Allahabad Address [1930]

Muslim leaders at Allahabad, 1930`

Several Muslim leaders and thinkers having insight into the Hindu-Muslim question proposed separation of Muslim India.

However, the most lucid explanation of the inner feelings of the Muslim community was given by Allama Muhammad Iqbal in his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. Allama Muhammad Iqbal was a poet, philosopher and thinker who had gained country-wide fame and recognition by 1930.

Political events took an ominous turn. There was a two-pronged attack on the Muslim interests. On one hand, the Hindus offered a tough opposition by proposing the Nehru report as the ultimate constitution for India. On the other, the British government in India in the course of observations on the Simon Commission report ignored the Muslim demands.

At this critical juncture, Iqbal realized that the peculiar problems of the Muslims in North-West India could only be understood by people belonging to this region and that in order to survive they would have to chalk out their own line of action.

Allama Iqbal proposed that the Muslim majority provinces be converted into one

Allama Iqbal defined the Muslims of India as a nation and suggested that there could be no possibility of peace in the country unless and until they were recognized as a nation and under a federal system the Muslim majority units were given the same privileges which were to be given to the Hindu majority units. It was the only way in which both the Muslims and the Hindus could prosper in accordance with their respective cultural values.

As a permanent solution to the Hindu-Muslim problem, Allama Iqbal proposed that the Punjab, North West Frontier Province, Baluchistan and Sind should be converted into one province and declared that the North-West part of the country was destined to unite, self government within the British empire or without the British empire. This he suggested was the only way to do away with the communal riots and bring peace in the sub-continent.


The greatest historical significance of Allama Iqbal’s Allahabad address was that it washed all political confusions from the minds of the Muslims thus enabling them to determine their new destination.

News clip reporting the landmark Allahabad session



The national spirit which Iqbal fused among the Muslims of India later on developed into an ideological base of Pakistan.

 Allama Iqbal explained in his address that Islam was the major formative factor in the life history of Indian Muslims. It furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.