IQBAL'S "MESSAGE OF THE EAST"

Amongst Indian Moslem poets of to-day Iqbal stands on a hill by himself. In him there are two voices of power. One speaks in Urdu and appeals to Indian patriotism, though Tgbal is not a nationalist in politics, the other, which uses the beautiful and melodious language of Persia, sings to a Moslem audience — and it is indeed a new and inspiring song, a fiery incantation scattering ashes and sparks and bidding fair to be " the trumpet of a prophecy ".

Born in the Punjab, Iqbal completed his education in England and Germany. East and West met, it would be too much to say that they were united. No one, however gifted, can hope to partake on equal terms and in full measure of two civilisations which have sprung from different roots. While Iqbal has been profoundly influenced by Western culture, his spirit remains essentially Oriental. He knows Goethe, Byron, and Shelley; he is as familiar with Also sprach Zarathustra [1]and L'evolution creatrice as he with the Qur'an and the Mathnwi. But with the Humanistic foundations of European culture he appears to be less intimately acquainted and we feel that his criticism, though never superficial, is sometimes lacking in breadth.

The leading idea of his philosophy, which is indicated rather than expounded in the Asrar-i-Khudi[2] and the Rumuz-i-Be-Khudi, may be briefly stated here, as without some knowledge of them it is not easy to understand his poetry.

He regards Reality as a process of becoming, not as an eternal state. The templa scrota of the Absolute find no place in his scheme of things: all is in flux. His universe is an association of individuals, headed by the most unique Individual, i.e., God. Their life consists in the formation and cultivation of personality. The prefect man `"not only absorbs the world of matter by mastering it; he absorbs God himself into his Ego by assimilating Divine attributes''. Hence the essence of life is Love, which in its highest form is "the creation of desires and ideals, and the endeavour to realise them ". Desires are good or had according as they strengthen or weaken personality, and all values must be determined by this standard.

The affinities with NIETZSCHE and BERGSON need not be emphasised. It is less clear, however, why Iqbal identifies his ideal soeiety with Mohammad's conception of [slam, or why membership of that society should be a privilege reserved for Moslems. Here the religious enthusiast seems to have knocked out the philosopher — a result which is logically wrong but poetically right. Iqbal, the poet, has a proper contempt for intellectualism. He contrasts Ibn Sina with Jalalu'ddin Rumi:

The Payam-i-Mashriq was written as a response to GOETHE'S West-ostlicher Divans. In the dedicatory poem, addressed to the Amir of Afghanistan, Iqbal says:

The Sage of the West, the German poet who was fascinated by the charms of Persia,

Depicted those coy and winsome beauties and gave the East a greeting from Europe.

Although the Payam resembles the Divan in form, since both contain short poems arranged in sections which bear separate titles,[5] and also in its general motive, there is no correspondence as regards the subjeet-matter. "Madchen and Dichter" and "Mahomet's Gesang" are the only poems of Goethe (and these do not belong to the Divan) which are directly imitated.[6] In the piece entitled "Jalal and Goethe", Iqbal imagines Jalalu'ddin Rumi, for whom he has the greatest admiration, meeting Goethe in Paradise[7] After hearing him read Faust, Rumi speaks as follows:

Much in the Payam is hard to comprehend and harder to translate. Subtle emotions and abstruse philosophical ideas, often couched in the conventional imagery of Persian poetry, yet expressed originally, make large demands on our intelligence — and even more on our sympathy. The following extract from a letter written to the poet by a Mohammedan friend, efidently a man of high culture and sensibility, goes to the root of the matter : "One must have read much, pondered much, doubted much, to be able to soar in thought to the heights to which you, in your easy manner, wish to take your readers. The work is only for those who are deeply conversant with the game of getting one's self wilfully entangled, for those who make it an article of faith to go on from one trap to another. You, it seems, have explored the whole world of human emotions from the highest ecstasy to the darkest doubts. In your case it may be said with perfect truth:

We others, who have neither felt as much nor seem as much, have not the courage or qualifications to abide in this super-spiritual world. Still, occasionally we peer in".

All I can attempt here is to give glimpses of the poet's thought in the hope that some who read my translations may be induced to study this remarkable volume as a whole. It is worth while to become acquainted with Iqbal's rich and forceful personality. Granted that the difficulties are great, so is the reward; and LUCRETIUS said long ago: Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera vial.

For Iqbal self-consciousness, individuality, is all in all. He never tires of preaching the gospel of self-knowledge, self-affirmation, and self-development. The pith of life is action, its end is the spiritual and moral power which grows from obedience and self-control. By conquering matter we become free, by living intensely and losing the spatial eonception of time we gain immortality.

The concluding seetion, entitled "A Picture of Europe" (Naqsh-i Firang), is intended to give the Oriental reader a notion of some of the more important aspects of European thought as these are viewed by the poet. It is good to see ourselves as others see us, and better still if we take to heart the eloquent message (payam) in which Iqbal bids us throw off the fetus of an arid intcllectualism and emerge into our inner world of Life and Love.

Iqbal does not believe in political short cuts to the Muslim faith. His lines on the League of Nations are characteristic of him.

But the philosophers themselves get some stinging blows — particularly HEGEL, whose soaring mind is called

"a hen that by dint of enthusiasm lays eggs without assistance from the cock (Ibid., p. 245)"

As an example of the author's method of introducing his Moslem readers to European philosophy, I translate his verses on Schopenhaucr and Nietzsche.

A bird flew from its nest and ranged about the garden; its soft breast was pierced by a rose-thorn.

It reviled the nature of Time's garden ; it throbbed with its own pain and the pain of others.

It thought the tulip was branded with the blood of innocents ; in the closed bud it saw guile of Spring.

From its cries of burning woe a hoopoe's heart caught fire. The hoopoe with his beak drew forth the thorn from its body,

Saying, "Get thee profit out of loss : the rose has created pure gold by rending her breast. If thou art wounded, make the pain thy remedy. Accustom thyself

While Iqbal cordially agrees with Nietzsche's "will to power" (meaning "the fullest possible realisation of a complete, self-reliant personality"), his view that Islam, considered as the ideal community, is a theocracy and democracy,[9] brings him into conflict with "the madman in the European china-shop" [10] whom he takes — unwarrantably, perhaps — to be an atheist.

He plunged a laneet into Europe's heart his hand is red with the blood of the Cross.

He reared a pagoda on the ruins of the Temple : his heart is a true believer, but his brain is an infidel.[11]

Burn thyself in the fire-of that Nimrod, for the garden of Abraham is produced from fire.[12]

It would be fair, I think, to describe the author of the Payam as a Mohammedan Vitalist. Certainly there is no modern philosopher with whom he is so much in sympathy as with Bergson, whose teaching he interprets in these lines:‑

Appreciators of witty and pungent criticism will find plenty of entertainment — Einstein, for instance, "the hierophant of Light, the descendant of Moses and Aaron who has revived the religion of Zoroaster"[13] or LENIN proclaiming the triumph of Communism to Kaiser WILHELM, who retorts that the people have only exchanged one master for another : Shirin never lacks a lover ; if it be not King Khusrau, then it is Farhad (Kuhkan).[14] "The Dialogue between Comte and the Workman",[15] "The Qismat-nama of the Capitalist and the Wage-earner"[16] and "The Workman's Song"[17] show, as might be expected, that Iqbal is whole-heartedly on the side of Labour. Here are three couplets of the "Workman's Song"

It has been said that "the current which in philosophy sets against intellectualism, in the political realm sets against the State".[18] Extreme nationalists and Panislamists can quote Iqbal for their purpose, just as the Syndicalists quote Bergson. But the creative action of Life need not be based on irrational impulse. Iqbal expressly declares that self-control is "the highest form of self-consciousness", and that in the Ideal Man "reason and instinct become one"[19]. This, to be sure, will not satisfy his critics who see clearly enough the uses to which his doctrines may be put. Let them read, then, his Apologia pro Vitalitate Qua :‑

An Eastern tasted once		the wine in Europe's glass;
No wonder if he broke		old vows in reckless glee
The blood came surging up		in the veins of his new-born thought:
Predestination's bondslave,		he learned that Man is free.
Let not thy soul be vexed		with the drunkards' noise and rout
O Saqi, tell me fairly,		who was't that broached this jar?

* Iqbal uses "Time" in the sense of BERGSON's la-duree, "the very stuff of which life and consciousness are made". Cf. Asrar-i-Khudi, translation, p. 134 and foll,

[1] First published at Lahore in 1923. The second edition (1924) includes a number of new poems and the author has expanded some of the old ones. The references in the article are to the second edition.

[2] An introduction by the present writer appeared in 1920 under the title of The Secrets of the Self. The introduction includes an account of the philosophical ba: is of the poem, contributed by the author,

[3] Payam, p. 122.

[4] Ibid., p. 2.

[5] The poems in the Payam are grouped under the following heads : Lala-i‑Tur (163 ruba'is); Afkar (miscellaneous pieces) ; Ma'ay-i-Baqi (ghazals); Naqsh-i-Firang (a criticism of European life and thought); Khurda (fragments),

[6] The counterpart to “Madchen und Dichter” is “Hur-u-Shai’ir”. (p.147)

While “Juy-i-ab” (p. 151) is a fine, though very free, rendering of “Mahomet’s Gesang”.

[7] Payam, p. 246.

[8] The final couplet, which sums up the lesson of Faust, is a quotation from the Mathnawi.

[9] Cf. The Secrets of the Self, Introduction, p. X and p, XXIX

[10] Peyam, p. 238, last line.

[11] Suggested by the words which the Prophet is said to have used concerning Umayya ibn Abi'l Salt:

[12] The commentators on Qur'an, XXl 69 relate that the burning pyre on which Abraham was cast by order of Nimrod was miraculously transformed into rose-garden.

[13] Ibid., p. 239.

[14] Ibid., p. 249.

[15] Ibid., p. 244.

[16] Ibid., p. 255.

[17] Ibid., p, 257.

[18] J. A. Gunn, Bergson and his Philosophy, p. 110.

[19] The Secrets of the Self, Introduction p. XXVII.

N.B.—The article was published in the Crescent Islamia College Magazine, Lahore, Vol. XX. No. 81, March-April 1926, pp. 9--18 Reproduced from Islamic, Leipzig, 1925, Vol. 1, Fasc. : I, pp, 112—124. Urdu translation of this article appeared under the caption : "Payam-i-Mashriq" in the Paigham-i-Haq, Lahore, Iqbal Number, Vol. XII, Nos. 1-3, January-March 1946, -pp 180-194.