Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Urdu: محمد اقبال ‎) (November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938), widely known as Allama Iqbal (علامہ اقبال), was a poet, philosopher, and politician, as well as an academic, barrister and scholar[1][2] in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature,[3] with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages.[2][3]

Iqbal is admired as a prominent poet by Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and other international scholars of literature.[4][5] Though Iqbal is best known as an eminent poet, he is also a highly acclaimed "Muslim philosophical thinker of modern times".[2][5] His first poetry book, Asrar-e-Khudi, appeared in the Persian language in 1915, and other books of poetry include Rumuz-i-Bekhudi, Payam-i-Mashriq and Zabur-i-Ajam. Amongst these his best known Urdu works are Bang-i-Dara, Bal-i-Jibril, Zarb-i Kalim and a part of Armughan-e-Hijaz.[6] Along with his Urdu and Persian poetry, his Urdu and English lectures and letters have been very influential in cultural, social, religious and political disputes.[6]

In 1922, he was knighted by King George V,[7][8] granting him the title "Sir".[9]While studying law and philosophy in England, Iqbal became a member of the London branch of the All-India Muslim League.[5][6] Later, during the League's December 1930 session, he delivered his most famous presidential speech known as the Allahabad Address in which he pushed for the creation of aMuslim state in Northwest India.[5][6]

In much of South Asia and the Urdu speaking world, Iqbal is regarded as theShair-e-Mashriq (Urdu: شاعر مشرق‎, "Poet of the East").[10][11][12] He is also called Mufakkir-e-Pakistan (Urdu: مفکر پاکستان‎, "The Thinker of Pakistan"),Musawar-e-Pakistan (Urdu: مصور پاکستان‎, "Artist of Pakistan") and Hakeem-ul-Ummat (Urdu: حکیم الامت‎, "The Sage of the Ummah"). The Pakistan government officially named him a "national poet".[5] His birthday Yōm-e Welādat-e Muḥammad Iqbāl (Urdu: یوم ولادت محمد اقبال‎), or Iqbal Day, is apublic holiday in Pakistan.[13] In India he is also remembered as the author of the popular song Saare Jahaan Se Achcha.[14]

• BACK GROUND

Iqbal was born on 9 November 1877 in Sialkot within the Punjab Province of British India (now in Pakistan). His grandparents were Kashmiri Pandits, the Brahmins of the Sapru clan from Kashmir who converted to Islam.[11][15] In the 19th century, when the Sikh Empire was conquering Kashmir, his grandfather's family migrated to Punjab. Iqbal often mentioned and commemorated his Kashmiri Pandit Brahmin lineage in his writings.[11]

 
Allama Iqbal with his son Javed Iqbal in 1930
 
Iqbal's mother, who died on 9 November 1914. Iqbal expressed his feeling of pathosin a poetic form after her death.
Iqbal's father, Sheikh Noor Muhammad (died 1930), was a tailor, not formally educated but a religious man.[7][16] Iqbal's mother Imam Bibi was a polite and humble woman who helped the poor and solved the problems of neighbours. She died on 9 November 1914 in Sialkot.[8][15] Iqbal loved his mother, and on her death he expressed his feelings of pathos in a poetic form elegy.[7]

Who would wait for me anxiously in my native place?

Who would display restlessness if my letter fails to arrive?
I will visit thy grave with this complaint:
Who will now think of me in midnight prayers?
All thy life thy love served me with devotion—
When I became fit to serve thee, thou hast departed.[7]
Iqbal was four years old when he was admitted to the masjid to learn the Qur'an. He learned the Arabic language from his teacher Syed Mir Hassan, the head of the madrassa and professor of Arabic language at Scotch Mission College in Sialkot, where he matriculated in 1893. He received Intermediate with the Faculty of Arts diploma from Murray College Sialkot in 1895.[8][11][17] The same year he enrolled at the Government College Lahore where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, English literature and Arabic in 1897, and won the Khan Bahadurddin F.S. Jalaluddin medal as he took higher numbers in Arabic class.[8] In 1899, he received his Masters of Arts degree from the same college and had the first place inPunjab University, Lahore.[8][11][17]

Iqbal married three times, in 1895 while studying Bachelor of Arts he had his first marriage with Karim Bibi, the daughter of physician Khan Bahadur Ata Muhammad Khan (the maternal grandfather of director and music composer Khwaja Khurshid Anwar),[18][19] through an arranged marriage. They had daughter Miraj Begum and son Aftab Iqbal. Later Iqbal's second marriage was with Sardar Begum mother of Javid Iqbal, and his third marriage was with Mukhtar Begum in December 1914.

HIGHER EDUCATION

 

Iqbal was influenced by the teachings of Sir Thomas Arnold, his philosophy teacher at Government college Lahore. Arnold's teachings determined Iqbal to pursue higher education in the West, and in 1905, he travelled to England for that purpose. Iqbal qualified for a scholarship from Trinity College, University of Cambridge and obtained Bachelor of Arts in 1906, and in the same year he was called to the bar as a barrister from Lincoln's Inn. In 1907, Iqbal moved to Germany to pursue his doctoral studies, and earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich in 1908. Working under the guidance of Friedrich Hommel, Iqbal's doctoral thesis entitled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia was published.[11][20][21][22]

During Iqbal's stay in Heidelberg in 1907 his German teacher Emma Wegenast taught him about Goethe's Faust, Heine and Nietzsche.[23] During his study in Europe, Iqbal began to write poetry in Persian. He prioritised it because he believed he had found an easy way to express his thoughts. He would write continuously in Persian throughout his life.

• IQBAL JINNAH CONCEPT OF PAKISTAN

Ideologically separated from Congress Muslim leaders, Iqbal had also been disillusioned with the politicians of the Muslim League owing to the factional conflict that plagued the League in the 1920s. Discontent with factional leaders like Muhammad Shafi and Fazl-ur-Rahman, Iqbal came to believe that only Jinnah was a political leader capable of preserving unity and fulfilling the League's objectives of Muslim political empowerment. Building a strong, personal correspondence with Jinnah, Iqbal was an influential force in convincing Jinnah to end his self-imposed exile in London, return to India and take charge of the League. Iqbal firmly believed that Jinnah was the only leader capable of drawing Indian Muslims to the League and maintaining party unity before the British and the Congress:

I know you are a busy man but I do hope you won't mind my writing to you often, as you are the only Muslim in India today to whom the community has right to look up for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North-West India and, perhaps, to the whole of India.[31]
While Iqbal espoused the idea of Muslim-majority provinces in 1930, Jinnah would continue to hold talks with the Congress through the decade and only officially embraced the goal of Pakistan in 1940. Some historians postulate that Jinnah always remained hopeful for an agreement with the Congress and never fully desired the partition of India.[32] Iqbal's close correspondence with Jinnah is speculated by some historians as having been responsible for Jinnah's embrace of the idea of Pakistan. Iqbal elucidated to Jinnah his vision of a separate Muslim state in a letter sent on 21 June 1937:

 
Allama Iqbal in Allahabad with other Muslim leaders
A separate federation of Muslim Provinces, reformed on the lines I have suggested above, is the only course by which we can secure a peaceful India and save Muslims from the domination of Non-Muslims. Why should not the Muslims of North-West India andBengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India and outside India are.[6]
Iqbal, serving as president of the Punjab Muslim League, criticised Jinnah's political actions, including a political agreement with Punjabi leader Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, whom Iqbal saw as a representative of feudal classes and not committed to Islam as the core political philosophy. Nevertheless, Iqbal worked constantly to encourage Muslim leaders and masses to support Jinnah and the League. Speaking about the political future of Muslims in India, Iqbal said:

There is only one way out. Muslims should strengthen Jinnah's hands. They should join the Muslim League. Indian question, as is now being solved, can be countered by our united front against both the Hindus and the English. Without it, our demands are not going to be accepted. People say our demands smack of communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to the defense of our national existence.... The united front can be formed under the leadership of the Muslim League. And the Muslim League can succeed only on account of Jinnah. Now none but Jinnah is capable of leading the Muslims.[31]
Few months before his death, an ailing Iqbal met with Jawaharlal Nehru where he drew a comparison between Jinnah and Nehru by saying, "What is there common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician, you are a patriot."

• REVIVAL OF ISLAMIC POLITY

Iqbal's six English lectures were published in Lahore in 1930, and then by theOxford University Press in 1934 in a book titled The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. The lectures had been delivered at Madras, Hyderabad andAligarh.[6] These lectures dwell on the role of Islam as a religion as well as a political and legal philosophy in the modern age.[6] In these lectures Iqbal firmly rejects the political attitudes and conduct of Muslim politicians, whom he saw as morally misguided, attached to power and without any standing with the Muslim masses.

Iqbal expressed fears that not only would secularism weaken the spiritual foundations of Islam and Muslim society, but that India's Hindu-majority population would crowd out Muslim heritage, culture and political influence. In his travels toEgypt, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, he promoted ideas of greater Islamic political co-operation and unity, calling for the shedding of nationalist differences.[7] He also speculated on different political arrangements to guarantee Muslim political power; in a dialogue with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Iqbal expressed his desire to see Indian provinces as autonomous units under the direct control of the British government and with no central Indian government. He envisaged autonomous Muslim provinces in India. Under a single Indian union he feared for Muslims, who would suffer in many respects especially with regard to their existentially separate entity as Muslims.[6]

Iqbal was elected president of the Muslim League in 1930 at its session in Allahabad in the United Provinces, as well as for the session in Lahore in 1932. In his presidential address on 29 December 1930 he outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India:[6]

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 Northwest Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of Northwest India.[6]
In his speech, Iqbal emphasised that unlike Christianity, Islam came with "legal concepts" with "civic significance," with its "religious ideals" considered as inseparable from social order: "therefore, the construction of a policy on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim."[35] Iqbal thus stressed not only the need for the political unity of Muslim communities but the undesirability of blending the Muslim population into a wider society not based on Islamic principles.

He thus became the first politician to articulate what would become known as the Two-nation theory—that Muslims are a distinct nation and thus deserve political independence from other regions and communities of India. However, he would not elucidate or specify if his ideal Islamic state would construe a theocracy, even as he rejected secularism and nationalism. The latter part of Iqbal's life was concentrated on political activity. He travelled across Europe and West Asia to garner political and financial support for the League, he reiterated the ideas of his 1932 address, and, during the Third round-Table Conference, he opposed the Congress and proposals for transfer of power without considerable autonomy or independence for Muslim provinces.

He would serve as president of the Punjab Muslim League, and would deliver speeches and publish articles in an attempt to rally Muslims across India as a single political entity. Iqbal consistently criticised feudal classes in Punjab as well as Muslim politicians averse to the League. Many unnoticed accounts of Iqbal's frustration toward Congress leadership were also pivotal in providing a vision for the two nation theory.

• IN THE VEST

Iqbal's views on the Western world were applauded by men including United States Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, who said that Iqbal's beliefs had "universal appeal".[56] In his Soviet biography N. P. Anikoy wrote:

[Iqbal is] great for his passionate condemnation of weak will and passiveness, his angry protest against inequality, discrimination and oppression in all forms i.e., economic, social, political, national, racial, religious, etc., his preaching of optimism, an active attitude towards life and man's high purpose in the world, in a word, he is great for his assertion of the noble ideals and principles of humanism, democracy, peace and friendship among peoples.[56]
Others, including Wilfred Cantwell Smith, stated that with Iqbal's anti-capitalist holdings he was 'anti-intellect', because "capitalism fosters intellect".[56] Professor Freeland Abbot objected to Iqbal's views saying that Iqbal's view of the West was based on the role of imperialism and Iqbal was not immersed enough in Western culture to learn about the various benefits of the modern democracies, economic practices and science.[56] Critics of Abbot's viewpoint note that Iqbal was raised and educated in the European way of life, and spent enough time there to grasp the general concepts of Western civilisation