Allama Muhammad Iqbal: M. Salman Shafiq M. Waleed Khalid Naeem Jawahar Jauhar Saeed Khan
Allama Muhammad Iqbal: M. Salman Shafiq M. Waleed Khalid Naeem Jawahar Jauhar Saeed Khan
Allama Muhammad Iqbal: M. Salman Shafiq M. Waleed Khalid Naeem Jawahar Jauhar Saeed Khan
Iqbal
SUBMITTED TO
Prof. Tahreem Sadiq
SUBMITTED BY
Iqbal’s Education
Iqbal was educated initially by tutors in languages and writing, history,
poetry and religion. His potential as a poet and writer was recognized by
one of his tutors, Syed Mir Hassan, and Iqbal would continue to study
under him at the Scotch Mission College in Sialkot. The student became
proficient in several languages and the skill of writing prose and poetry,
and graduated in 1892.
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Literary Career
In Europe, he started writing his poetry in Persian as well. Throughout his
life, Iqbal would prefer writing in Persian as he believed it allowed him to
fully express philosophical concepts, and it gave him a wider audience.
Upon his return to India in 1908, Iqbal took up assistant professorship at
the Government College in Lahore, but for financial reasons he
relinquished it within a year to practice law. While maintaining his legal
practice, Iqbal began concentrating on spiritual and religious subjects, and
publishing poetry and literary works.
Anjuman-e-Himayat-e-Islam
Works in Persian
Iqbal's poetic works are written mostly in Persian rather than Urdu. Among
his 12,000 verses of poem, about 7,000 verses are in Persian.
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ii. In his Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Hints of Selflessness), Iqbal seeks to
prove 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. Also in Persian
and published in 1917.
Works in Urdu
Iqbal's first work published in Urdu, the Bang-e-Dara (The Call of the
Marching Bell) of 1924, was a collection of poetry written by him in three
distinct phases of his life.
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Phase I
The poems he wrote up to 1905, the year Iqbal left for England imbibe
patriotism and imagery of landscape, and includes the Tarana-e-Hind (The
Song of India), popularly known as Saare Jahan Se Achcha and another
poem Tarana-e-Milli (Anthem of the Muslim Community), which was
composed in the same meter and rhyme scheme as Saare Jahan Se Achcha.
Phase II
The second set of poems date from between 1905 and 1908 when Iqbal
studied in Europe and dwell upon the nature of European society, which he
emphasized had lost spiritual and religious values. This inspired Iqbal to
write poems on the historical and cultural heritage of Islamic culture and
Muslim people, not from an Indian but a global perspective. Poems such as
Tulu-e-Islam (Dawn of Islam) and Khizar-e-Rah (Guide of the Path) are
especially acclaimed.
Phase III
The works of this period were often specifically directed at the Muslim
masses of India, with an even stronger emphasis on Islam, and Muslim
spiritual and political reawakening. Published in 1935, the Bal-e-Jibril
(Wings of Gabriel) is considered by many critics as the finest of Iqbal's
Urdu poetry, and was inspired by his visit to Spain, where he visited the
monuments and legacy of the kingdom of the Moors. It consists of ghazals,
poems, quatrains, epigrams and carries a strong sense religious passion.
Iqbal's final and beautiful work was the Armughan-e-Hijaz (The Gift of
Hijaz), published posthumously in 1938. The first part contains quatrains in
Persian, and the second part contains some poems and epigrams in Urdu.
The Persian quatrains convey the impression as though the poet is
travelling through the Hijaz in his imagination. The Urdu portion of the
book contains some categorical criticism of the intellectual movements and
social and political revolutions of the modern age.
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Political career
It was while in England that he first participated in politics. Following the
formation of the All-India Muslim League in 1906, Iqbal was elected to the
executive committee of its British chapter in 1908. Together with two other
politicians, Syed Hassan Bilgrami and Syed Ameer Ali, Iqbal sat on the
subcommittee which drafted the constitution of the League. Working under
the supervision of Friedrich Hommel, Iqbal published a thesis titled: The
Development of Metaphysics in Persia.
While dividing his time between law and poetry, Iqbal had remained active
in the Muslim League. He supported Indian involvement in World War I,
as well as the Khilafat movement and remained in close touch with Muslim
political leaders such as Mulana Mohammad Ali and Muhammad Ali
Jinnah. He was a critic of the mainstream Indian National Congress, which
he regarded as dominated by Hindus and was disappointed with the League
when during the 1920s, it was absorbed in factional divides between the
pro-British group led by Sir Muhammad Shafi and the centrist group led by
Jinnah.
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India's Hindu-majority population would crowd out Muslim heritage,
culture and political influence. In his travels to Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran
and Turkey, he promoted ideas of greater Islamic political co-operation and
unity, calling for the shedding of nationalist differences. He also speculated
on different political arrangements to guarantee Muslim political power; in
a dialogue with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, 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. Sir Muhammad Iqbal was
elected president of the Muslim League in 1930 at its session in Allahabad,
in the United Provinces as well as for the session in Lahore in 1932.
He was also the first patron of the historical, political, religious, cultural
journal of Muslims of British India and Pakistan. This journal played an
important part in the Pakistan movement. The name of this journal is The
Journal Tulu-e-Islam. In 1935, according to his instructions, Syed Nazeer
Niazi initiated and edited, a journal Tulu-e-Islam named after the famous
poem of Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Tulu-e-Islam. He also dedicated the first
edition of this journal to Sir Muhammad Iqbal. For a long time Sir
Muhammad Iqbal wanted a journal to propagate his ideas and the aims and
objective of Muslim league. It was Syed Nazeer Niazi, a close friend of
him and a regular visitor to him during his last two years, who started this
journal. He also made Urdu translation of The Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam, by Sir Muhammad Iqbal.
Ideologically separated from Congress Muslim leaders, Iqbal had also been
disillusioned with the politicians of the Muslim League owing to the
factional conflict that plagued the League in the 1920s. Discontent with
factional leaders like Sir Muhammad Shafi and Sir Fazl-ur-Rahman, Iqbal
came to believe that only Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a political leader
capable of preserving this unity and fulfilling the League's objectives on
Muslim political empowerment. Building a strong, personal
correspondence with Jinnah, Iqbal was an influential force on convincing
Jinnah to end his self-imposed exile in London, return to India and take
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charge of the League. Iqbal firmly believed that Jinnah was the only leader
capable of drawing Indian Muslims to the League and maintaining party
unity before the British and the Congress:
"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."
There were significant differences between the two men, Iqbal believed
that Islam was the source of government and society, Jinnah was a believer
in secular government and had laid out a secular vision for Pakistan where
religion would have "nothing to do with the business of the state." Iqbal
had backed the Khilafath struggle; Jinnah had dismissed it as "religious
frenzy." And while Iqbal espoused the idea of Muslim-majority provinces
in 1930, Jinnah would continue to hold talks with the Congress through the
decade and only officially embraced the goal of Pakistan in 1940. Some
historians postulate that Jinnah always remained hopeful for an agreement
with the Congress and never fully desired the independence of India.
Iqbal's close correspondence with Jinnah is speculated by some historians
as having been responsible for Jinnah's embrace of the idea of Pakistan.
Iqbal elucidated to Jinnah his vision of a separate Muslim state in a letter
sent on June 21, 1937:
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"There is only one way out. Muslims 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 defense of our national existence.
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."