conception of life, which cuts across all geographical, racial and other social barriers and visualises an ideological community traditional in its values, progressive in its outlook and reconciling the individual and the community, church and state, the ideal and the real into one harmonious whole. He could not countenance the dichotomy of religious and political values that prevailed in the West.
The theistic Islamic socialism which declares land to be for God and makes property a trust in the hands of owners, was, for Iqbal, the social system of the future, in preference to materialistic communism with its class war and regimentation of thought and action. To those who were inclined to cavil at his ostensible parochialism, he pointed out that the object of his Persian poems was not to make a case for Islam. He was aiming at a universal social reconstruction and in the process, he found it philosophically impossible to ignore a social system which expressly avows a universal humanistic code of life. He did not regard philosophy as the handmaid of religion.
Egohood, or Personality, is the keynote of Iqbal’s philosophy. This is for him the touchstone of all art, literature, ethics and religion. That which strengthens the ego is good; that which weakens it is bad. The degree of reality of an individual varies with the degree of the feeling of egohood. Personality is a state of tension and the preservation of that state by sustained conscious effort, tends to make us immortal. Personal immortality is possible but it has to be won. In this life, by educating his ego on the right lines, man can advance to that level of personality which may be termed God’s vice-regency on earth. Such a person is the goal of humanity, the Perfect Man in whom the highest power is united with the highest knowledge and in whose life, thought and action, instinct and reason become one. His advent will establish the Kingdom of God on Earth.
It is beauty allied with power in Iqbal’s poetry that has impelled Chughtai’s gifted brush to transmute his ideas into his inimitable combination of colours and lines that, in the words of Dr. James H. Cousins, “seem to be less lines of painting than of some inaudible poetry made visible”. His sensitivity and the quality of pictorial lyricism that characterise his paintings, have already assured the artist a niche in the temple of fame and I feel sure that the wealth of imaginative truth that he has offered us in this volume will endure in the coffers of time, long after some of the present-day aberrations that pass muster under the generous name of modern art, have sunk into the limbo of oblivion.
Excerpts and Photos Courtesy: Amal-e-Chughtai, published by the Chughtai Foundation Lahore 1968.
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The profession’s lone constant
By Khurram Husain
AMID all the changes that are buffeting the profession of journalism as the digital age undergoes one revolution after another, investigative journalism will remain the one constant. Platforms will change, presentation is being revolutionised while news-gathering is finding vast new areas from where to harvest its content with the proliferation of social media. But the recent past has shown that investigative journalism has retained its ability to rock the established powers in profound ways.
The biggest investigative scoop of recent times was undoubtedly the Panama Papers leak, bringing down governments around the world and justifiably earning for the International Centre for Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) a Pulitzer Prize.
And this is not the only example. The Dawn exclusive headlined, Act against militants or risk international isolation – the story that came to be famously (or infamously) called ‘Dawn leaks’ – created a national stir the likes of which journalism has rarely created in this country.
And, prior to that, the Dawn series of exclusives in collaboration with Wikileaks brought out important details of the war on terror, such as the fact that the drone attacks raining down on the tribal areas were coordinated with the military establishment.
In an era when the news profession is being permeated with commercial interests as well as planted news, and shaped powerfully by the new digital platforms that are ‘democratising’ the dissemination of opinion and information, investigative reporting has emerged as the most resilient and enduring part of the old world of journalism. In the future, too, it will remain the one guiding thread to connect the new journalism with the old. Investigative reporting has retained, if not increased, its significance for three primary reasons. First, the wide array of skills and competencies required to properly carry out investigative work means it can never be ‘democratised’ in the way more standard breaking news, and even more so, opinion, can be.
Second, even as the tools of communication proliferate around the world, it is possible to argue that transparency has not kept pace, and the centres of power have become more opaque even as the tools of surveillance available to them have increased. This increases the demand for investigative work, as was illustrated by the Panama Papers that shone a light on one of the most opaque corners of the world. It was also illustrated by the leaks of Edward Snowden that revealed how the new tools of communication are being turned into instruments of surveillance on a scale the world had never seen before.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, investigative journalism can hold powerful individuals and entities accountable in a way that the normal checks and balances of a democratic system are increasingly unable to. The Dawn stories on Bahria Town’s land acquisition practices, as well as about DHA Karachi, were prime examples in this regard.
The property market of Pakistan is arguably one of the most powerful, and opaque, enterprises in the country. Those at the pinnacle of this racket have a reach deep into the state as well as media with the massive marketing budgets that they control. Only an independently functioning news operation, shielded from the vested interests that otherwise permeate the news profession, could have commissioned and carried stories of that sort.
And the facts that were revealed through them, of large-scale evictions and dispossession of the poor from land that they had lived and worked on for generations to make room for elite housing needs was a rare example of how investigative journalism can bring to light the awful cruelties through which the perks of affluence are gathered.
Investigative journalism differs from its brethren in the breaking news and opinion department in a number of ways. The pursuit of breaking news revolves around gathering the data points needed to unearth the direction in which a large development is moving. Opinion operates in a bazaar where readers can flip through the works of one writer after another until they find someone who echoes their own prejudged notions of how things are. Its tools are rhetoric and the construction of narratives, and the opinion factory harvests facts selectively in order to fit them into a particular narrative. Skilled opinion writers use these tools with varying degrees of emphasis to build and grow their audience.
Investigative journalism, on the other hand, combines all these elements and requires more in the toolkit of the journalist. There is an element of storytelling involved without which investigative work loses its edge. Good storytelling involves connecting the dots, and the more dots that the journalist can bring forward, the more detailed the final story will be. Unearthing the dots with which a stor