THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 'ALLÿMAH IQBÿL

‘All«mah Iqb«l's Personality

Such a multitude of different events interacting with ‘All«mah's inherently sensitive heart and his fields of education made him a multi-dimensional personality which make it difficult to say what he was. For that reason different people present him in different ways.

He was a jurist by profession but practiced as barrister only intermittently for short periods when pressed by financial needs. He also taught as Professor at the Government and Islamiya Colleges at Lahore for short periods. He had realized that the Muslim Ummah was unique and distinctly different from other Ummahs and geographical nations. So its problems and needs as well as the methods of solving them would also be unique and different from other nations. They can be solved only with the cooperation and efforts of the whole Ummah. Consequently, he devoted his full time to the service of Islam and the Muslim Ummah in India and abroad. He had realized that an ideological revolution in the Muslim Ummah would not be possible without creating a body of the intelligentsia of Muslim youth who would be so conscious and proud of their rich heritage of Islam that they would spare no pains, would face all dangers and make all sacrifices for its revival. So he emancipated the philosophy of Khudâ (for details see Chapter 3.) He endeavored to bring about a psychological revolution which would revive the values of Islam and ultimately create a pan-Islamic society and State, transcending the boundaries of race and color, and would establish a super-national Islamic State with justice and freedom for all. This would be the "Kingdom of God on Earth" for which Christians have only prayed for the last two thousand years and for which the Holy Qur’«n and the Holy Prophet S.A.W , at the last pilgrimage had commissioned the Muslim Ummah. ²¹

‘All«mah Iqb«l appreciated the great value of the intellectual approach and also felt that efforts were needed at the practical level. His political philosophy is explained in Chapter 3 together with the part he played in the practical politics of the Indian subcontinent and in the establishment of Pakistan.

In common parlance he is mistakenly called a poet. Though eleven out of his fifteen published books are in verse he was a poet only to the extent that he used poetry as a vehicle for his message. See Chapter 4, "Sir ‘Abd al-Qadir's Preface" for ‘All«mah Iqb«l's attitude to poetry and the circumstances in which he adopted poetry for his mission.

The vast variety of subjects covered in his books, though all revolving round Islam, reflect his multi-dimensional genius, and leave one wondering whether he was a poet, a creative thinker, a seer, a reformer, or a political philosopher. In fact he himself wonders about his characterization when he says:

(33) I myself do not know the reality of mine
Very deep is the sea of the thoughts mine
(Appendix III, No. 25.)

As specialists on ‘All«mah Iqb«l have expressed contradictory views on his relative excellence as a poet and a thinker and seer it is best to go to ‘All«mah Iqb«l himself to get the answer. He denounces as well as eulogizes poetry:

In the last verse of Ghazal 75-2 in B«ng-i-Dar« he says:

In the last two verses of the sixth stanza of Poem 99 "Sham‘-o- Sh«‘ir"(The has Candle and the Poet), in the same book, he says;

This apparent contradiction is reconciled by the fact that his denunciation of poetry in the first example pertains to conventional poetry, which is often decadent and life negating, addresses itself to the base side of the human nature, is unconcerned with the environment and the historical events taking place therein, and is subversive to human progress by creating an unreal world and producing soporific effects. His target is unmistakably decadent poetry, the poetry of the nations on the downgrade. He did not like "poetry for poetry's sake". As for himself he had to be assiduously persuaded by his friend and confidant, Sir ‘Abd al-Q«dir and his professor , Dr. Thomas Arnold to adopt poetry as a vehicle for his philosophy and reformism. When he adopted poetry for the fulfillment of his mission he combined the perfection of the artist with the zeal of the missionary. His choice fell on poetry because of its greater effectiveness and appeal to the human head and heart than prose. Like other great men of the world ‘All«mah Iqb«l had been ordained by God for the sacred mission of uniting the stray pieces of the Muslim Ummah into a united Millat, imbibed with the sacred desire for the reconstruction of the God's world on Islamic lines to prepare the ground for the establishment of the Islamic State - a mission entrusted to the Muslim Ummah by God and the Holy Prophet S.A.W. at the time of the last pilgrimage . He says:

‘All«mah Iqb«l molded poetry so as to make it the vehicle for Divine message, for revealing Divine secrets to mankind, for expressing his internal inspired feelings in a language which would awaken the sleeping Ummah from their deep torpor and create in them high thinking and freedom of thought. So equipped they could visualize the coming age of the Tawhâd-i-Ins«niyat under pan-Islamism and thus fulfill the Divine trust and accomplish the original mission of the creation of Man which was to be the vicegerent of God on earth (Holy Qur’«n 2:30). He was fully conscious of his mission .

Thus a serious study of ‘‘Allamah Iqb«l shows that he was much more than a poet. He can be considered as the Islamic revivalist of his age.

I have discussed some important components of ‘All«mah Iqb«l's philosophy in Chapter 3. However, as we are dealing with one of his poetic works in this commentary I shall now endeavor to recapitulate the evolution of his poetry. Regarding kinds of poetry his works include all the popular genres used in Urdu-Persian verse, except qasâdah, viz. ghazal, marthi«, mathnavâ, rub«‘â and qaè‘ah. His poetic career of 38 years from 1900 to 1938 can be divided into four periods. The characteristics of these periods are summarized in the following pages. B«ng-i-Dar« covers the first three of them.