Remembering Iqbal…........

By Shazia Marri

Lo, like a candle wrestling with the night… over my own self I pour my flooding tears… I spent my self, that there might be more light… more loveliness, more joy – Allama Muhammad Iqbal

His words flow true, as Iqbal, through his revolutionary poetry, provided unparalleled service to the cause of Muslims in the subcontinent. Unlike other poets of the time, Iqbal was not a romantic lyricist. Instead, his poetry carried a message – of hope, of Islamic renaissance, and of the economic liberation of Muslims of the Indo-Pak subcontinent.

Iqbal’s political contribution is widely considered as the starting point in the struggle for the creation of a separate, independent, sovereign state of Pakistan. He recognised the cultural, political, religious, economic and social dissimilarities between the two major communities – Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent. These differences of outlook, in fact, were greatly instrumental in giving rise to two distinct political ideologies, which were responsible for the partition of India into two independent states.

However, in order to fully appreciate the weight behind Iqbal’s words, we need to understand the reasons behind them. To follow the chain of thoughts and events that led to his unshakeable faith in the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims. Iqbal was the product of an age that gave a new socio-political consciousness to the people of the subcontinent. He had studied the Indian political problems from various angles. He had studied the idea of a common nationality as preached by the Indian National Congress in all its details and implications; he was witness to the revolutionary activities of the Hindus on the eve of the partition of Bengal; he had seen the bleak results of the Unity Conferences held in connection with the Hindu-Muslim question; he had seen the outcome of the Minto-Morley and Montford Reforms; was dejected at the failure of the Khilafat Movement; he supported and cooperated with the Simon Commission only to be sorely disappointed by its report and the recommendations carried therein; the outcome of the Nehru Report was also before him; the results of the Round Table Conference of 1930, which he attended, left him dejected. As the entire political phenomena revolved around the Hindu-Muslim question, and the result of all political and constitutional endeavours was nothing but an increase in the hot tempers of both the communities and their gradual departure from each other.

In his presidential address at the annual session of All India Muslim League in Allahbad in 1930, Iqbal very firmly laid the foundation for a separate homeland, when he categorically said, “I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated into a single state.” Following this, he continued to be one of the most powerful though tacit precursors of political evolution of Muslim India. Indeed, without Iqbal’s persistence, the Quaid would perhaps never have returned from England in 1934, to head the then unified Muslim League.

Until his death in 1938, Iqbal continued his close association with the Quaid and the All India Muslim League. Ever mindful of the volatile situation in the subcontinent, Iqbal continued to apprise Jinnah through his letters. In his letter to the Quaid on June 21, 1937, Iqbal lamented, “I tell you that we’re actually living in a state of civil war which, but for the police and military, would become universal in no time.” These letters that Iqbal wrote to the Quaid were his prized possessions. As Hector Bolitho writes about the Quaid in ‘Jinnah – Creator of Pakistan’, “He worked alone, with no personal staff and not even a secretary to copy his letters and keep his papers tidy. But there was one bundle of letters, in a drawer, to which he could turn for consolation: they had been written to him by Sir Muhammad Iqbal…”

The Quaid himself said of Iqbal, “To me he was a friend, guide and philosopher and during the darkest moments through which the Muslim League had to go, he stood like a rock and never flinched one single moment…”

But Iqbal’s contribution to the creation of Pakistan can perhaps be best gauged by Jinnah’s words on the eve of the Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940, “Iqbal is no more amongst us,” he said. “But had he been alive he would have been happy to know that we did exactly what he wanted us to do,” he added.

Let’s use today, his birthday, to remember what Iqbal wanted, and what he helped achieve. This great nation – a homeland for Muslims. A separate, sovereign Pakistan. A land acquired after so many years of incessant struggles and sacrifices. A land we must now pledge to protect and develop, as envisioned by those who spent their lives struggling to achieve it.