Iqbal and Capitalism
A huge and precious part of Alama Iqbal's poetry in Persian language and unfortunately we have removed Persian from our syllabi. That is why we are hardly able to understand a large content of Alama's message.
So we are quite blank and can't benefit from "Fickre Iqbal". The subject was mostly addressed in Alama's book "Israr-e-Khudi". In Israr-e-Khudi, Alamas seems to be concerned with the cause of rise of Japan and the west.
Through his poetry, Alama Iqbal has it out western imperialism and capitalism. Capitalism has resulted in making the poor, poorer and the rich, richer, as per Alama's perception. This was perceived a hundred years ago and now is being deconstructed in front of us.
We are thankful to writers like Muhammad Ali Siddique(2008) who explained Alama's and made our job easier.
It is worth mentioning that Alama has mostly addressed capitalism and imperialism side by side. It is we to make research and find a co-relation between the two. I believe them is a strong relationship amongst them Iqbal possessed vision on golobal scale and second to none. Wedo have Iqbal's wisdom was derived from Quran, Sunnah and history. He know the causes of rise and fall of Nations. We also know that his vision and wisdom was God gifted. What so ever he said and wrote is sufficient guideline for us to put out economy on right track. According to the study in the year 2000, top managers of 300 American companies had income 110 times larger than that of average worth. Assuming that trend was continued, by now, the trend must have worsened more. Iqbal believes in distribution of wealth upto the common man. He believes that the kings of today do not deserve lavish lives. He believes they are enjoying on the unjustified taxes from poor.
Iqbal's book "ilm-ul- Iqtisad" is the first book of an Urdu poet to understand the basic roots of Smith, Ricardo and Marshal who are called the father of capitalism, we come across a basic disagreement of Iqbal towards an economic philosophy which believes in exploitation of weaker section of society.
Iqbal was a visionary leader, poet and economist a great motivator of its times. We need to understand his message and set individual and collective goals. Iqbal himself said that it takes thousands of years to produce a really visionary person.
