ISLAMIC UNIVERSALISM AND TERRITORIAL NATIONALISM IN IQBAL’S THOUGHT

Professor S. Qudratullah Fatimi

Director, RCD Cultural Institute (Pakistan Branch), Islamabad

I

Islamic Universalism and Territorial Nationalism are the two complementary political forces in the present-day Muslim world. Both these trends originated in the Muslim world of today through Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s thinking and interpretation of Islamic teachings and found their most eloquent expression in prose and poetical compositions of Allamah Muhammad Iqbal. It will be opportune to give a very brief survey of Afghani’s contributions to modern Muslim thought before an attempt is made to analyze the progress of these two trends in Iqbal’s thought.

In the long history of the struggle of the East against Western domination Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s name occupies a unique place.[1] His was one man’s will and wit pitted against the brute force of the two mightiest powers of his times, the British Empire and the Czarist Russia. Though Afghani had no support of an army, a State, or even a political organization, yet through his indomitable courage, indefatigable labour, astute statesmanship, moving eloquence, charismatic leadership and dynamic personality, he became a terror for the chanceries of the West and a hope for the enslaved masses of the East. His programme for their liberation and uplift consisted of three inter-linked reformatory measures:

One, enlightenment through educational reforms;

Two, strengthening the national States of the Muslim World through the promotion of nationalist and populist movements; and Three, the unity of the Muslim world.

Afghani knew that territorial nationalism was the greatest political force of modern times and the most potent weapon in the hands of the downtrodden and enslaved masses of colonical East. So, he became the pioneer of nationalist movements in Muslim East and at the same time exhorted these nationalist forces to join hands against their common enemy, Western Imperialism.

He was the harbinger of Arab nationalism. He inspired ‘Arabi Pasha’s Egyptian revolt of ‘1881 and it was under his guidance that Muhammad ‘Abduh and Sa’d Zaghlul led the movement for Arab liberation and resurgence. Among his close collaborators for the cause of Arab resurgence were non-Muslim Arab journalists and intellectuals like Adib Ishaq, a Syrian Christian, and Ibn Sanu, an Egyptian Jew.[2] The nationalist ferment and intellectual renaissance kindled by Afghani at the Azhar University of Cairo had its influence as far as the Malayan peninsula and the Indonesian archipelago. Afghani’s disciples inspired the powerful reformist Muhammadiyah and Sarekat Islam organisations through whose efforts Islam assumed the role of a pre-nationalism in Indonesia,[3] A similar pre-nationalist lead was given by Sayyid Shaikh al-Hadi of Malaya who also drew his guidance from the Egyptian disciples of Afghani.[4]

In Iran, he led the successful campaign of 1890-91 against the British monopoly of the sale and export of tobacco, showed the way how the rich economic resources of Muslim East could be used as a weapon for the political and economic emancipation of the people, and, through his powerful support to the Iranian people’s struggle for constitutional monarchy (.......), he became one of the pioneers of Iranian nationalism.[5] Grateful Iranians claim him to be an Iranian by origin being an Asadabadi. They contend that he assumed Afghani nisbah to escape the tyranny of the Qachar despots of Iran, The question is still debated and is, certainly, symbolic of the national pride aroused by him.

In Turkey, Sultan Abdul Hamid II conspired to use him and his movement for Muslim unity as tools for the promotion of his own despotic aims, but he tenaciously resisted those attempts and contri­buted towards giving a nationalist direction to the movement of the Young Turks. At his urging Mehmed Emin Yurdakul composed poems in simplified Turkish using the syllabic meter of folk poetry[6] and what was still more remarkable, as Professor Bernard Lewis has remarked:

“he adopted a word which, in Turkish usage, had connoted a boorish, ignorant peasant or nomad, and proudly proclaimed himself a Turk I am a Turk, my faith and my race are mighty in another place—We are Turks, with this blood and with this name we live.”[7]

He was put under detention by the Ottoman autocrat and, in March 1897, the pioneer of the movement for Muslim unity died in the “guided” prison of the Muslim Caliph who claimed to be the up-holder of Pan-Islamism.[8] What an irony of history it was!

But the still greater irony is that the founder of nationalist movements in Muslim countries is said to be hostile to nationalism. This is, in fact, a very subtle propaganda of the Imperialist forces aimed at the weakening of the anti-Imperialist movement among the Muslim masses on two fronts. On the one hand, attempt is thus made to keep the Muslims aloof from the national liberation movements of their countries in the name of Afghani’s so-called Pan-Islamism; and, on the other, doubts are created in the minds of the nationalist forces about the motives of the movement for Muslim solidarity. The former attempt delayed the awakening of Muslim masses but it eventually failed and, though the Muslims could not be the vanguard, which Islam expected them to be, yet they did take an active part in the emancipation of the East. The Pakistan Freedom Movement, the Indonesian struggle for merdeka, the heroic battles fought by the Algerians against the French colonialists and the long and bitter war that the Arabs have been fighting on many fronts for the liberation of Palestine, are some of the most notable triumphs of the nationalist upsurge in modern world. But we have yet to guard ourselves against the dangers posed by Pan-Islamism to the movement for Muslim. We must differentiate between Pan-Islamism and Islamic Universalism. Islam being a universal religion does not have a nationalism of its own. As Iqbal has so well put it, “Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations.”[9] To talk of Muslim National-ism is to equate Islam with the national religions of the Jews and the Hindus.[10] Islam does not have a Zion or any Aryavarta.[11] The whole world is its homeland and not a particular country, for the Blessed Prophet declared: جعلت لی الارض مسجدا و طھورا [The whole earth is made a mosque for me and pure][12] For this reason Islamic universalism does not reject; rather, it affirms the nationalist idea; and the territorial nationalism of the Muslim countries and the movement for Muslim solidarity are complementary to each other. On the one hand, Muslim solidarity is the surest guarantee for the safeguard of the territorial integrity of the Muslim countries; and, on the other, it is only a strong, nationally coherent, self-confident and self-reliant Muslim country that can play a meaningful role in promoting Muslim unity. Afghani lived and laid down his life for the achievement of these ideals.

Afghani was a radical. He was not an obscurantist. He visualized the resurgent nationalisms of the Muslim countries in the context of the struggle of the East against the colonial exploitation of the I West.

AI-’Urwat al-Wuthqa (العروۃ الوثقی), a weekly periodical clandestinely circulated by Afghani and Muhammad ‘Abduh throughout the Muslim world, was one of the most powerful weapons that they had forged for the anti-Imperialist freedom fight. In its issue dated 15 May 1884, Afghani unequivocally declared:

لا یظن احد من الناس ان جریدتنا ھذہ بتخصیصھا المسلمین بالذکر احیانا و مدافعتھا عن حقرفھم نقصد الشقاق بینھم و بین من یجاورھم فی اوطانہم و یتفق معھم فی مصالح بلادھم و یشارکھم فی المنافع من اجیال طویلۃ فلیس ھذا من شاننا و لا مما نمیل الیہ و لا بییحہ دیننا و لا تسمح بد شریعتنا و لکنن الغرض تعذیر الشرقین عموما و المسلمین خصوصا من تطاول الا جانب علیھم و الافساد فی بلادھم و قد نخص المسلمین بالخطاب لانھم العنصر الغالب فی الاقطار اللتی غدر بھا الا جنبیون و اذلوا اھلھا اجمعین و استاثروا بجمیع خیراتھا۔

[In this Journal we have been specifically mentioning Muslims very often and have been fighting to defend their rights, but this must not make anyone believe that we intend to sow enmity between the Muslims and their non-Muslim compatriots who have common terri­torial interest with them and who have been sharing with them mutual benefits since long millenniums. This does not behove us. It is against our natural disposition. It is also against the tenets of our Faith and is not permitted by our Religious Law. Our aim is to warn the Easterners, in general, and the Muslims, in particular, against becom­ing victims of the tyranny of the aliens and against letting their lands being corrupted by these foreigners. We do often address the Muslims particularly but only because they are the dominant element in that part of the world where the aliens have spread corruption, subjected the people and destroyed all that was good.][13]

In the last letter that he wrote from the prison of the Pan-Islamist Caliph, Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid, Afghani said:

خوشم بہ حبس و خوشم بر این کشتہ شدن۔ محبوسم برائے آزادئ نوع۔ کشتہ می شوم برائے زندگي قوم۔ ولے افسوس می خورم ازین کہ آرزوئے کہ داشتم کاملا نائل نہ گردیدم و شمشیر شقاوت نہ گزاشت کہ عمل بیداری مشرق را بینم۔

[I am happy over my internment. I am jubilant over my impending death. I am imprisoned so that humanity may be freed. I am being killed so that nation may live. But I regret that my wishes have not been completely fulfilled. Misfortune did not allow me to see the full process of the awakening of the activism of the East.][14]

Afghani’s call for Muslim unity and Asian solidarity did not fall on deaf ears. It took roots, developed and finally emerged as the power of the Third World in which Muslim national States have a prominent place. His soul must have rejoiced at the sight of the Lahore Summit of 1974 when, all the Muslim national States joined hands together to remove one of the last bases of Western Imperialism in the East. He regretted that he would not live to see “the process of the awakening of the activism of the East”. Better late than never: that process is now in full swing. It reached one of its triumphant moments when the Chairman of the Summit Conference, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, delivered his Presidential Address. The wisdom of Islamic universalism and its relationship with territorial nationalism, on the one hand, and with the solidarity of the Third World, on the other, were incisively perceived and succinctly presented in this historic address. Elucidating the aim and purpose of the Conference he stated:

“‘…it is inherent in our purpose that we promote, rather than subvert, the solidarity of the Third World. This solidarity is based on human and not on ethnic factors. The distinctions of race are anathema to Islam but a kinship of suffering and struggle appeals to a religion which has always battled against oppression and sought to establish justice… It may well be that, in the cause of the Third World, and in humanity’s struggle towards a balanced world order, we, the Muslims, are now being called upon to play a central role.

“I must, in this context, refer to a certain ambivalence in our Muslim minds about the role of nationalism in Islam and its compatibility with the establishment of an Islamic community. Let us face it that there has been some uncertainty on this issue. We have several nationalisms among us, Arab and non-Arab, all equally vigorous and vibrant with aspiration. All these nationalisms constitute our respons­es to the historic situation that we have confronted in our different geographical locations. Nationalism as the motive force of a people’s liberation, nationalism as an agent of a people’s consolidation, nationalism as a propeller of social and economic progress is a powerful force which we will do nothing to weaken. Furthermore, nationalism is a necessary tributary to the broad stream of human culture. It takes a full understanding of one’s own country, of its history and language and traditions to develop an understanding of other countries, of their inner life and of our relations with them. Islam provides both the spirit and the technique of such a mutuality. Patriotism and loyalty to Islam can thus be fused into a transcendent harmony. As Muslims, we can rise higher than our nationalism, without damaging or destroy­ing it.”[15]

‘Allamah Muhammad Iqbal was a spiritual disciple of Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani. He rendered the most notable service towards accelerating the pace of the process “of the awakening of the activism” in the South Asian subcontinent and in welding the two complementary political forces of Islamic universalism and territorial nationalism. The holding of the Islamic Summit at Lahore where he lies buried was a homage to his services paid by the grateful Muslim world.

While Afghani was a man of action, Iqbal was a man of thought. His views on the subject are very complex and we feel that they have suffered through oversimplification at the hands of his hostile critics as well as those of his admirers- In the next few pages an attempt is made to present them unshorn of their complexities.

Among all the poetic and prose writings of ‘Allamah Muhammad Iqbal the Presidential Address that he delivered at the Annual Session 0f the All-India Muslim League held at Allahabad in 1930 stands unique for the profound impact that it made on the destinies of the people of this part of the world. The truth of the prophetic words that he spoke on this occasion is slowly but surely unfolding itself on the pages of history. Take, for instance, the history-making declaration that he made, when he said:

“I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India… The exclusion of Ambala Division and perhaps of some districts where non-Muslims predomintate, will make it less extensive and more Muslim in population so that the exclusion suggested will enable this consolidated State to give a more effective protection to non-Muslim minorities within its area.”[16]

But Iqbal not only visualised the destined geographical boundaries of the State of his dreams, he also laid down broad guidelines for the future leaders of this State in the same Presidential Address. What he repeatedly emphasised was his wish that the establishment of this new State “will intensify their the Muslims’] sense of responsibility and deepen their patriotic feeling”.[17] And what is most remarkable is the fact that in this respect he asked the leaders of the country that came to be known as Pakistan, to follow the example set by the founders of Modern Turkey and of Modern Iran, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and Reza Shah Kabir. He said:

“Nor should the Muslim leaders and politicians allow themselves to be carried away by the subtle but placid argument that Turkey and Iran and other Muslim countries are progressing on national, i.e., territorial lines. The Muslims of India are differently situated. The countries of Islam outside India are practically wholly Muslim in population. The minorities there belong, in the language of the Quran, ‘to the people of the Book’. There are no social barriers between Muslims and the ‘people of the Book’… Indeed the first practical step that Islam took towards the realization of a final combination of humanity was to call upon peoples possessing practically the same ethical ideal to come forward and combine. The Quran declares: ‘O people of the Book! Come, let us join together on the word (Unity of God), that is common to us all.’[18] The wars of Islam and Christianity, and later, European aggression in its various forms, could not allow the infinite meaning of this verse to work itself out in the world of Islam. To-day it is being gradually realized in the countries of Islam in the shape of what is called Muslim Nationalism.”[19]

No doubt, these words were spoken in the context of the political, social and economic conditions that prevailed in what was in the year 1930 known as British India. Iqbal was delivering the Presidential Address of a political party and for that reason his observations had to be primarily of topical interest. But he was first a poet-philosopher and then a politician-statesman. It is not just a coincidence that among all the Muslim countries only Turkey and Iran—or Persia as it was called at that time—were specifically mentioned by Iqbal, for the leaders of these two brotherly countries, Kemal Ataturk and Reza Shah Kabir, were the foremost upholders of the Nationalist ideal in the Islamic world. Iqbal gave a new and profound interpretation to the idea of “what is called Muslim nationalism” by identifying it with the Nationalist movements of Turkey and Iran: “what is called Muslim Nationalism,” the italicised words are very meaningful. In the first sentence of the passage under discussion he stated, “National, i.e. territorial lines”. These statements show that Iqbal was not only well aware of the territorial basis of modern nationalism but had also accepted it as an established fact which needed no elaboration.

In one of his last writings while commenting on Leibniz’s monad-ism Iqbal states that according to Leibniz the monad, i.e. the mind of man, “is a closed window incapable of absorbing external forces. My view is that the monad is essentially assimilative in its nature. Time is a great blessing. While it kills and destroys it also expands and brings out the hidden possibilities of things. The possibility of change is the greatest asset of man in his present surroundings.”[20]

Change is certainly the greatest asset of Iqbal’s thought-processes but is at the same time the greatest liability of his admirers and critics who in the name of consistency would like to seek constancy in his concepts. Iqbal’s mind was highly assimilative in its nature and quickly imbibed the impact of his political surroundings. He was very sensitive to the fast moving changes in his milieu. In this constant flux one can discern a broad division of three main phases of Iqbal’s thought on the subject under discussion.

First, the Pan-Indian nationalist phase, which ended with his travel to Europe in 19,5. This comprises the first part of the Bang-i-Dara, and the poems rejected by Iqbal but posthumously collected in different anthologies, like S A. Vahid, Baqiyat-i-Iqbal, Muhammad Anwar Harith, Rakht-i-Safar, and Ghulam Rasul Mihr, Sarud-i.Rafta The small collection of poems in the second part of the Bang-i-Dara, which were composed during Iqbal’s stay in Europe, belong to the transitional period between the first and the second phase of his thought: the first portion of this part still reflects the first phase a the second portion presages the second period.

Second, the Pan-Islamist phase, which started sometime during his sojourn in Europe and ended in April 1926, when he successfully contested for the membership of the Punjab Legislative Council and having faced the realities of the political life, could no longer rem’, a romantic visionary. The whole of the third part of the Bang-i-Dara (1924), the Asrar-i-Khudi (1914), the Rumuz-i-Bekhudi (19 8), Payam-i-Mashriq (1922), and his Urdu and English letters, speeches statements of the period 1908 to 1926, represent the second phased his thought.

Third, and the last, which may be termed the Pakistani nationalist phase in which he synthesized his religious pre-nationalism of the second phase with the modern territorial nationalism. The most mature and the last phase of the development of Iqbal’s genius was also his most productive one. Most of the works of this period its discussed here.

In the first anthology of his Urdu poems, Bang-i-Dara, Iqbal had divided his Urdu poetry in three parts: one, from the beginning to the year 1905; two, from 1905 to 1908; and, three, from 1908 onwards This was a correct chronological delineation of the growth of I poetical genius up to the year 1924, when the Bang-i-Dara was find published. But for the critics of Iqbal time seems to have come tot stop in September 1924: the three phases of Iqbal’s poetry as defined above is taken by them as final and they fail to appreciate that the last, most productive and maturest phase of his work started after lid date. This anachronism has inevitably led to much confusion, the blame for which is laid at the doors of the poet’s Muse by his Western critics like Gibb, Smith, and—the latest in the field—Gordo Polonskaya. His Pakistani admirers, on the other hand, revel in tit confusion, for it provides them ample opportunities for their own dentiously selective reading and paraphrasing of the Poet. We belive that for a correct and judicious appraisal of Iqbal’s thought a soot historical analysis of his works based on a firm chronology is the dal prerequisite.

Iqbal’s dynamic genius also provided different religious philosophical frameworks for the political ideas of each of the three phases of his thought. It may also be—perhaps, more validly—argued that the three stages in the development of his religious philosophy led inevitably to those different political attitudes. However, during the period when he preached the political ideology of Pan-Indian territorial nationalism he upheld the traditional concept of wahdat al-Wujud (“Unity of Existence”), but when he repudiated this political standpoint he at the same time rejected lbn ‘Arabi and his sun doctrine of the Unity of Existence. But in the last phase when he assimilated the political concept of territorial nationalism with Islam, the same process manifested itself in the modified form of the Unity of Existence, viz. that of Rumi.[21]

The long passage of his historic Presidential Address which we quoted above shows the subtle way in which the transition from Pan-Islamism to Pakistani Nationalism took place in Iqbal’s thinking and the role that contemporary trends in Muslim countries, especially those in Iran and Turkey, played in this process. However, the dialec­tics of South Asian politics sometime led also to its antithesis especially when the Pakistani nationalist movement faced fierce opposition at the hands of Indian nationalist and Hindu pre-nationalist forces.

Iqbal was himself very conscious of this conflict. Presiding over the Second Session of the All-Parties Muslim Conference held at Lahore in March 1932, he stated:

“To reveal an ideal freed from its temporal limitations is one function; to show the way how ideals can be transformed into living actualities is quite another. If a man is temperamentally fit for the former function his task is comparatively easy, for it involves clean jump over temporal limitations which waylay the practical politician at every step. The man who has got the courage to migrate from the former to the latter function has constantly to take stock of, and often yield to, the force of those very limitations which he has been in the habit of ignoring. Such a man has the misfortune of living in the midst of perpetual mental conflict and can be easily accused of self contradiction.”[22]

Iqbal’s perceptive genius must be fully aware of the fact that some of the observations made by him at this Conference might not appear compatible with the fundamental propositions made by him two years back at the epoch-making Twenty-First Annual Session of the A11-India Muslim League at Allahabad. But “the time was out of joint”; the long-drawn-out peace parleys between political leaders of the Hindu and Muslim communities had broken down; the Hindu leaders of the Congress, in spite ,of their loud protestations of having the monopoly of nationalist convictions, preferred to look forward to favours from the British Labour Prime Minister to the making of peace with their Muslim compatriots; and the Communal Award of His Britannic Majesty was eagerly awaited not only by the “communalists” but also by the so-called nationalists of “British India”.

The two seemingly conflicting, but really complementary, facets of the last stage of the development of Iqbal’s thoughts on nationalism appear to be portrayed in the two short poems of the last collection of his verses, which was posthumously published. On the one hand, in a quatrain he exhorts his millat (nation) to follow in the footsteps of the Turkish and Egyptian nationalists and says:

[Unto the Turks the closed doors were opened;

The Egyptians got their national foundations strengthened;

You, too, grasp the skirt of your identity;

For, a nation without its identity possesses neither Faith nor Fatherland.]

But, at the same time, he enters into a bitter controversy with Mawlana Husayn Ahmad Madani, who headed the premier madrasah of the South Asian subcontinent located at Deoband, and opposed the Pakistani movement for national self-determination on the supposedly nationalistic ground.[24] Iqbal poetically summed up this polemic in a short satirical poem entitled “Husayn Ahmad,” which had been put towards the end of the Armaghan-i-Hijaz by its compilers. It reads as follows:

[fhe’Ajam has not yet mastered the secrets of the Faith, otherwise

We would not have seen the strange spectacle of (the madrasah of) Deoband producing a Husayn Ahmad.

He sermonised from the top of the pulpit that it is the territory that makes a nation;

How ignorant he is of the standpoint of Muhammad of Arabia!

You must reach out to Muhammad, the Chosen One, for he personifies the Religion;

If you do not reach out to him, you follow the Father of the Flame]

There was no contradiction in Iqbal’s own thought, but certainly was much confusion in the political situation of South Asia on eve of the promulgation of the Government of India Act, 1 35, on ant of the conflicting aims and ambitions of the contending parties. his famous Allahabad Presidential Address which contains the leitmotive of the last phase of his political thought he unequivocally his demand for the formation of “autonomous States” on the universally accepted postulates of nationhood, that is, “the unity of page, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests”[26] viewpoint on the question of nationhood was thus radically differ-from that of the “Iqbalist” theo-bureaucrats and their publicists the same history-making address he re-affirmed his essentially non-communal, secular and nationalist approach towards the vital question the electorates when he declared:

“The Muslims of India can have no objection to purely territorial ‘orates if provinces are demarcated so as to secure comparatively homogeneous communities possessing linguistic, radical, cultural and religious unity.”[27]

In the controversy that he had with Jawaharlal Nehru during the years 1934-36 on the Ahmadiyah question, he again elucidated what he considered to be "the attitude of Islam towards nation ' ideals". "Nationalism," he stated, "in the sense of love of one's country and even readiness to die for its honour is a part of the Muslin faith." He further explained: on "In Turkey, Iran, Egypt and other Muslim countries it will never become a problem. In these countries Muslims constitute an o M whelming majority and their minorities, i.e., Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians, according to the law of Islam, are either ‘People of Book' or ‘like the People of the Book' with whom the law of Is Pallows free social relations including matrimonial alliances. It becomes a problem for Muslims only in countries where they happen to be in a minority, and nationalism demands their complete self-effacement majority countries Islam accommodates nationalism; for there Islamabad nationalism are practically identical ; in minority countries it is justified c in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit. In either case, it is thoroughly consistent with itself."[28]

Commenting on the above-quoted passage of his father's writings, Justice Dr. Javid Iqbal made the following judicious remarks:

"If Iqbal had lived to see the establishment of Pakistan (the realization in a concrete form of his abstract and nebulous political id it is certain that he would have developed Into yet another phase, laid the foundations of what may be termed ‘Pakistani nationalism' But he died at a stage when Indian Islam was still sruggling to gain independence from the British and, at the same time, emancipation from the Hindus. Those were the times when supporting the cause territorial nationalism or patriotism in the Indian subcontinent mead the submergence of the Muslims Into the majority community and their extinction as a distinct political entity. Iqbal, therefore, took pains' providing a religto-philosophical justification for the rejection of territorial nationalism and patriotism, although he approved of the growl of territorial nationalism and patriotism in the countries of the Middle East."[29]

With all deference to the illustrious son of the ‘Allamah, we would like to submit that by December 1928 when Iqbal delivered his lecture on "The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam" at Madras he had definitely forsaken the pan-Islamist views of the second phase of his thought as is evident from the passages of that lecture that we have quoted in this essay elsewhere.[30] Two years later when he presided over the Twenty-First Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad, the Pakistani phase of his thought had reached its culminating point. Now he not only “approved of the path of territorial nationalism and patriotism in the countries of the Middle East” as claimed by Dr. Javid Iqbal, but also pleaded for the creation of autonomous States in the South Asian subcontinent based c the universally accepted ingredients of nationhood for, he argued that, such a measure would deepen “the patriotic feeling” of the Indian Muslims.[31] It is remarkable that at a time when the ascendancy of the revanchist Hindu Nationalism and the introduction of religion into politics by Mahatma Gandhi[32] had paved the way for the religious problem to monopolise the political scene of the subcontinent, the ‘Allamah was not at all oblivious of the socio-economic and pa-historical raison d’etre of the liberation of Pakistan. In the Pakistan Address to which we are repeatedly referring be made it dear that “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim States will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such States.”[33]

He further emphasized, as we have partly quoted earlier, that “in view of India’s infinite variety in climates, races, languages, creeds and social systems, the creation of autonomous States based on the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests, is the only possible way to secure a stable constitutional structure in India.”[34]

In the same Address he had earlier argued that “India is Asia in miniature. Part of her people have cultural affinities with nations in the east and part with nations in the middle and west of Asia.”[35]

To illustrate how the broader geo-historical, cultural and economic, and not the narrow “communal,” considerations dominated Iqbal’s mind, we would like to quote extensively from that portion of his Pakistan Address in which he put forward the case for the separation of Sind from the Bombay Presidency. He stated:

“I see no reason why Sind should not be united with Baluchistan and turned into a separate province. It has nothing in common with Bombay Presidency. In point of life and civilization the Royal Commissioners find it more akin to Mesopotamia and Arabia than India. The Muslim geographer Mas’udi noticed this kinship long ago when he said: ‘Sind is a country nearer to the dominions of Islam.’ The first Omayyad ruler is reported to have said of Egypt: ‘Egypt has her back towards Africa and face towards Arabia.’ With necessary alterations the same remark describes the exact situation of Sind. She has her back towards India and face towards Central Asia. Considering further the nature of her agricultural problems which can invoke no sympathy from the Bombay Government, and her infinite commercial possibilities, dependent on the inevitable growth of Karachi into a second metropolis of India, I think it unwise to keep her attached to a presidency which, though friendly today, in likely to become a rival at no distant period.”[36]

In his magnum opus which was dedicated to the child who grew up into Justice Dr. Javid Iqbal and was composed soon after the Pakistan Address he welded the two complementary political forces of the present-day Muslim world, i.e. Islamic universalism and territorial nationalism, not in the context of the Middle East but in that of the South Asian subcontinent. To project his ideals of Islamic universalism he chose to depict an impressionistic and not at all a historically factual and photographic– portrait of Jamal al-Din Afghani. It was a happy choice of Iqbal, for, as we have shown in the first part of this essay, Afghani’s movement for Muslim solidarity was entirely based on forceful nationalistic impulses It is significant that Iqbal has put in Afghani’s mouth such sentiments as

36. Ibid., p. 186.

37. Kulliyat: Farsi, p. 650; Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad, Tr., Pilgrimage of Eternity, Versified English Translation of Iqbal’s Javid Namah (henceforth Pilgrimage), pp. 50-51.

[The Western lords, in their deceit, have taught The cult of nation-worship, have thus lured The faithful from their creed. A centre they Themselves do seek, while riven ye remain : Pray now bypass this Syria, Palestine, Iraq.]

The above lines seem to demonstrate that Iqbal was against those parochial, provincialist movements which served the interests of “the Western lords” and weakened the anti-Imperialist forces, as the particularist nationalism of “Syria, Palestine and Iraq” has been a great hindrance in the march of the resurgent A rab nationalism, it is also significant that Iqbal had foreseen that trend of Europeanism which culminated in the formation of the European Economic Community based on the Gaullist ideal of the preservation of national sovereignty and he wanted the Muslim national States to emulate it and defeat the machinations of “the deceitful Western lords” (لرد مغرب آں سراپا مکر و فن) by their own weapons. While establishing the larger framework of Islamic universalism, Iqbal’s Muse transcends all earthly bounds, for “The word of God doth not depend on time Or place or nations; no, it far transcends The words of even those who utter it.

It is above, apart; it needs no land, No Rum or Syria, for its home.”[38]

But Iqbal’s Muse was not like the skylark of Shelley, a “scorner of the ground,” but was “the daring warbler” of whom Wordsworth sang:

“While the wings aspire, are heart and eye

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground

The nest which thou canst drop into at will,

Those quivering wings composed, that music still!”

Coming back to its “nest” Iqbal’s skylark passes through the “firmament of Saturn” where were “the condemned spirits of those who were treacherous to their nation and whom Hell refused to accept.”

“... Of them

There are two evil ones who for their flesh

All stifled a nation’s soul. They are a shame

To fatherland, to faith, to all mankind. From Deccan Sadiq, Ja’far from Bengal!”[39]

Iqbal here introduces us to “the Spirit of India,” “a noble hourie” “Eternity beamed from her brow, her eyes Did sparkle with the wine of endless bliss.”[40]

“The Wail of the Soul of India”[41] reminds us of the (“Plaint of Pain”) and J.), “Portrait of Pain”) of the first phase of Iqbal’s thought.[42] “Beyond the firmaments” we meet Ghani, the minstrel of Kashmir. Here the patriotic soul of Iqbal soars high above the petty politics of the Hindu and the Muslim “National-isms”. He sings in praise of the Nehru family—the father and the son

[Who gave to and desire of liberty?

Who taught the prey to hunt? They were those sons Of Brahmins, with alive and vibrant hearts, whose faces put the tulip and the rose to shame Mature at work and diligent

And keen of eye, their very glance commoves The West. Their origin is this our soil, Our catching earth; in Kashmir’s sky, these stars Arose.]

What a tragic irony it is that the selfsame Nehru family is denying Kashmir’s yearning for liberty! But the true understanding of Iqbal’s message will one day and sooner rather than later—remove the cruel anomalies of the recent politics of “this ancient land which has suffered so long, more because of her situation in historic space than because of any inherent incapacity of her people.”[44] We can hear voices

coming from the future—and not a distant future, In-sha’ Allah:

‘‘…Shouldst thou think that our dust contains Not e’en a single spark, inside thyself

Look thou awhile. Whence all this fire thou hast? Whence came this breath of spring? ‘Tis from the wind That lends our hills their fragrance and their hue.”[45]

Iqbal once again gives vent to his intense patriotic fervour when he meets “the martyred king,” Sultan Tipu:

[Tell me of India, with whose blades of grass E’en gardens cannot match. Tell me of her,

Dead is the passion in whose mosques and quenched Whose temples’ fire. I gave my blood for her, I nursed her image in my memory,

From my grief canst thou guess her grief; alas! For the beloved who forgot her love.]

In the answer that is given to “the martyred king” by “Living Stream” 09j o a3 j)—an apt epithet for the poet himself—there is a large-hearted recognition of the liberating role of the Civil Disobedi­ence Movement launched by the Congress:

[The people of this land defy the law

The West has given to them ; they spurn its charms. A burden on the soul is alien law

A sorrow e’en though it be heaven-sent.]

But almost at the same moment the politician in Iqbal was reacting strongly against the very same Civil Disobedience Movement. In his

Presidential Address to the Second Session of the All-Parties Muslim Conference held at Lahore on 21 March 1932, to which we have already referred above, he stated:

“The Congress leaders fear that the British Government in their provisional settlement of the communal problem may concede to the minorities what they demand. They have, therefore, started the pre-sent campaign to bolster up a claim which has no foundation in fact, to defeat a pact which, they fear, may find a place in the coming con­stitution, and to force Government to settle the matter of minorities with the Congress alone. The Congress resolution in pursuance of which the civil disobedience campaign was launched made it perfectly clear that since Government had refused to regard Mahatma Gandhi as the sole representative of the country, the Congress decided on civil disobedience. How can then a minority join a campaign which is directed as much against itself as against the Government ?”[48]

Truly it is dangerous to be honest to one’s convictions and at the same time to the dialectics of historical forces ! But Iqbal was a brave man. He, with the disarming candour that was one of the most pro­minent characteristics of his character, confessed “the misfortune of living in the midst of perpetual mental conflict.”[49] In Javid Namah the “Living Stream” took the longer historical view that the Civil Disobedience Movement of the Congress was an anti-Imperialist move and was, therefore, bound to hasten Pakistan’s liberation despite the Congress leaders’ own narrow communalist motivation. But in his Presidential Address Iqbal had to take the immediate political view and condemn Congress communalism.

Symbolic of Iqbal’s journey from Pan-Islamism to Pakistani Nationalism is the replacement of Aurangzib by his arch-enemy, the poet-warrior-patriot Khushhal Khan Khattak, in the niche of the poet’s heroes. The “Living Stream” of Javid Namah sings:

[…The poet who the Afghans knew, Who uttered fearlessly what he beheld, The wise man of the Afghan nation,

Their doctor who could physic all their ills, He saw a people’s secret, ventured forth To tell the hidden truth in dauntless words.]

Iqbal found in Khushhal Khan a kindred soul and fell in love with him. Quite early in the third—and the last—phase of his thought, in May 1928, he wrote an article on “Khushhal Khan Khattack (The Afghan Warrior-Poet)” for the Islamic Culture of Hyderabad-Deccan, in which he inter alia stated:

“His was a versatile mind and he wrote on various subjects, such as poetry, philosophy, ethics, medicine and his own autobiography which is unfortunately lost. Throughout his poetry, the major portion of which was written in India, and during his struggles with the Mughals, breathes the spirit of early Arabian poetry- We find in it the same love of freedom and war, the same criticism of life.”[51]

Among the specimens that Iqbal gives of Khushhal’s poetry to show his “passionate patriotism, his aspirations, and the keenness of his observation of man” are included the following lines-albeit apologetically:

“Still Aurangzeb’s malevolence bath not a whit diminished

Though the curse of his father it before drew down.

For this reason, also, no one can place dependence on him: He is malignant and perfidious; a breaker of his word.”[52]

Certainly it is a far cry from the Pan-Islamist phase of Rumuz-i‑Bekhudi (1918) when Iqbal sang an eulogy of “Shahanshah Alamgir, May Allah’s mercy be upon him,” for he was

[He the last arrow in our quiver left in the affray of Faith with unbelief.]

Iqbal’s admiration for Khushhal’s “passionate patriotism” remained undiminished throughout his Pakistani nationalist phase. In the Bal-i-Jibril (1935) we find a short and sadly sweet poem “The Last Will of Khushhal Khan”  (خوشحال خان کی وصیت)in which Iqbal sang of the Warrior-Poet’s testament that he must be buried in that “hallowed spot which was not polluted by the dust raised by the hoofs of the horses of the Mughul hordes.”[54] In the Darb-i-Kalim (1936) Khushhal gets a unique place in the heroes’ gallery built by Iqbal: he is etherealised as Mihrab Gul Afghan. The ideas and impressions that Iqbal received through a deep study of the selections of Khushhal’s poems literally translated by Raverty into English were rendered by him in that beautiful collection of poems which are entitled (“Thoughts of Mihrab Gul Afghan” ),[55]

Iqbal’s own patriotic passion continued to express itself through-out the last phase of his thought in such outpourings اشکے چند بر افتراق ہندیاں ? (“A Few Tears on the Dissensions of the Indians”) in Pas Chi Bayad Kard (1936)[56] and شعاع امید, (“A Ray of Hope”) in Darb-i Kalim (1936),[57] till he himself felt that he was relapsing into the old days of his Pan-Indian Nationalism when he vainly tried to build “a new Temple”.58 In a quatrain included in the posthumously published anthology of his last poems, Armaghan-i-Hijaz, he sings in “The Presence of God, the Truth” (بہ حضور حق)

[How may I say to Thee the story of Faith versus Fatherland? For I cannot speak out the bare truth about this episode. Don’t Thou be angry with me, if because of Thy indifference to me I built up the same old Temple.]

How pathetic is the pain that the poet felt over his mental conflict! He was tortured by the dilemma faced by the Muslims in the subcontinent. [59]The solution that he proposed seemed very remote at that time. Pan-Indian nationalism which he had very rightly rejected at the time when he entered the Pan-Islamist phase was not the answer to the call of the country which every conscientious human being receives in his lifetime. But, maybe, he had to live with it till his dream of “the creation of autonomous states based on the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests” —my repetition may please be condoned—was fulfilled. He placed his acute problem before his spiritual mentor, the Pir of Rum, and the answer that he received is as follows:

[In the darkness of night the base coins and the golden ones get mixed up ; Let the day dawn for the glittering gold!]

He was sure that the Dawn will come and

[The people-with-vision will build a new Homeland;

I do not look up to the Kufah and Baghdad of yester-years !}

The Day of Deliverance dawned, but its herald had then left for his Eternal Home.

A new Homeland was built, but it is still waiting for its “people with-vision” اہل نظر) to make it prosper. They are still looking towards “the Kufah and Baghdad” of yester-years, oblivious of their own Karachi and Islamabad.

“National, i.e. territorial, lines” of Iqbal’s thinking in the final phase of his political philosophy are also evident in the stand that he took vis-a-vis Pan Islamism.

In September 1931, on the eve of his departure for London to attend the Second Round Table Conference, Iqbal gave an interview to The Bombay Chronicle in which he was asked to propound his views on what the questioner termed as “Pan-Islamism”. Iqbal, in the first instance, deprecated the use of this term as according to him it “was invented after the fashion of the expression ‘Yellow Peril,’ in order to justify European aggression in Islamic countries.[62] “Then, supporting Afghani’s movement for Muslim solidarity he explained that Afghani’s was “purely a defensive measure” and that “he actually advised Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey to unite against the aggression of Europe”. Iqbal concluded his views on the subject by declaring that:

“Islam does not recognize caste or race or colour. In fact Islam is the only outlook on life which has already solved the colour question, at least in the Muslim world, a question which modern European civilization, with all its achievements in science and philosophy, has not been able to solve. Pan-Islamism, thus interpreted, was taught by the Prophet and will live for ever. In this sense Pan-Islamism is only Pan-Humanism. In this sense every Muslim is a Pan-Islamist and ought to be so.”[63]

Two years after this interview Sir Fazl-i-Husain made certain observations regarding the so-called Pan-Islamic movement on which Iqbal issued the following press statement:

“Sir Fazl-i-Husain is perfectly correct when he says that political Pan-Islamism never existed. It has existed, if at all, only in the imagination of those who invented the phrase or possibly as a diplomatic weapon in the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan of Turkey.

Even Jamal-ud-Din Afghani, whose name is closely associated with what is called Pan-Islamic movement, never dreamed of a unification of Muslims into a political State.

“It is significant that in no Islamic language—Arabic, Persian or Turkish does there exist a phrase corresponding to Pan-Islamism.”[64]

Further elaborating this theme he advised the Indian Muslims that they “should sink in their own deeper self like other Musiim nations of Asia, in order to gather up their scattered sources of life and, according to Sir Fazl’s advice, stand on their own legs”.[65]

“Every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self” was a favourite topic of lqbal in the third and last phase of his thought, viz.

of Pakistani Nationalism. He has expounded it philosophically in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, as follows:

… For the present every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical overlordship. It is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free independent units where racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual aspiration.”[66]

But Allah is not the god of a Chosen Ummah. He is the Lord of the worlds. (رب العلمین) His Blessed Messenger is Mercy for the worlds(رحمۃ للعلمین). His Book is the guidance for the worlds (ھدی للعلمین) Islamic universalism must, therefore, be a prelude to what Iqbal so happily phrased “Pan-Humanism”. Conversely, the “noble ideal” in the words of Iqbal’s Pakistan Address of 1930 must be “a harmonious whole which, instead of stifling the respective individualities of its component wholes, affords them chances of fully working out the possibilities that may be latent in them”.[67]

In short, Iqbal’s political philosophy with all its complexities, phases of development and shifts of emphasis can be described by three concentric circles: first, the circle of territorial nationalism; second, that of Muslim unity; and, third, the one encompassing the whole of oppressed humanity. In the message for the New Year’s Day of 1918 that he gave to the All-India Radio from his death-bed, he pleaded for “the brotherhood of man, which is above race, nationality, colour or language”. There is a cry of anguish in his broadcast message for the suffering humanity of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), China, Palestine and Spain. He lamented:

… Engines of destruction created by science are wiping out the great landmarks of man’s cultural achievements. The governments which are not themselves engaged in this drama of fire and blood are sucking the blood of the weaker peoples economically. It is as if the day of doom had come upon the earth, in which each looks after the safety of his own skin, and in which no voice of human sympathy or fellowship is audible.[68]

“The world’s thinkers are stricken dumb. Is this going to be the end of all the progress and evolution of civilization, they ask, that men should destroy one another in mutual hatred and make human habitation impossible on this earth? Remember, man can be main­tained on this earth only by honouring mankind, and this world will remain a battle-ground of ferocious beasts of prey unless and until the educational forces of the whole world are directed to inculcating in man respect for mankind.”[69]

[It is evil to speak ill of others,

For Muslims and non-Muslims all are the creatures of God; To be human is to have respect for all mankind:

So, be thou aware of the station of Man!]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(Full titles of the works cited)

Qadi Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ghaffar, Athar-i-Jamal al-Din Afghani, Delhi: Anjuman-i-Taraqqi-i-Urdu, 1940

Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt, London : O.U.P., 1933 Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, Lahore : Sh. Muham­mad Ashraf, Vol. I (1942), Vol. II (1947)

Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad, Pilgrimage of Eternity : Versified English Translation of Iqbal’s Javid Namah, Lahore : Institute of Islamic Culture, 1961

Arthur J. Arberry, The Mysteries of Selflessness, London : John Murray, 1953 Edward G. Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909, Cambridge : University Press, 1919

Imam Isma’il al-Bukhari, al-Jami’ al-Sahih, Cairo : Mustafa al-Babi, 1377 H. Olaf Caroe, The Pathans : 650 B.0 -A.D. 1957, London : MacMillan, 1962 B.A. Dar, Ed., Letters and Writings of Iqbal, Karachi : Iqbal Academy, 1967

Sayyid Qudratullah Fatimi, Pakistani Qawmiyat : Jughrafiya’i wa Tarikhi Tajziyah, Lahore : A’inah-i-Adab, 1972

Government of Pakistan, Report on Islamic Summit, 1974, Pakistan, Islamabad

M. Hamidullah, Majrnu’at al-Watha’iq al Siyasiyah, Cairo : Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa’l-Nashr, 1956

Muhammad Anwar Harith, Rakht-i-Safar, Lahore : Taj Company, 1952

Husayn Muhiy al-Din al-Hibal,. Ed., Al-’Urwat al-Wuthqa, Beirut : Matba’ al‑Tawfiq, 1338 H.) Javid Iqbal, Ed., Stray Reflections : A Note-Book of Allama Iqbal (1910), Lahore :

Sh. Ghulam Ali & Sons, 1961

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1954

--, Kulliyat-i-Iqbal, Farsi, Lahore : Sh. Ghulam All & Sons, 1973

--, Kulliyat-i-Iqbal, Urdu, Lahore (Sh. Ghulam Ali & Sons), 1973

Rashid Ahmad Jullundhri, “Pan-Islamism and Pakistan : I—Afghani and Nasser,” Scrutiny, University of Islamabad, Islamabad, 1/2 (1975), 27-42

Kemal H. Karpat, “Modern Turkey,” in P.M Holt, Ann K.S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis, Eds., The Cambridge History of Islam, Cambridge: University Press, 1970, Vol. I

Detlev H. Khalid, “A Study of Ataturk’s Laicism in the Light of Muslim History,” The Reforms of Ataturk, Istanbul : RCD Cultural Institute, 1974

V.G. Kiernan, Poems from Iqbal, London: John Murray, 1955

Abdullah Albert Kudsi Zadeh, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani : An Annotated Bibliography, Leiden : Brill, 1970

V.I. Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Moscow : Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1951

Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford Paperbacks, 1968 Ghulam Rasul Mihr, Sarud-i-Rafrah, Lahore : Sh. Ghulam Ali & Sons, 1954 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History, Princeton and London, O.U.P., 1957

Joseph Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950

A.R. Tariq, Ed., Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, Lahore : Sh. Ghulam Ali & Sons, 1973

S.A. Vahid, Ed., Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal, Lahore : Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1964

Baqiyat-i-Iqbal, Karachi : Majlis-i-Iqbal, 1952

W.F. Wertheim, Indonesian Society in Transition, The Hague and Bandung : Van Hoeve, 1959

NOTES