Right-wing workers defaced a mural of poet-philosopher Mohammed Iqbal, popularly also known as Allama Iqbal, in Jaipur. They accused the poet as the “architect of India’s partition.”
The right-wing workers threw black ink over the mural of the Islamic philosopher which was originally drawn as part of a beautification project.
His closeness to Muhammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, brought in the Hindutva right wing’s narrative of him being the conspirator of partition even though he had passed away close to a decade before the formation of India and Pakistan.
Allama Iqbal was a poet par excellence and Sufi
Allama Iqbal is considered one of the greatest Urdu poets of the 20th century. He is credited with composing the famous Saare-Jahaan-Sey-Achaa-Hindustan Humaara. A philosopher who had his political vision clear, he worked for the emancipation of the Muslims in British-ruled India.
One of his most notable works, Zarb-e-Kaleem is considered rejuvenating and thought-provoking carrying the beautiful shades of humanity, peace, divinity, love of God, Holy Prophet and the Holy Quran.
The literal translation of Zarb-e-Kaleem is the strike of Moses’ staff. But the conceptual meaning is “A Declaration of War Against the Present Times.” He composed Zarb-e-Kaleem in 1936 during his stay at Sheesh Mahal while visiting Bhopal at the invitation of Nawab Hamidullah Khan. The poetry Zarb-e-Kaleem was his manifesto that was meant to rescue Muslims from the harms brought on by modern civilization, just as Moses had rescued the Israelites.
The poetry is nothing but Iqbal’s prediction about the present-time and political upheaval that changes the façade of India, Afghanistan, Europe, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It is mind-boggling how he predicts the future in a lyrical form without going wrong. Did he have a supernatural intuition that guided him to communicate the events in store? Was he getting some messages in his dream to write or warn the coming generation?
Two incidents in his life compel us to think that some unseen power was guiding him. The first incident was narrated by Allama Iqbal’s daughter Munira Salahuddin and his grandson Iqbal Salahuddin.
“Iqbal was a devotee of the great Turkish scholar Maulana Jalal Uddin Rumi. Iqbal describes himself as Mureed-e-Hindi (devotee from India) and Maulana as Pir-e-Rumi. The family of Allama Iqbal possesses a letter written by him to his friend Maharaja Kishan Prasad, Prime Minister to Nizam of Hyderabad when he was writing Asrar-e-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self) — published in Persian in 1915 and his first philosophical poetry book.
| Posted by Parameswaran Valeri | 
