On June 20, 2012 Iqbal Academy Scandinavia held a study session on 'Khudi'. This session was a continuation of Iqbal Day Event by IAS on April 14, 2012, and aimed at an extended rerun of Sarosh Alamgir's talk during the Iqbal day event in a more informal setting, using Urdu as the primary medium of discussion, and extending the discussion to a few areas which could not be addressed during the previous talk at the Iqbal day event.
After some parenthetical remarks on the significance of ideologies in life, and how they serve as the templates for coherent solutions to the more immediate and 'practical' issues we encounter in our everyday lives, Sarosh Alamgir moved to the elaborate exposition of the basic notion of 'Khudi', and some of its immediate implications. During his talk Sarosh mentioned what Iqbal's use of the word Khudi refers to, and what made it such a substantial philosophy that it acquired the central place in Iqbal's prose and poetry, and it's edification very often referred to by Iqbal as the primary objective of the human life. Sarosh drew a contrast between humans and other creatures showing how humans exclusively possessed the combination of several traits of creativity, freewill etc. and argued that these were all caused by the 'Rooh' of Allah breathed into humans, which made humans worthy of prostration by other created beings, and which defines the very core of our 'Khudi'. The natural conclusion this line of reasoning led to rendered Allah as the ideal for the edification of Khudi and the Prophet (PBUH) as the model for its achievement. This naturally led the discussion to Iqbal's 'Sulook' of Khudi's edification through the phases of Adherence to the law, self-control and Allah’s vicegerency on earth.
The detailed talk on Khudi was followed by a rich Q/A session in which the discussed concepts were critically inquired, making the whole discourse much more balanced and effective. A complete video recording of this event will be uploaded in due course. |
