In a recent column, thought leader Tavleen Singh could not have been more astounded that a BJP’s spokeswoman’s anti-Muslim vitriol was supplemented by the first verse from the couplet below.
“Kuch baat hai ki hasti mit ti nahin humari
Sadeeyon raha hai dushman, daur-e-zamaan humara”
(It is to be proud of that our existence is never erased,
Though the passing of time for centuries has always been our enemy)
These lines from the Taraana-e-Hindi by Allama Iqbal have had its unlikeliest of orators — be it Narendra Modi in 2016 or Mohan Bhagwat four months ago.
Oddly enough, when not paying obeisance to him via these lines, the right brands all of Iqbal’s work as the bedrock of Muslim separatism. Although, some feel that Iqbal never had a separate Muslim homeland in mind.
Unfortunately, rhetoric around Muhammad Iqbal’s legacy, repertoire, and overall ideology has always been trapped by the tentacles of reductionism. Plus, there is definitely no love lost between the left and Shayar-e-Mashriq’s (Poet of the East) work as prominent progressives like Ali Sardar Jafri and Sibt-e-Hassan were among his fiercest critics. In his reportage Paude, Krishan Chander recalled how socialist writer Mulk Raj Anand found Iqbal’s work to be rife with contradictions. Anand could surely not be faulted for this opinion as a lot of socialist versification somehow co-existed with Muslim revivalism.
However, socialism and Iqbal weren’t exactly at loggerheads.
An analytical yet accessible book help readers make sense of this ideological mixed bag that is Shayar-e-Mashriq’s repertoire is very much the need of the hour. That too, one which goes beyond sweeping statements like “Iqbal was fine when in India, but his time in Europe turned him into a ‘fanatic’ and ‘Islamist.’ ”
Coincidentally, around the time that the RSS honcho uttered these lines above, US-based Indian author and Management Professor’s book, Iqbal: Poet of the East, hit the shelves.
Though certain “serious” scholars should be warned! Those expecting something academic should instead opt for excellent works of Javed Majeed or Jagannath Azad. The former’s Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics, and Postcolonialism would come off as dry to someone looking for a mere introduction to Iqbal. The latter is considered a foremost authority on Allama and has mostly written in Urdu.
Throughout the 198-page narrative, Mir also plays the role of a translator and compiler of many classic lines.
Yet, it is his ability to be a quasi-literary scholar-cum-fact checker that makes Iqbal: Poet of the East worth a read. While there is no denying that Allama developed a Pan-Islamic sentiment during his Europe sojourns, the secular “Pre-Europe” and Islamist “Post-Europe” Iqbal tropes are shattered by some nuance. One such tidbit is about how he was deemed a “Wahabi,” “Hindu appeaser,” and “grave-worshipper” during a very dirty 1926 Punjab Assembly Election Campaign.
This was long after he earned his PhD from Germany in the early 1900s.
Mir devotes a whole chapter to the leftism seeped in Iqbal’s poetry. After all, the revolutionary, populist ideas of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution clearly inspired Iqbal to pen some subversive material. Whether it was Lenin – Khuda Ke Huzoor Mein or Farmaan-e-Khuda — an anthem for South Asian leftists till this day — Mir deconstructs the inherent progressivism and contradictions prevalent throughout Iqbal’s storied career. Among the prolific, controversial poet’s critics was Sahir Ludhianvi. Before translating the aforementioned nazm and ghazal respectively, Mir’s inclusion of Sahir’s poetic retorts to some Farmaan-e-Khuda lines could not be more suitable.
For instance, below is Iqbal’s paean to toiling farmers,
Jis khet se dehqaan ko mayyasar nahin rozi
Uss khet ke har khosha-e-gandum ko jala do
(Find the Farm whose harvest is no peasant’s daily bread
Garner and burn in the furnace every ripening ear of wheat!)
Sahir’s take on those lines below is simply searing.
Jis se dehqaan ko rozi nahin milne paati
Main na doonga tujhe us khet jalaane ka sabaq
Fasl baaqi hai to taqseem badal sakti hai
Fasl ki khaak se kya mangega jamhoor ka haq?
(Burn the wheat field’s whence the farmer’s denied?
I wouldn’t advise you to perform that task
If the crop remains, distribution can change
Justice from soil, why should we ask?)
Despite this so-called schism between progressives and Iqbal’s overall leanings, the author makes some surprising revelations — with appropriate citations of course. One of them being that the Progressive Writers Association founders reached out to Iqbal for encouragement and support. One of those founders Sajjad Zaheer even wrote that besides Munshi Premchand’s endorsement, Iqbal’s patronage was indispensable for this group of iconoclastic writers.
Clearly, the tendency to brand Allama as per one’s biases is tenuous at best.
When comparing Tarnana-e-Hindi (also known as “Saare Jahaan Se Accha) and the Tarana-e-Milli, Mir aptly repudiates the reductive nature of looking at these ghazals as “secular nationalist” and “separatist Islamist” respectively. The two lines commonly used to buttress these claims are:
Tarana-e-Hindi
Mazhab nahin sikhata apas mein bair rakhna
Hindi hain hum, watan hai Hindustan humara
(Religion does not teach us to be enemies with each other:
We are Indians, our homeland is our India)
Tarana-e-Milli
Cheen-o-Arab humara, Hindustan Humara
Muslim hain hum, watan hai sara jahaan humara
(China and Arabia are ours; India is ours.
We are Muslims, the whole world is ours)
The author does point out one couplet in Tarana-e-Milli which contravenes the overt pan-Islamism in the poem. Aside from that, there is no further elaboration regarding why T-e-M isn’t entirely the soft separatist anthem it is made out to be. Yes, Mir did state at the beginning that he wouldn’t delve deep into a particular element of Iqbal’s political life. Nevertheless, a little more elucidation on why one must not look at T-e-M solely in a secessionist light could have made for even more informative reading.
Mir also helps readers make sense of complex concepts of Khudi as well as recurring motifs like the Shaheen (falcon) without being a pretentious, pedantic poetry scholar. However, he like many others, misattributed the following lines to Iqbal when expounding on the winged-creatures.
Tundi-e-baad-e-mukhaalif se na ghabra ay uqaab
Yeh to chalti hai tujhe ooncha udaane ke liye
(Fear not, O eagle, the ferocity of the oncoming wind
It exists to make you fly even higher)
Even to me a few years ago, these lines oozed similar, if not the same, metaphorical and uplifting substance of Iqbal’s work. In reality, only Syed Sadiq Hussain can stake a claim to those verses.
In spite of some minor shortcomings, Iqbal: Poet of the East is a fitting examination of the greatness of a poet and intellectual who is still misunderstood by many. Nonetheless, with diverse entities ranging from Manmohan Singh to Mohan Bhagwat still quoting him, Sir Muhammad Iqbal clearly is here to stay even as the powers that be seek to uproot Islam from India.
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