Thursday, 19 June 2014
IQBAL AND PAKISTAN MOVEMENT
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Although
his main interests were scholarly, Iqbal was not unconcerned with the
political situation of the, country and the political fortunes of the Muslim
community of India. Already in 1908, while in England, he had been chosen as
a member of the executive council of the newly-established British branch of
the Indian Muslim League. In 1931 and 1932 he represented the Muslims of
India in the Round Table Conferences held in England to discuss the issue of
the political future of India. And in a 1930 lecture Iqbal suggested the
creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Iqbal died (1938)
before the creation of Pakistan (1947), but it was his teaching that
"spiritually ... has been the chief force behind the creation of
Pakistan."
Iqbal
joined the London branch of the All India Muslim League while he was studying
Law and Philosophy in England. It was in London when he had a mystical
experience. The ghazal containing those divinations is the only one whose
year and month of composition is expressly mentioned. It is March 1907. No
other ghazal, before or after it has been given such importance. Some verses
of that ghazal are:
Your civilization will commit suicide with
its
own daggers. A nest built on a frail bough cannot be durable.
The caravan of feeble ants will take the
rose
petal for a boat And inspite of all blasts of waves, it shall cross the river.
I will take out may worn-out caravan in the
pitch darkness of night. My sighs will emit sparks and my breath will produce flames.
For
Iqbal it was a divinely inspired insight. He disclosed this to his listeners
in December 1931, when he was invited to Cambridge to address the students.
Iqbal was in London, participating in the Second Round Table Conference in
1931. At Cambridge, he referred to what he had proclaimed in 1906:
I would like to offer a few pieces of
advice to the youngmen who are at present studying at Cambridge ...... I
advise you to guard against atheism and materialism. The biggest blunder made
by Europe was the separation of Church and State. This deprived their culture
of moral soul and diverted it to the atheistic materialism. I had twenty-five
years ago seen through the drawbacks of this civilization and therefore had
made some prophecies. They had been delivered by my tongue although I did not
quite understand them. This happened in 1907..... After six or seven years,
my prophecies came true, word by word. The European war of 1914 was an
outcome of the aforesaid mistakes made by the European nations in the
separation of the Church and the State.
Building
upon Sir Sayyid Ahmed's two-nation theory, absorbing the teaching of Shibli,
Ameer Ali, Hasrat Mohani and other great Indian Muslim thinkers and
politicians, listening to Hindu and British voices, and watching the
fermenting Indian scene closely for approximately 60 years, he knew and
ultimately convinced his people and their leaders, particularly Quaid-i-Azam
Muhammad Ali Jinnah that:
"We both are exiles in this land. Both
longing for
our dear home's sight!"
"That dear home is Pakistan, on which
he harpened like a flute-player, but whose birth he did not witness."
Iqbal
and Politics
These thoughts crystallised at Allahabad Session (December, 1930) of the All India Muslim League, when Iqbal in the Presidential Address, forwarded the idea of a Muslim State in India:
I would like to see the Punjab, North-West
Frontier Provinces, Sind and Baluchistan into a single State. Self-Government
within the British Empire or without the British Empire. The formation of the
consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to be the final destiny
of the Muslims, at least of the North-West India.
The
seed sown, the idea began to evolve and take root. It soon assumed the shape
of Muslim state or states in the western and eastern Muslim majority zones as
is obvious from the following lines of Iqbal's letter, of June 21, 1937, to
the Quaid-i Azam, only ten months before the former's death:
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 and Bengal be
considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in
India and outside India are.
There
are some critics of Allama Iqbal who assume that after delivering the
Allahbad Address he had slept over the idea of a Muslim State. Nothing is
farther from the truth. The idea remained always alive in his mind. It had
naturally to mature and hence, had to take time. He was sure that the Muslims
of sub-continent were going to achieve an independent homeland for
themselves. On 21st March, 1932, Allama Iqbal delivered the Presidential
address at Lahore at the annual session of the All-India Muslim Conference.
In that address too he stressed his view regarding nationalism in India and
commented on the plight of the Muslims under the circumstances prevailing in
the sub-continent. Having attended the Second Round Table Conference in
September, 1931 in London, he was keenly aware of the deep-seated Hindu and
Sikh prejudice and unaccommodating attitude. He had observed the mind of the
British Government. Hence he reiterated his apprehensions and suggested
safeguards in respect of the Indian Muslims:
In so far then as the fundamentals of our
policy are concerned, I have got nothing fresh to offer. Regarding these I
have already expressed my views in my address to the All India Muslim League.
In the present address I propose, among other things, to help you, in the
first place, in arriving at a correct view of the situation as it emerged
from a rather hesitating behavior of our delegation the final stages of the
Round-Table Conference. In the second place, I shall try, according to my
lights to show how far it is desirable to construct a fresh policy now that
the Premier's announcement at the last London Conference has again
necessitated a careful survey of the whole situation.
It
must be kept in mind that since Maulana Muhammad Ali had died in Jan. 1931
and Quaid-i Azam had stayed behind in London, the responsibility of providing
a proper lead to the Indian Muslims had fallen on him alone. He had to assume
the role of a jealous guardian of his nation till Quaid-i Azam returned to
the sub-continent in 1935.
The League and the Muslim Conference had
become the play-thing of petty leaders, who would not resign office, even
after a vote of non-confidence! And, of course, they had no organization in
the provinces and no influence with the masses.
During
the Third Round-Table Conference, Iqbal was invited by the London National
League where he addressed an audience which included among others, foreign diplomats,
members of the House of Commons, Members of the House of Lords and Muslim
members of the R.T.C. delegation. In that gathering he dilated upon the
situation of the Indian Muslims. He explained why he wanted the communal
settlement first and then the constitutional reforms. He stressed the need
for provincial autonomy because autonomy gave the Muslim majority provinces
some power to safeguard their rights, cultural traditions and religion. Under
the central Government the Muslims were bound to lose their cultural and
religious entity at the hands of the overwhelming Hindu majority. He referred
to what he had said at Allahabad in 1930 and reiterated his belief that
before long people were bound to come round to his viewpoint based on cogent
reason.
In
his dialogue with Dr. Ambedkar Allama 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 one Indian union he feared for Muslims, who
would suffer in many respects especially with regard to their existentially
separate entity as Muslims.
Allama
Iqbal's statement explaining the attitude of Muslim delegates to the
Round-Table Conference issued in December, 1933 was a rejoinder to Jawahar
Lal Nehru's statement. Nehru had said that the attitude of the Muslim
delegation was based on "reactionarism." Iqbal concluded his
rejoinder with:
In conclusion I must put a straight
question to punadi Jawhar Lal, how is India's problem to be solved if the
majority community will neither concede the minimum safeguards necessary for
the protection of a minority of 80 million people, nor accept the award of a
third party; but continue to talk of a kind of nationalism which works out
only to its own benefit? This position can admit of only two alternatives.
Either the Indian majority community will have to accept for itself the
permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the East, or the
country will have to be redistributed on a basis of religious, historical and
cultural affinities so as to do away with the question of electorates and the
communal problem in its present form.
Allama
Iqbal's apprehensions were borne out by the Hindu Congress ministries
established in Hindu majority province under the Act of 1935. Muslims in
those provinces were given dastardly treatment. This deplorable phenomenon
added to Allama Iqbal's misgivings regarding the future of Indian Muslims in
case India remained united. In his letters to the Quaid-i Azam written in
1936 and in 1937 he referred to an independent Muslim State comprising
North-Western and Eastern Muslim majority zones. Now it was not only the
North-Western zones alluded to in the Allahabad Address.
There
are some within Pakistan and without, who insist that Allama Iqbal never
meant a sovereign Muslim country outside India. Rather he desired a Muslim
State within the Indian Union. A State within a State. This is absolutely
wrong. What he meant was understood very vividly by his Muslim compatriots as
well as the non-Muslims. Why Nehru and others had then tried to show that the
idea of Muslim nationalism had no basis at all. Nehru stated:
This idea of a Muslim nation is the figment
of a few imaginations only, and, but for the publicity given to it by the
Press few people would have heard of it. And even if many people believed in
it, it would still vanish at the touch of reality.
Iqbal
and the Quaid-i Azam
Who could understand Allama Iqbal better than the Quaid-i Azam himself, who was his awaited "Guide of the Era"? The Quaid-i Azam in the Introduction to Allama Iqbal's letters addressed to him, admitted that he had agreed with Allama Iqbal regarding a State for Indian Muslims before the latters death in April, 1938. The Quaid stated:
His views were substantially in consonance
with my own and had finally led me to the same conclusions as a result of
careful examination and study of the constitutional problems facing India and
found expression in due course in the united will of Muslim India as
adumbrated in the Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League popularly
known as the "Pakistan Resolution" passed on 23rd March, 1940.
Furthermore,
it was Allama Iqbal who called upon Quaid-i Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to lead
the Muslims of India to their cherished goal. He preferred the Quaid to other
more experienced Muslim leaders such as Sir Aga Khan, Maulana Hasrat Mohani,
Nawab Muhammad Isma il Khan, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Nawab Hamid Ullah Khan of
Bhopal, Sir Ali Imam, Maulvi Tameez ud-Din Khan, Maulana Abul Kalam, Allama
al-Mashriqi and others. But Allama Iqbal had his own reasons. He had found
his "Khizr-i Rah", the veiled guide in Quaid-i Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah who was destined to lead the Indian branch of the Muslim Ummah
to their goal of freedom. Allama Iqbal stated:
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.
Similar
sentiments were expressed by him about three months before his death. Sayyid
Nazir Niazi in his book Iqbal Ke Huzur, has stated that the future of
the Indian Muslims was being discussed and a tenor of pessimism was visible
from what his friends said. At this Allama Iqbal observed:
There is only one way out. Muslim 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 defence of our national existence.
He
continued:
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.
Matlub
ul-Hasan Sayyid stated that after the Lahore Resolution was passed on March
23, 1940, the Quaid-i Azam said to him:
Iqbal is no more amongst us, but had he
been alive he would have been happy to know that we did exactly what he
wanted us to do.
But
the matter does not end here. Allama Iqbal in his letter of March 29, 1937 to
the Quaid-i Azam had said:
While we are ready to cooperate with other
progressive parties in the country, we must not ignore the fact that the
whole future of Islam as a moral and political force in Asia rests very
largely on a complete organization of Indian Muslims.
According
to Allama Iqbal the future of Islam as a moral and political force not only
in India but in the whole of Asia rested on the organization of the Muslims
of India led by the Quaid-i Azam.
The
"Guide of the Era" Iqbal had envisaged in 1926, was found in the
person of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The "Guide" organized the Muslims of
India under the banner of the Muslim League and offered determined resistance
to both the Hindu and the English designs for a united Hindu-dominated India.
Through their united efforts under the able guidance of Quaid-I Azam Muslims
succeeded in dividing India into Pakistan and Bharat and achieving their
independent homeland. As observed above, in Allama Iqbal's view, the organization
of Indian Muslims which achieved Pakistan would also have to defend other
Muslim societies in Asia. The carvan of the resurgence of Islam has to start
and come out of this Valley, far off from the centre of the ummah. Let
us see how and when, Pakistan prepares itself to shoulder this august
responsibility. It is Allama Iqbal's prevision.
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