A glorious legacy
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Bilal Rana

Just for a moment take off the cloak of reverence from Iqbal's persona and forget that he was our national poet and visionary, and independently judge the credibility of his scholarship and insight from an impartial yardstick. One is simply amazed by his diversity and depth. With a command over Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Punjabi, Sanskrit, German and English languages, he had a keen perception of Eastern and Western literature, ancient as well as modern. An ardent follower of the history of civilisations and religions, coupled with his interest in sociology and economics (he had written a handbook on Economics, Ilmul Iqtisad, early in his career), his grasp of the march of human thought was phenomenal. Never formally a student of science, still he was acutely aware of the contemporary advances in the field and their transforming impact on human landscape. Not to forget his lifelong association as an ardent student of philosophy and law, in which he held formal degrees.

Not content with all that, his versatility found expression in poetically mediated thought. Urdu poetry, which traditionally operated in the narrow confines of love and melancholy, found a practitioner that lifted it to celestial heights, introducing subjects that were fresh, virile and inspirational.

Unleashing the potential inherent in an individual, Iqbal is a vociferous advocate of human empowerment. He prepares an individual through awareness and self-realisation, and ultimately guides him towards self-actualisation. He raises man to such heights where even Divine force acts as a coworker in unison with human aspirations. The cultivation of Khudi or Self is a recurrent theme in his works. For him it is these individual building blocks that need to be nurtured and trained to foster higher collective aims. It is their individual worth and association with lofty ideals that would equip them with self-belief, which in turn would chart a glorious course for the Nation.

But Iqbal is not just the prophet of Khudi or 'Self', as some would emphasise. That Khudi, on a higher and advanced plane, finds expression in Bekhudi or 'Selflessness'. No wonder Iqbal's Mathnawi Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of the Self) was followed by Rumooz-e-Bekhudi (Mysteries of Selflessness). For him it is just like a drop submitting its being to an ocean. It retains its essential identity, yet is an intrinsic part of a larger whole. Thus Iqbal methodically prepares a choicest crop of individuals, aware of their boundless creative capacity, and offers their services for the realisation of higher collective ideals. And it is this submission that ensures their individual preservation.

The individual is firm by nation's coherence, otherwise nothing/The wave is only in the ocean, and outside it is nothing.

On a much broader horizon Iqbal envisions humanity as one entity. It would be naïve to assume that he was partial towards the East and had antagonism for the West. He was beyond such parochial prejudices. Actually he opposed everything that had a detrimental impact on the creative existence of mankind. So while he vehemently criticises the West for its crass materialism and hegemonic greed, in the same breath he censures East for slavish imitation and intellectual sloth. He stands for the emancipation of humanity. In the New Year Message (Iqbal's last message) broadcast from the All-India Radio Station Lahore on 1st January,1938, he unequivocally asserts, "…Only one unity is dependable, and that unity is the brotherhood of man, which is above race, nationality, colour or language…" Iqbal's is simply an all-embracing creed that yearns to usher in a dawn of shared human prosperity.

Don't shun the East, nor look on West with scorn/Since Nature yearns for change of night to morn.

Bridging the physical divide amongst humanity, Iqbal's genius did not shy away from confronting the ideological frontiers that posed complex and divisive problems for human societies for centuries. With his encyclopedic scholarship and critical insight he initiated a discourse that aimed at reconciling the duality of seemingly divergent perspectives like spirit and matter, religion and science, man and nature, art and life, tradition and modernity. His fresh and innovative approach opens many exciting vistas for reflection and probe. It is indeed a sad reflection of our national character that we could not carry the baton further, enriching the modern human discourse on a wide range of issues.

The spectrum of Iqbal's vision is astounding. Be it a celebration of cultural diversity, or social justice and educational reforms, issues of good governance or the role of life-sustaining art and literature, Iqbal seems more a man of our times than his own. In him we see creativity transcending spatiotemporal constraints. He could envision a harmonious balance in the existential trinity of God, Universe and Man. After a lifelong quest of learning from innumerable founts of wisdom he had ultimately ascertained the veracity of Islamic ideals enshrined in his early upbringing at Sialkot , so he proclaimed.

It is a pity and a national disgrace that we have consigned such a rare genius to our libraries and bookshelves, paying homage to his greatness by including a cosmetic sprinkling of his poetry in our textbooks. He is a poet of action and his legacy demands to be circulated like blood in our body polity. If not today his time is bound to come. Rather than wallowing in despair, let's grab the moment, enact his vision, and truly make him our very own.


source:http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=235256


Faiz on Iqbal
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Farooq Sulehria

Few students of Pakistani literature know that Faiz Ahmed Faiz translated Allama Iqbal's Payam-e-Mashriq into Urdu. An equally little-known fact is Iqbal's presence at the founding conference of the Progressive Writers Association. While Iqbal, being the national poet of a confessional state, has been "Islamised" beyond recognition, a section of the left has written Iqbal off as reactionary. However, many progressives, notably Ali Sardar Jafri, glorified Iqbal as a neo-progressive.

But Faiz finds these evaluations "far from satisfactory.'' He criticises writers who put a "great deal of stress on the religious element in Iqbal's work without clarifying that Iqbal's concept of religion was in many ways opposed to the concept of the orthodox Muslim theologian.''

On the other hand, Faiz disagrees with progressive commentators who make much of Iqbal's admiration for Marx and Lenin. These progressives, Faiz thinks, "ignore that Iqbal's approach to social and economic problems was idealistic and abstract, and the scientific basis of Marxist materialism did not enter into his concept of socialism.'' For Faiz, Iqbal was neither a reactionary ("The mullah or the orthodox religious preacher is the subject of some of the bitterest satirical verse written by Iqbal''), nor a socialist ("He frequently confused the materialist and capitalist points of view").

Instead of colouring Iqbal red or green, Faiz has tried to contextualise Iqbal's message. Placing Iqbal among "poets of affirmation'' like Dante, Milton and Goethe, Faiz described Iqbal as a product of his period whose "work reflected all the inner intellectual contradictions, all the conflicting impulses, all the confused dreams and aspirations of the middle strata of Indo-Pakistani Muslims.'' "It is precisely because of this," says Faiz, "that his work is popular among progressives and reactionaries alike.''

Despite the fact that Iqbal benefited from Western philosophies, according to Faiz, he devoutly believed that it was only the authority of Islam that could truly validate the message he carried. However, to drive home his message, Iqbal, as a first step, "sought to cleanse the House of God of all false idols, of scribes and Pharisees, the obscurantist mullah, the withdrawn mystic, the charlatan and the demagogue.'' Faiz finds in Iqbal a believer in the process of never-ending cosmic creation signified by constant change. To quote a line by Iqbal:

Sabaat aik taghayyur ko hai zamanay main."

("Only change has permanence in this world.")

Iqbal applies this change, Faiz claims, "as much to the subjective and the ideological as to social and material factors'' and "the principal agent in this creative process is the human Ego, or Personality or Self--Khudi, as Iqbal calls it.'' To meet the challenge of creation, Khudi has to be fortified by "perceptual knowledge of the physical world and intuitive passion (or love, 'Ishq' in Iqbal's terminology).''

Only Iqbal's Perfect Man (Mard-e-Kamil) is capable of meeting this challenge. However, Faiz finds the Perfect Man different from Nietzsche's Superman, as this Perfect Man does not develop in isolation but "in the context of the totality of social relationships.'' Hence, unlike the Superman, the Perfect Man negates "all forms of nationalist chauvinism, imperialist domination, racial discrimination, social exploitation and personal aggrandisement, since all of them make for the debasement and perversion of human personality.'' For Faiz, "Iqbal is a humanist not only in the formal but in the literal sense of the word.''

Unlike many critics, Faiz attaches great importance to Iqbal's style too. After all, it is Iqbal's "vibrant and impassioned verse and the persuasive appeal it carried which accounts for much of his influence.'' But before analysing Iqbal's style, Faiz warns: ''First of all I might clarify that Iqbal himself was deadly opposed to art for art's sake and, therefore, we cannot study his art or his style or his technique or his other poetic qualities in isolation from his theme.''

Faiz believes that Iqbal's thought, and hence his style, went through a four-phase evolution influenced by the political milieu in the Indian Subcontinent. In his younger days, Iqbal's themes are either descriptive and colourful delineations of natural phenomena or "subjective experiences typical of adolescent years, experiences of nostalgia and romantic melancholy.'' Iqbal is "obviously under the influence of Bedil, Naziri and Ghalib.'' The style is "a bit florid, a bit diffuse, a bit undefined.''

In the early twentieth century, "as the first wave of nationalist anti-imperialist sentiment, after the great uprising of 1857, arose in undivided India and saw the birth of various political organisations,'' Iqbal's verse enters the second phase as Iqbal "transferred his attention from personal subjective observations and experiences to the collective sentiments and experiences of his country – his nationalist, patriotic phase.'' Now his style becomes monolithic. "It becomes almost uniform, having no ups and downs, practically keeping the same pace and same level.'' This is second progression.

In the period before and immediately after the First World War, when the subcontinent was convulsed by a series of widespread anti-imperialist movement, the "Indian Muslim, while fully participating in these movements shoulder-to-shoulder with non-Muslims, had some additional emotional and political motivations which were distinctly their won, and which found expression in what came to be known as the Khilafat Movement.'' This struggle took a Pan-Islamic character. Hence, notes Faiz, "Iqbal's poetry, correctly reflecting the emotional and political impulses of his people, also turned from Indian patriotic to Pan-Islamic anti-imperialist themes, which is the third important phase of his poetic evolution.''

The same period also witnessed the abolition of the Khilafat and the birth of Soviet Russia as first socialist state. "For Iqbal these were the years of deep study and meditation, resulting in the fourth and last phase of his work, the most mature and most valuable, the phase of his philosophical humanism.'' This final theme is Man and Universe. As Iqbal goes Pan-Islamic, one witnesses the third progression in his work and style, "the progression which integrates disjointed phenomena, disjointed experiences into a single whole, through a process which is both intellectual and emotional.'' And the fourth progression, as Iqbal goes universal, is "transition in emotional climate'' when Ishq (passion) replaces Mohabbat (love as a sentiment).

This is no coincidence. After all, the entire universe is man's domain and "each stage of evolution is merely a step to the next stage.'' Hence, Faiz observes, "the dynamics of this evolutionary struggle are provided firstly by what Iqbal calls 'Ishq,' or passion, in the sense of dedication to a humanist ideal, and, secondly, by what he calls 'amal,' or action, as opposed to the more passive contemplation or meditation advocated by mystics and idealist philosophers.''

Faiz admits that "Iqbal's approach to these themes was abstract and philosophical, which frequently gave use to contradictory expositions by his followers and admirers.'' However, he points out, Iqbal's poetry "contributed a great deal to the rise of the progressive movement in the Urdu language, firstly because its high and purposeful seriousness demolished many decadent notions regarding the function of poetry as trivial entertainment, like the notion of art for art's sake, and, secondly, because the core of his humanist thought held up admiration for the great human ideals of freedom, justice, progress and social equality.''
source : http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=235254