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Spds Notes

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mtsectionmps
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Muhammad Iqbal (born November 9, 1877, Sialkot, Punjab, India [now in

Pakistan]—died April 21, 1938, Lahore, Punjab) was a poet and philosopher
known for his influential efforts to direct his fellow Muslims in British-
administered India toward the establishment of a separate Muslim state,
an aspiration that was eventually realized in the country of Pakistan. He
was knighted in 1922.
Early life and career
Iqbal was born at Sialkot, India (now in Pakistan), of a pious family of small
merchants and was educated at Government College, Lahore. In Europe
from 1905 to 1908, he earned a degree in philosophy from the University of
Cambridge, qualified as a barrister in London, and received a doctorate
from the University of Munich. His thesis, The Development of Metaphysics
in Persia, revealed some aspects of Islamic mysticism formerly unknown in
Europe.

On his return from Europe, he gained his livelihood by the practice of law,
but his fame came from his Persian- and Urdu-language poetry, which was
written in the classical style for public recitation. Through poetic symposia
and in a milieu in which memorizing verse was customary, his poetry
became widely known.

Before he visited Europe, his poetry affirmed Indian nationalism, as in Nayā


shawālā (“The New Altar”), but time away from India caused him to shift his
perspective. He came to criticize nationalism for a twofold reason: in
Europe it had led to destructive racism and imperialism, and in India it was
not founded on an adequate degree of common purpose. In a speech
delivered at Aligarh in 1910, under the title “Islam as a Social and Political
Ideal,” he indicated the new Pan-Islamic direction of his hopes. The
recurrent themes of Iqbal’s poetry are a memory of the vanished glories
of Islam, a complaint about its present decadence, and a call to unity and
reform. Reform can be achieved by strengthening the individual through
three successive stages: obedience to the law of Islam, self-control, and
acceptance of the idea that everyone is potentially a vicegerent of God
(nāʾib, or muʾmin). Furthermore, the life of action is to be preferred
to ascetic resignation.

Three significant poems from this period, Shikwah (“The


Complaint”), Jawāb-e shikwah (“The Answer to the Complaint”), and Khizr-e
rāh (“Khizr, the Guide”), were published later in 1924 in the Urdu
collection Bāng-e darā (“The Call of the Bell”). In those works Iqbal gave
intense expression to the anguish of Muslim powerlessness. Khizr (Arabic:
Khiḍr), the Qurʾānic prophet who asks the most difficult questions, is
pictured bringing from God the baffling problems of the early 20th century.
Britannica Quiz

Philosophy 101

What thing is the State? or why


Must labour and capital so bloodily disagree?
Asia’s time-honoured cloak grows ragged
and wears out…
For whom this new ordeal, or by whose hand prepared?
(Eng. trans. by V.G. Kiernan)
Notoriety came in 1915 with the publication of his long Persian poem Asrār-
e khūdī (The Secrets of the Self). He wrote in Persian because he sought to
address his appeal to the entire Muslim world. In this work he presents a
theory of the self that is a strong condemnation of the self-negating
quietism (i.e., the belief that perfection and spiritual peace are attained by
passive absorption in contemplation of God and divine things) of classical
Islamic mysticism; his criticism shocked many and excited controversy.
Iqbal and his admirers steadily maintained that creative self-affirmation is a
fundamental Muslim virtue; his critics said he imposed themes from the
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on Islam.

The dialectical quality of his thinking was expressed by the next long
Persian poem, Rumūz-e bīkhūdī (1918; The Mysteries of Selflessness).
Written as a counterpoint to the individualism preached in the Asrār-e
khūdī, this poem called for self-surrender.

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