"Where there is no vision, the people perish" - so goes an old adage. It has stood the test of time because it quintessentially epitomizes the prime rationale
behind the rise and fall of nations all through history. And it is Muslim India's good fortune that it found a man of vision in Iqbal at a most critical juncture
in their 1200-year old encounter with Hinduism in India.

As seer who could see beyond time and space, an outstanding intellectual, who had the ability to analyse the Indian Muslim situation in the light of its past
history and current predicament and give serious thought to their short- and long-term problems, he envisioned for Muslim India a destiny. What was most
remarkable about it was that while being congruent with the ideological legacy of Indian Islam, it provided a viable and constructive answer to Muslim India's
current problems and predilections.

That vision was spelled out and the contours of Muslim India's destiny delineated in Iqbal's presidential address to the annual session of All India Muslim League
at Allahabad in December 1930. The most important of his many political pronouncements concerning the Muslim destiny in India, this address was as significant as Quaid-i-Azam
Jinnah's presidential address to the League Lahore session in March 1940 which provided the background of, and the justification for, the adoption of the Lahore
Resolution (1940), later known as the Pakistan Resolution.

While Jinnah argued the case for separate Muslim nationhood at the micro level, Iqbal did it at the macro level; while Jinnah provided the political justification
of that nationhood in terms of an achievable goal, Iqbal presented its intellectual justification on the ideological plane. Devoid of such justification, an issue
cannot be intellectualized and it fails to find a viable solution.

In any case, it was Muslim India's good fortune that the protagonist of the ideal and the one who brought to fruition thought on the same lines, so that
the Allahabad address and the Lahore address together present a composite and well-integrated concept of Muslim nationhood.

In his 1930 address, Iqbal, if only because of his wide-ranging scholarship, his long insight into Muslim history (both in the subcontinent and elsewhere),
his close familiarity with the Muslim ethos, was able to envision and enunciate the intellectual justification of Muslim nationhood, of Muslim nationalism,
and for a separate Muslim national and cultural home in the subcontinent.

Iqbal justified Muslim India's claim to nationhood on the basis of the "moral consciousness" created among the Muslims by their allegiance to Islam, its ethics
and ethos and its institutions. He argued, "Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression 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."

It is important to remember that Iqbal believed in Islam "as a living force for freeing the outlook of man from its geographical limitations." He also believed
that "religion is a power of the utmost importance in the life of individuals as well as states." Above all, he believed that "Islam is itself destiny and
will not suffer a destiny."

Despite all this, he could not possibly ignore what was happening to Islam and the muslims in India and elsewhere. "True statesmanship", he told his Allahabad
audience, "cannot ignore facts, however unpleasant they may be. The only practical course is not to assume the existence of a state of things which does not exist,
but to recognize facts as they are, and to exploit them to our greatest advantage."

Hence Iqbal took cognizance of the fact that in an attempt to get rid of foreign domination, for successfully withstanding western designs as well as for rehabilitating
themselves, the Muslim countries had gone in for nationalism and nationalist movements, that the national idea was racializing the outlook of Muslims everywhere,
and that the growth of racial consciousness might mean "the growth of standards different and even opposed to the standards of Islam."

Since the people of India had refused to pay the price required for the formation of the kind of moral consciousness which, according to Renan, constitutes the
essence of national feeling and nationhood (as evidenced by the failure of Akbar, Kabir and Nanak to capture the imagination of the Indian masses, India at the
moment could not be considered a "nation" in the western sense of the terms.

And since, on the other hand, Islam had provided the Indian Muslims with a moral consciousness of their own, Iqbal argued, they were the only Indian people who
could aptly be described as a "nation" in the modern sense of the term. Having thus made out a cogent case for Muslim nationhood, Iqbal went on to suggest
a viable solution to India's communal problem: "a redistribution of British India", and territorial readjustment, which would ensure stable Muslim provinces
in the North-Western India.

It is in this context that Iqbal suggested the amalgamation of Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan into a single state and the formation
of an integrated North-West Indian Muslim state. He also suggested the exclusion of the Ambala Division and perhaps some of the districts where non-Muslims predominated,
with a view to making it less diverse and more unitary in population.

Iqbal's reasons in favour of this solution were unassailable. Since Indian nationalism was pro-Hindu and predominantly Hindu-oriented, the Muslims should construct
a separate "nationalism" of their own. Since the whole of India could not be won for Islam, if only because of the overwhelming Hindu majority, "the life
of Islam as a cultural force" in India must be saved by centralizing it "in a specified territory". This must be achieved by setting up "a consolidated
North-West Indian Muslim state", comprising "the most living portion of the Muslims of India."

It is also significant that Iqbal demanded the creation of "autonomous states" on the basis of "the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity
of economic interests", and that "in the best interests of both India and Islam."

Iqbal's elucidation of this last point is important: "For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity
to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilize its laws, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer
contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times."

Two years earlier, in the course of his famous Lectures, Iqbal had enunciated two basic principles. First, he called on every Muslim nation to "sink into
her deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics." Second, he warned
his audience that Islam "recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of
its members."

The destiny that Iqbal envisaged for Indian Muslims in 1930 represented a political expression in the peculiar Indo-Muslim context of these twin principles. For
while proposing a national or territorial solution to the Indian Muslim problem, Iqbal - unlike leaders of other Muslim countries such as Turkey, Iran and Egypt
- was against restricting the social horizon" of the Indian Muslims. Thus, he laid the groundwork for delineating the demand for Pakistan, which the Muslims
of the subcontinent finally adopted as their main political objective, in essentially Islamic terms, signifying a renewed interest in international Islam.