Iqbal and Muslim renaissance

Shaikh Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) had four-decade long pro-active career as a poet and philosopher. Multitudinous and diverse are the evaluation of his thought and intellectual forays and philosophical shifts. Yet, all said and done, it was given to renowned Professor Hamilton A. R. Gibb to set up a viable framework or paradigm on how really to look at him. This Professor Gibb did in his Chicago lectures (1946) on "Modern Trends in Islam" which have since been published under the same title.
Therein, he perceptively observes, "perhaps the right way to look at Iqbal is to see in him one who reflected and put into vivid words the diverse currents of ideas that were agitating the minds of Indian Muslims. His sensitive poetic temperament mirrored all that impinged upon it - the backward looking romanticism of the liberals, the socialist leanings of the younger intellectuals, the longing of the militant Muslim League for a strong leader to restore the political power of Islam. "Every Indian Muslim, dissatisfied with the state of things - religious, social, or political - could and did find in Iqbal a sympathiser with his troubles and his aspirations and an advisor who bade him seek the way out by self-expression."
This means that despite being a creative thinker, Iqbal, in a large measure, was addressing the situation at hand, to the environment. The ideas he enunciated, though intrinsically creative and constructive in themselves besides being abiding in appeal beyond a particular time and place, were yet primarily meant to salvage the bleak Muslim situation in India and the world at large. This makes Iqbal, in a sense, Indian Muslim psyche and situation oriented. This frameworks eminent sense of makes his periodic darting out to discuss and suggest solutions to the problems of the Muslim world at large and his consuming concern with the "Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam" (1930), - a logical extension of his role as a modern Muslim ideologue, strenuously attempting to analyse and see Muslim India's problems and predicament on a wider canvas and in the total context. After all, Iqbal regarded India, if only because of the Muslim numerical strength, as "the greatest Muslim country in the world", to quote his own words. And these tasks, both critical and onerous as they were, he fulfilled squarely and to the hilt.
And emotion-laden and soul-lifting poetry was the medium Iqbal chose to bring his people a new awareness of the depths of degradation to which they had fallen, of the slough of despondency that had possessed them. And this in order to diagnose their ailments, their predicament, and the prime cause of their decline, and to warn them dire of the consequences if they failed to mend themselves in good time. A more effective medium could not have been possibly chosen.
For one thing, poetry is the most powerful medium for touching the deepest emotions of a people and for sinking a message into their subconscious. For another, the Indian Muslims had been among the most poetry oriented people in the world, with a long tradition of readily taking to heart what was written in verse. Political orations may stir an audience to action a la Mark Antony's, but their impact is bound to be severely restricted the audience on the spot, and dissipate with time when read in cold print. In contrast, a poetic message seeps through the ethos of a nation, working on its psyche all the while, and for years on end. Hence Iqbal achieved through his poems what a thousand speeches could not. And but for the silent mental preparation that had gone on for long decades, the people would not have responded to the call of political leaders - in this case, especially of Jinnah during the 1937-47 epochal decade. No wonder, the pandals of the League sessions from Lucknow (1937) onwards were plastered with Iqbal's couplets, calling on Muslims to rise and take their destiny in their own hand, and Iqbal was quoted oft and anon to rouse Muslims to a sense of new activism and a new destiny. And all this had an electric effect on the audience since Iqbal, though generally complex and couched in appropriate idiom, was, to quote Mushtoor Hussain Yad, yet straightforward and yielded clear guidelines.
Besides being a poet of extraordinary merit, Iqbal was a thinker of a high order. Thus, while Syed Ahmed Khan, Mohammad Ali and Jinnah provided political leadership to Muslims, Iqbal took upon himself the task of setting the intellectual tone since 1910; (previously, this was done by Sir Syed's prodigious writings and the Aligarh school). In addressing himself to this task, Iqbal brought about a revolution in Muslim thinking at various levels, while keeping them stolidly anchored to their pristine ideology and historical legacy.
Iqbal's role in awakening the Muslims to a new consciousness began in 1899 when he recited a poem at the annual session of the Anjuman-i-Islam, Lahore. His moving "Nala-i-Yatim" was symbolic of the echoing cry of his faceless audience, indeed of all Indian Muslims - Muslims, who had long felt themselves abandoned, neglected, and orphaned.
Like Syed Ahmad Khan and Jinnah, Iqbal had started out as an Indian nationalist, but ended up at the threshold of Muslim nationalism. While the former two came at this threshold directly, Iqbal did it via the pan-Islamism route. And with Muhammad Ali, he shared the passion for pan-Islamism. In terms of ideological orientation, these three trends at various stages in Iqbal's poetic and public life represent his point of convergence with the three most important political leaders Muslim India had spawned during the ninety years of British imperial rule (1858-1947).
When Iqbal sailed for Europe for higher studies in 1908 he had gone as an Indian nationalist, but he returned in 1911 as a pan-Islamist. His European sojourn had acted as a catalyst, enabling him to look at events and developments in a wider perspective and in more perceptive terms. Thus, he came to be disillusioned with the very concept of nationalism, which had spawned cut-throat competition (even as the European credo of laissez-faire had between man and man) and bred racial discrimination. What pained him most was the impact of nationalism on various Muslim countries, eroding the Islamic Ummah concept, enfeebling and rivening the Muslim world, and laying it all the more open to European aggression, exploitation and designs. Indeed, in the first decade of the twentieth century that world seemed hurtling towards its nadir.
To the ailments Muslim world was afflicted with, Iqbal found the solution in Islam and its message. He therefore focused his message on the Muslims, by and large. And in order to reach the innermost recesses of their consciousness, he invoked nostalgically the departed glory of mundane Islam, recalling to them the beckoning accomplishments of their ancestors. And, in so doing, he tried to fight off the prevalent slough of despondency, raise their drooping spirits, and replace it with a sense of soaring confidence.
Next, he gave them a message of hope. He told them that they could still redeem themselves if they could only recapture their soul and regain their pristine moral and spiritual values. He emphasised the imperative need to build up the lofty human qualities and the right type of character. He attributed their degeneration to their taking to a life of passivity and resignation for several generations past. And that debilitating trend could be reversed by opting for initiative and endeavour. And these, he believed, Islam stood for. To him, an active, struggling kafir was preferable to a sleeping Muslim.
But if Muslims were to be beckoned to a new destiny, they must first be confirmed as Muslims; if they were to come into their own, they must first own up their pristine values. This was all the more necessary in the context of the rise of positivism and scepticism, which posed a serious challenge to the modern Muslim.
To Iqbal, "The task before the modern Muslim is to re-think the whole system of Islam without completely breaking with the past". And this crucial task he undertook in a series of lectures since compiled as "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930)." Therein, he argued that Islam represented a philosophy of action, and that faith without action was a life totally bereft of any significance. A true Muslim should always be on the move: he should have an energetic and wide-awake interest in the material reality around him; he should cultivate the sciences and mould the forces of life rather than submit to them.
To him, "Here on the path halt is improper,/As in rest remains concealed the death;/Only those on move have gone ahead./And who tarried get to be trampled!" Again: "From Khizr you should ask the secret of life,/Through ceaseless efforts all things exist here!" That means toil and labour, ceaseless efforts and relentless exertions alone will lead to success - to new vistas, greener pastures, and ennobling goals. He wished Muslims to become dynamic, enterprising and assertive as in early Islam. He wished them to realise, own up and raise their "khudi", and his doctrine of 'self' and this was meant to strengthen the moral and intellectual power lying within oneself which can enable him to master the world around, besides fulfilling Allah's will. Thus, Muslims could remain Muslims and yet enjoy the fruits of modern science and civilisation.
Yet another crucial task still remained - that is, to spell out the destiny for Indian Muslims. This Iqbal did in his League Allahabad (1930) address. Here, for the first time, he set out to delineate and address the psychic needs and political aspirations of his fellow Muslims. As a piece of political discourse this address was unique: it spelt out in some detail for the first time the intellectual justification for the Indian Muslims' aspirations towards separate nationhood and a separate national existence. He argued how 'Islam regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which structure I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own. Indeed it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is, under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam."
Interestingly, during the last years of his life, Iqbal came close to Jinnah, and corresponded with him regularly and at length. He also goaded Jinnah to solve the problem of Muslim identity by opting for separate Muslim state(s). To Iqbal, moreover, Jinnah was "the only Muslim in India...to whom the community had a right to look up for safe guidance through the storm that is coming ..." And Jinnah, on his part, acknowledged in 1943, "His views were substantially in consonance with my own and had finally led me to the same conclusions as a result of careful examination and study of the constitutional problems facing India..."
Seldom does a poet exert such a profound influence on the course of history and in changing the destiny of a nation. But Iqbal did, if only because his accomplishments extended far beyond the realm of mere imagination and into the ever changing sphere of objective realities, because in the final years of his eventful life he donned the role of an ideologue, besides being a national poet.And, to be sure, all of Iqbal's efforts throughout the entire span of his active life were incrementally directed towards the regeneration of Muslims and the resurgence of Islam.
(The writer has recently co-edited Unesco's History of Humanity, vol. VI, and has edited In Quest of Jinnah (2007), the only history on Pakistan's founding father) ([email protected])