Allama Muhammad Iqbal was one of the greatest thinkers and poets of the Muslim world. He was not only a sage, a revolutionary poet-philosopher, an extraordinary scholar and harbinger of Islamic renaissance but also a political thinker and ‘seer’ of Pakistan. From the outset he took keen interest in the political situation of India and in 1908 while he was still in England, he was selected as a member of the executive council of the newly-established British branch of the Indian Muslim League. In 1931 and 1932 he represented the Muslims of India in the Round Table Conferences held in England to discuss the issue of the political future of the Indian Muslims
A brilliant intellect from the beginning, Allama Iqbal's devotion to knowledge and intellect verily attributed to his academic achievements:

Bachelor's degree from the Government College Lahore, then another Bachelor's from the Cambridge University, Master's degree from the Punjab University, Law degree from the Lincoln's Inn London, and a PhD from the University of Munich. In recognition to his remarkable scholastic work and extraordinary poetry, the British Crown knighted him in 1922. His works and inspirations cover a wide range of topics, e.g., Religion, Islam, Quran, Philosophy, Metaphysics, Art, Politics, Law, Economics, Universal brotherhood, the Revival of Muslim glory. The Encyclopedia Britannica appropriately entitled him as "the greatest Urdu poet of the century."

Iqbal was immensely inspired with political wisdom and divinely insight. He was deadly against atheism and materialism and discarded the European concept of religion as the private faith of an individual having nothing to do with his temporal life. In his view, the biggest blunder made by Europe was the separation of Church and State. His prophecy that he had made in the following verse of a ghazal written in March 1907:

Your civilization will commit suicide with its own dagger

Because a nest built on a frail bough cannot be durable

came absolutely true in 1914 when the European war broke out because of the European nations’ blunder of separating the Church from the State. In the same ghazal he had also said:

“I will take out my worn out caravan in the pitch darkness of night

Lo! My sighs shall emit sparks and my breath will produce flames.”

This again proved to be a wonderful foresight as in a Presidential Address delivered at the annual session of the all-India Muslim League on December 29, 1930, Iqbal demanded in the best interests of India as well as Islam the creation of a separate homeland for the Indian Muslims. Let us delve into this monumental and historic document of great importance, which like Rousseau’s “Social Contract” is most widely quoted but rarely studied in full. Expressing his views as a student of Islam, its laws and polity, its culture, its history and its literature, Iqbal believed that Islam was “the major formative factor in the life history of Indian Muslims; it adequately 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.” He maintained: “Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam, God and the Universe, spirit and matter, church and state are organic to each other. For such a group of people, the concept of an Indian nationhood and the construction of a polity on national lines amounted to a negation of the Islamic principles of solidarity and, therefore, not acceptable to Muslims.” Iqbal had no hesitation in saying “if the principle that the Indian Muslims is entitled to full and free development on the lines of his own culture and tradition in his own Indian homeland is recognized as the basis of a permanent communal settlement, he will be ready to stake all for the freedom of India.” He added: “The life of Islam in this country very largely depends on its centralization in a specific territory” and thereby posed a question: “Is it possible to retain Islam as an ethical ideal and reject it as a polity in favor of national politics in which religious attitude is not permitted to play any part.” If the answer to this question was in the negative, it was impossible for the Muslims of India to stay within a secularized and unified political structure.

Iqbal further argued: “The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism. There are communalisms and communalisms. A community which is inspired by feeling of ill will towards other communities is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws, religious and social institutions of other communities. Nay, it is my duty, according to the teaching of the Quran, even to defend their places of worship if need be. Yet I love the communal group which is the source of my life and behavior; and which has formed what I am by giving me its religion, its thought, its culture and thereby recreating its whole past, as a living operative factor, in my present consciousness. The religious ideal is organically related to the social order which it has created. The rejection of the one will eventually involve the rejection of the other. Therefore, the construction of a polity on national lines if it means the displacement of the Islamic principles of solidarity is simply unthinkable to a Muslim. This is a matter which at the present moment directly concerns the Muslims of India.”
Taking a broader view of the tedious problem, Iqbal explained: “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. If an effective principle of co-operation is discovered in India, it will bring peace and mutual good will to this ancient land which has suffered so long, more because of her situation in historic space than because of her inherent incapacity of her people. And it will, at the same time, solve the entire political problems of Asia.” Iqbal was cognizant of the fact that: “To base a constitution on the conception of a homogenous India or to apply to India the principles dictated by democratic sentiments is unwittingly to prepare her for a civil war.” Being a poet of peace, love, tranquility and fraternity, Iqbal despised the very idea of a civil war. Hence he was obliged to propound:

“Self-government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. The formation of the consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of the North-West India. I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interests of India and Islam. For India it means security and peace resulting for an internal balance of power; for Islam an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that the 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.”

It is apparent from the above that the purpose for the creation of a separate Muslim state was two-fold. It was to end the Hindu-Muslim conflict and also to enable Islam to play its vital role as a cultural force. In the context of the Indian sub-continent commitment to Islam could only be fulfilled by the creation of a separate Muslim state. Iqbal’s address came at the time when Indian Muslims were passing through a great crisis. “To be or not to be” was the only question left before the desperate Muslim nation. Muslim leadership was utterly isolated and demoralized. And the British and Hindus had agreed upon a sinister scheme of constitutional amendments and establishing Hindu Raj under the aegis of the British. Therefore, according to Allama Iqbal the future of Islam as a moral and political force not only in India but in the whole of Asia rested on the organization of the Muslims of India led by the Quaid-i Azam.

It is noteworthy that Iqbal’s proposal for a separate homeland or the Indian Muslims was a bombshell for the British as well as Hindus. Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald was highly displeased with the views expressed by Iqbal. British and Indian circles in the Round Table Conference expressed resentment and termed it as an assault against the idea of an all India constitution being worked out. “The Tribune of Lahore” viewed that Iqbal had torpedoed all chances for a communal settlement. The Hindu Press carried out maligned and raging campaign against him. They used all sorts of abusive epithets like ‘fanatic, mischievous, dangerously prejudiced, venomous, narrow-minded, mean, and a dangerous Muslim of Northern India’.

It was “Inqilab” of Lahore that came to his rescue and wrote a number of articles and editorials in his favor. Here is an excerpt from an editorial entitled “Iqbal’s Victorious March against Hindu Raj” published in its issue on March 17, 1931:
“The truth stands declared. The untruth lies prostate. Hindu machinations have been exposed. Long live the personality that showed light to a Millat that was lost in the magic of deceptive slogans of nationalism and democracy. God willing, this light would remain a constant companion of the Muslims of India till they reach their destination.”

The sentiment of separate entity had its foundations not only in religion and culture but also in history because Muslims had identified themselves as inheritors of the traditions of Muslim supremacy for a millennium. The Hindus who constituted the majority community developed under the banner of the Indian National Congress the concept of composite nationalism supposed to embrace all religious communities, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and the rest. However, the mass of Muslim community could not accept the concept of composite Indian nationalism. Iqbal was singularly the major influence in sharpening and delineating the feeling of Muslim identity and separateness on the basis of religion, history, tradition and culture. He gave his community a message of faith, hope and struggle. He believed in a dynamic rather than static view of life. Self-awareness, which was the corner stone of Iqbal's philosophical thinking, profoundly motivated the rising middle class of the Muslim Community.

Since Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar had expired in January 1931 and Quaid-i-Azam had stayed behind in London, the responsibility of providing a proper lead to the Indian Muslims had fallen on his shoulders till Quaid-i-Azam returned to the sub-continent in 1935. He had to assume the role of a jealous guardian of his nation also because the League and the Muslim Conference had no organization in the provinces and their leaders had lost confidence of and contact with the masses.

During the Third Round-Table Conference, Iqbal was invited by the London National League where he addressed an audience which included among others, foreign diplomats, members of the House of Commons, Members of the House of Lords and Muslim members of the R.T.C. delegation. In that gathering he dilated upon the situation of the Indian Muslims. He explained why he wanted the communal settlement first and then the constitutional reforms. He stressed the need for provincial autonomy because autonomy gave the Muslim majority provinces some power to safeguard their rights, cultural traditions and religion. Under the central Government the Muslims were bound to lose their cultural and religious entity at the hands of the overwhelming Hindu majority. He referred to what he had said at Allah bad in 1930 and reiterated his belief based on cogent reason.

There are some critics within Pakistan and without, who insist that Allama Iqbal never meant a sovereign Muslim country outside India. Rather he desired a Muslim State within the Indian Union: A State within a State. This is absolutely wrong. What he meant was vividly understood by his Muslim compatriots as well as the non-Muslim contemporaries till Quaid-i-Azam returned to the sub-continent in 1935. Nehru and others who knew what Iqbal meant had then tried to refute the idea of Muslim nationalism had no basis at all. Nehru, in particular, observed:

“This idea of a Muslim nation is the figment of a few imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the Press few people would have heard of it. And even if many people believed in it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.”

In Iqbal’s poetry, we find a significant symbol, "Deeda-war" (visionary), who may be deemed as Iqbal himself. He could foresee what others could not. A visionary sees the problems or critical phenomena in a long term perspective and develops some sort of cosmic sense. Such individuals, although very rare, change the course of history forever, as indeed Iqbal did. Pakistan owes its existence to Allama Iqbal and the people of Pakistan owe a great deal of gratitude to his extraordinary vision. After the disaster following the Balkan War of 1912, the fall of the caliphate in Turkey, and many anti-Muslim incessant provocations and actions against Muslims in India and elsewhere by the intellectuals and so called secular minded leaders, Allama Iqbal suggested a separate state for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent so that they can express the vitality and veracity of Islam to the utmost.