[The philosopher-poet, Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal
(1873-1938) was one of the most outstanding personalities of modern Asia. Among
others, the late Dr. Rabindranath Tagore considered Iqbal’s works as of deep
cultural significance and of universal application. Iqbal was a Muslim
descendant of the famous Sapru clan of Kashmiri Brahmins.
After a brilliant career at school and college,
where he came invariably at the top and won gold medals and scholarships, Iqbal
came first in M.A., in the University and was appointed Professor of Philosophy
and History and Assistant Professor of English in the Government College,
Lahore.
In 1905 he went to Cambridge and obtained a degree
in Philosophy and Ethics. At the same time he obtained a diploma from the
London School of Political Science. A little later he obtained the Ph.D., from
the Munich University for his brilliant thesis which made him famous throughout
Europe as a scholar of the first rank. When the professor of Arabic in the
London University, Thomas Arnold (under whom Iqbal had studied earlier in
India), went on leave, Iqbal was selected to fill this important post. At this
time he also had the distinction of being selected to edit a volume in the
famous Gibb Memorial Series. In addition he also studied law and was called to
the Bar. All this was accomplished in a bare three years’ stay in Europe!
On his return to India Iqbal resumed his post as
Professor of Philosophy and also practised law, but shortly he gave up his post
as professor. For a living he practised law and all his spare time he devoted
to deep philosophical and religious studies and to higher poetry. Both the
Aligarh and Allahabad Universities conferred on him the honorary degree of D.
Litt., and the Government recognised the worth of this erudite scholar by
conferring on him a knighthood.
At the insistence of some friends Iqbal took an
active part in politics and attended two Round Table Conferences in London, but
soon he retired from political life altogether. In 1928-29 he was invited to
the Deccan to deliver a series of lectures at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore and
Mysore. These learned lectures in English have been published in book form and
are well worth serious study by scholars interested in philosophy and the
modern interpretation of higher Islamic thought. Another work in English well
worth perusal is Professor Nicholson’s translation in English of Iqbal’s
“Secrets of the Self”.]
The death of Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal has removed
from the world one of the greatest constructive thinkers of Islam in the last
six centuries. The outstanding achievement of Iqbal was that, to a very great
extent, he succeeded in arriving at a synthesis of the Eastern and Western
modes of thought. He himself says at one place: “The teachings of the
philosophers of the West illumined my intellect: the companionship of the Seers
(of the East) illumined my heart.” It is yet too early to judge what permanent
effect the teaching of this virile thinker will have on future generations. At
the same time the remarkable extent to which the intelligent and intellectual
sections of the youth of Muslim India have been stirred by Iqbal’s thought is
portentous and significant.
The Muslim descendent of a family of intellectual
Brahmins of Kashmir and a keen student of Western–especially German–philosophy,
he was well-equipped to re-interpret certain aspects of Islamic teachings to
the modern world. His two prose works in English, “The Development of
Metaphysics in Persia” and “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,”
show clearly how far ahead he was in religious and philosophic thought. The
study of these two prose works is imperative for an understanding of the basic
thought underlying all his poetical works.
Iqbal was a philosopher-poet. This is a
contradiction in terms, but only apparent so. A poet looks at life as a whole.
It is the function of philosopher-poet to show the purpose of the life
of the individual, and of the community, by looking at the philosophy of
civilisation as a whole. He does that by infusing feeling and deep emotion in
the expression of his philosophic concepts. This has ever been the method of
the higher poetry of Asia. In the Muslim world of six centuries ago, the great
Maulana Rumi is an outstanding example. And Rumi is the Master whom Iqbal
constantly holds before him as his preceptor and mentor.
Like Rumi’s message, Iqbal’s message, if
interpreted correctly, is for the entire humanity; but, like Rumi, bearing in
mind the limits of effective expression of a definite message by the poetic
method, Iqbal addresses one particular community, the Muslims. “Community” or
“Nation” or, to use Iqbal’s own term, millat, as understood by Iqbal,
transcends both geographical and racial limitations. He is opposed to a narrow
“nationalism” as conceived in the modern utilitarian and commercialized West.
“Nation” or millat, in Iqbal’s view, is a group having a common spiritual
and ethical purpose, which purpose alone influences its worldly
ends. Nationalism has thus to be interpreted in the broadest manner, so as to
be nearest to the conception of an Ideal Humanity. According to Iqbal, the
conflict between nationalism and racialism is inherent in the modes of life the
world has so far experienced. By laying stress on this conflict the gulf
between the two only grows wider, making the attainment of an Ideal Humanity
difficult, if not impossible. He therefore opposes this with all the vigor of a
virile mind and a deep emotional nature. As a poet-philosopher he fervently desires,
and therefore ardently attempts, the complete reconstruction of the
imaginative faculty in man, because it is the imaginative faculty that gives
direction to man’s desires and intellectual pursuits. In this, his aim is
opposed to that of the mere poet trying only to picturize emotions and
sentiments. In other words, Iqbal follows the poetic method for philosophic
ends.
To understand this it would be well to look back a
little and to consider the methods of two great Indian Muslim reformer-poets
who immediately preceded Iqbal. Hali, the dynamic, aimed at stretching the
imagination of the Muslims into the future by reminding them of their great
past. He poetically argued that a similar greatness was within their reach, if
only they modeled their present behaviour on the past. On the other hand, Akbar
the static, merely stressed on the past culture by criticizing almost every new
development, in humorous verse of a quality that even Iqbal could not achieve,
despite repeated attempts. A third great personality and constructive thinker
of this period, though not a poet, was the late Sir Syed Ahmed. He had faith
enough in the inherent virility of Muslim culture and civilisation to urge
Muslims to fearlessly strike out into the future by assimilating as much of the
Western culture as came their way. This vas treading on dangerous ground.
Nevertheless battle was given. It was a great fight and many fell by the way–as
the intuitional Akbar had foreseen.
All the three–Hali, Akbar and Sir Syed–prepared the
ground for Iqbal. The two poets, Hali and Akbar, were necessarily limited in
their vision. They were yet too near the disintegrating past to gauge to a
nicety the real causes of disintegration. Akbar thought the disease was merely
“irreligion” (bedini). Hali thought it was partly the lack of striving
in thought and partly the constriction of thought, the result of blind
following, which had killed out the faculty of creative imagination. Though
both diagnosed the disease, each in his own way, neither suggested a sane and
applicable method of treatment. Neither could even say why the disease
had set in. Both were sure of only one thing; that the disease was there which
was eating the very vitals out of the body politic of Islam. In their frantic
efforts to find a remedy they could only look back at history–looking backward,
instead of forward–comparing the past with the present, to the inevitable
detriment of the present. There was something lacking in their vision, and
hence in their diagnosis.
What they lacked was supplied by Iqbal. He also
looked back. But not only at Muslim history. He studied the history and also
the philosophy of civilisation, taken as a whole. Further, he looked at both in
true perspective,–in the light of human psychology. He realised that mere
outward facts of history, that is, the acts of individuals and groups at
certain periods and under given circumstances, cannot kill out the roots of
a particu1ar type of civilisation and culture, unless the roots themselves
are diseased and hence deprived of their inherent vitality. He made sure
that the disease had attacked the very roots and then, logically enough, he set
to arrive at the correct diagnosis.
Originally Islam is a purely monotheistic system.
According to Iqbal the disease that has attacked the very roots of the
thirteen-centuries-old tree of Islam is the pantheistic mode of thought, which
has undoubtedly percolated through from extraneous sources, especially after
the fall of Baghdad. This has resulted in the wrong interpretation of the value
of the individual to society. If the individual comes to think that his own
personality is philosophically non-existent and not of any ultimate value, he
cannot but discount personal responsibility for events and happenings. Thus
“effort” and “action” cease to be justly evaluated, either in relation to t
individual or in relation to society. Iqbal opines that Persian philosopher and
poets were mainly responsible for bringing these extraneous pantheistic notions
and ideas into the purely monotheistic system of Islam. While the fertile brain
of Persian thinkers attacked the philosophic concepts of Islam, Persian poets
enveloped the heart of the average Muslim with pantheistic imageries.
The basic idea presented to the Muslim was: “Nothing truly exist but God.” So
far so good. But the effort and the action of an individual that of a nation,
are entirely dependent on the right interpretation–or the misinterpretation–of
this basic idea. It was the misinterpretation of this basic idea in the
pantheistic sense that Iqbal abhorred and endeavoured to set right.
Thus it will be seen that unlike the average
Oriental poet enwrapped in his own imaginings, however ethical and moral in
appearance, the philosopher-poet Iqbal was intensely practical in his outlook.
He did not say things for the sake of saying them, nor even for the sake of
self-satisfaction, intellectual or emotional. He had a definite and practical
purpose in view and he burned with the fire of intense desire to bring this
purpose to fruition. He held that the reconstruction of the Muslim world is
impossible unless the thought and imagination of each Muslim world is
impossible unless the thought and imagination of each Muslim has first been
reconstructed along right Islamic lines. Above all, he wished to divest the
mind and the heart of every Muslim of the un-Islamic accretions of the last
five or six centuries. To understand all this better it would be helpful to
look into some of Iqbal’s basic conceptions.
In his conception of the Ultimate Ego, Iqbal lays
stress on the Will and Wisdom aspects, which ultimately resolve into Activity.
To achieve self-expression and to bring these into manifestation, the
All-Sufficient ultimate Ego voluntarily divides itself, by its own volition,
into perceptual concept of the Self and the Not-Self. The
manifestation is a long sequential evolutionary process. The last, and hence
the most perfect, stage of this evolutionary process so far is man. Man is
superior because he is aware of the fact of his superiority to the sub-human
kingdoms, through knowledge born of higher understanding and conceptual power (idrak).
Man’s own existence is to him a fact. For him it is the fact of facts.
To him the existence of the rest of nature is conceptual, as opposed to the
irrefutable fact of his own being. This is reminiscent of the eminent European
philosopher Descartes. According to this great French philosopher, even if a
man were to doubt the fact of his own being, something yet remains which doubts
this fact. That “something” is the innermost consciousness which is the real
man. Iqbal repeats this often, in ever varying imageries.
Thus, if the most fundamental fact of a man’s life
is the absolute and irrefutable consciousness of his own being, the purpose of
his life is to strengthen and stabilise this basic feeling of ego-hood which
Iqbal calls khudi. One cannot help remarking that the term khudi,
because of its other connotations such as pride, conceit, etc., does not seem
to have been well chosen. Unfortunately the use of this term has given rise to
much misunderstanding and even wrong interpretation of Iqbal’s basic thought by
many superficial readers. But once the term is correctly understood in the
sense Iqbal used it, there is not much danger of misunderstanding the rest of
his thought. Man has the power inherent in him to strengthen and stabilize this
fundamental feeling of self-hood to the highest pitch. As Iqbal says at one
place: “Raise thy self hood to such a high state that, before fixing each fate,
God Himself may deign to ask His slave, ‘Say! What is thy wish?” That is the
meaning of self-realizations.
To achieve this self-realisation–this perfection of
self-hood–man has to wage a constant war against the “Not-Self “. In this war
to the bitter end he must continually be changing his immediate objectives
so as not to lose sight of the ultimate purpose of life–the attainment
of the state of the Perfect Man or, what the German philosophers less correctly
called, the “super-man”. All that is extraneous to this feeling of selfhood is
the Not-Self. The “Not Self” is the inner and the outer environment of the ego
which he must, of necessity, subjugate and control. Under no circumstances is
he to succumb to it, whatever the temptation of pleasurable feelings or selfish
thoughts or easy physical life. In the attempt to overcome the disabilities of
his environment, man is called upon to sharpen his perception in the
fields of emotion; intellect and activity. When he does this the “fire of
self-hood” burns more brightly in his “heart”. He aspires ever higher and
higher. Or, rather, he aspires to stabilize more and more the center of fixity within
him. There is no “peace” in the sense of rest for him. Rest spells death
for him, even though it be the rest and the “peace” of heaven. Further, his
feeling of Ego-hood must transcend both Time and Space. It is not possible to
deal with Iqbal’s conception of Time and Space in this short paper. The serious
student would do well to refer to his “Six Lectures” in English. Briefly, Iqbal
agrees with Professor Whitehead that the “four dimensional spatio-temporal
continuum” is merely a conceptual mode of cognition of the Not-Self. In reality
serial time and space do not exist. Iqbal bases this conception on certain
verses of the Quran and on certain well-authenticated sayings of the Prophet.
His whole conception is expressed in a small couplet of entrancing beauty: “The
intellect has become the worshipper of the (false) idols of Time and Space:
There is neither Time nor Space: There is no God save Allah!”
Obviously the strengthening and stabilisation of
the basic feeling of self-hood is a very difficult task to undertake unaided.
To tread this Path of progress a “Perfect Man” is needed as a guide. Having
found such a guide, the wayfarer must have in his heart an intense love
(ishq) for such a guide, for only he can show the wayfarer how to make his
own effort fruitful by strengthening his own feeling of self-hood.
But, at the same time, Iqbal insists that if the aspirant’s vision of Reality
is not clear enough, “love” for the guide can only lead him into the bog of
self-forgetfulness and thence into self-annihilation, which is the very
opposite of self-hood. On the other hand, if he has his goal clearly in view,
the same “love” for the guide will bring him to self-knowledge, resulting in
the accentuation and the stabilising of the feeling of his own self-hood. The
love of an eternal purpose transmutes the frail heart of man into something as
eternal as the purpose itself. As Iqbal says: “The action of a Man of God is
illumined by Love: Love is the Essence of Life: Death for it is a sin!”
This aspect of Iqbal’s thought must be very
carefully examined and understood. To bow before the Perfect Man, the so-called
“superman”, the guide who can really lead, is to ask for much needed help. Not
only that. It is to obtain the right kind of help that would enable one
to strengthen one’s own self-hood. On the other hand, to bow before the
false “idols” of riches, possessions and popularity–all forms of the
“Not-Self”–is to weaken the basic feeling of self-hood, which is the
only reality man is aware of. Hence the need for istaghna, which
literally means “not depending upon” anything external. Hence also the need for
faqir, which means not standing in essential need of any external
object. The two terms are really complementary. A true faqir does not
stand in need of anything, and so he asks for nothing. He is the very opposite
of gada–a beggar–who begs because he feels the lack of something
external which he craves. Iqbal again and again calls himself a qalander,
that is, a non-conformist faqir who does not either beg or conform to
even the ceremonies and usage’s of any order of faqirs. Above all,
servility is far removed from the make-up of a true qalander. He dares
to tell the truth in the face of any odds. As he says: “In the eyes of a faqir
what is (the worth of) the grandeur and pomp of an Alexander?–What is that
(false) rulership worth which (is dependent on and) begs for contribution (and
taxes from the populace)?
It is evident that Iqbal favours a form of
renunciation, or rather, dis-attachment, where worldly affairs are
concerned. Iqbal does not favour the type of renunciation that makes a man run
away from the struggle of life. Nor does he advocate the kind of renunciation
that makes an intelligent and self-dependent being servile and dependent on the
charity of others. He merely insists that the Not-Self, at no time and under no
Circumstances, should be taken to be something identifiable with the Self. You
cannot separate the two aspects; but the Not-Self is there to be conquered and
subjugated. Only thus can self-hood be strengthened. The Not-Self, therefore,
serves an essential purpose in the evolutionary life-process.
When self-hood, which Iqbal calls khudi, has
first been established and then strengthened gradually to the highest pitch, by
the positive method of love (ishq) and the negative method of
non-dependence on the environment (istaghna), all the hidden forces of
nature become subservient to the Will of Man. The problem before him now is how
to use these forces for constructive and useful purposes. Iqbal is fully
conscious of the danger of the position. In fact, he utters a word of solemn
warning. The power of khudi, the feeling of “I am”, can be used to
destroy or it can be used to build and to re-build. To make it serve
constructive purposes it must always be controlled and regulated: “I” must
always have under full control the feeling of “am”. He cites the example of Iblis,
Satan, who attained to the high state wherein the tremendous power of the self
inherent in him was fully liberated. But he could not, or would not, regulate
it!
Then, how to regulate this power of self-hood when
attained? Iqbal suggests a two-fold method. First, by prayer, that is, by
following in the footsteps of the Perfect Man, the true guide on the path;
second, by the control–not the suppression–of one’s own desires. Desire
(arzoo) is a great power entrusted to man. But it must be fully
controlled. Desire can only be controlled by overcoming attachment to all forms
of the Not-Self which constitutes the inner and the outer environment of the
ego. At the same time, it is necessary to overcome fear of anything or
in any shape whatsoever. Fear must be overcome because it is an elementary and
elemental feeling, ever pulling the aspirant backwards and downwards, involving
him in attachments to subtle forms of the Not-Self.
It is only after passing through all these stages
that a man can hope to approach the state of Perfect Man. It is only thus that
the human ego can get nearer to the Ultimate Ego, though it can never be
absorbed in and lose itself in the Greater Reality. In fact, the very purpose
of human life is to transcend all human limitations and to rise to
the higher stage. Thus, self-discipline is the secret of the
evolutionary process, equally applicable to individuals as to communities and
nations. But first the individual forming a community must rise to the heights
of self-hood, individually and singly. Before any community or nation, as a
whole, can rise, For, says Iqbal “If a hundred asses are agreed in an idea, it
therefore does not make the idea any the more valuable!”
It will be seen that, from this point of view, the
key-note of Iqbal’s thought is personal freedom of thought and action,
but under conditions perfect self-control. He does not believe in any of
the new-fangled theory of contemporary Europe entailing the curtailment of
personal freedom and hence of personal responsibility. Iqbal believes that
self-controlled personal freedom as conceived in the Quranic system, and as
practiced by the Arabian Prophet, is as perfect for humanity as it is possible
to make it at the present stage of the evolution of man. This conception is
based on firm faith in Unity and Unique-ness of the Ultimate Reality. The
accretions of later centuries, embodying extraneous influences, have to a very
large extent hidden this original, pure monotheistic teaching. The present-day
conception of the Muslims is, therefore, not free from pantheistic tendencies,
incipient or otherwise. Hence, times without number, Iqbal does not hesitate to
run down the mullas and to attack the sufis. According to Iqbal, both
these classes are responsible for the misinterpretation–in different
directions–of the original message. He urges the Muslims to make none but the
Prophet himself as their Perfect-Man Guide. He urges the necessity of going
back to the original teachings of the Quran, disregarding the interpretations
the later-day commentators. He openly says that ijtihad1 must
be understood and practiced so as to make the decisions arrived at by ijma2
worth being put into practice. His lecture on “The Spirit of Muslim Culture”
deals with this delicate question in a thoroughly sound manner.
The original Quranic teaching transcends, both Time
and Space. The Prophet showed by the most convincing practical example how it
could be made to apply successfully to a community of individualists,
transcending both geographical and racial limitations. It is not enough to slavishly
follow in acts all that was done in the past. What is necessary is to
understand and to assimilate the lesson of the original teaching and of the
life of the Prophet. Only thus can Wisdom be attained and the Will properly
trained leading to Action, which, though new and exactly suited to overcome the
present environment, would yet be rooted in the original
Islam–the Islam the Quran, the Islam practiced by the Prophet. He refers over
and over again to the battles fought by the Prophet and also to Imam Hussain’s
action at Kerbela, to show what right action really is and what it can do for
the entire millat. One cannot help remarking that in this respect
Iqbal’s conception rises much higher than even the great Rumi’s, for in the Mathnavi
of Maulana Rumi one finds no appreciation or the proper evaluation of Imam
Hussain’s action at Kerbela and its incomparable importance to the Muslim
world. Indeed, there is only one reference to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain in
the whole of the Mathnavi, which is positively derogatory! It is
difficult to say why Rumi missed the significance of Kerbela, even though he
was fully six hundred years nearer to the incident than Iqbal!
According to Iqbal the Muslim community (millat)
has lost sight of the original purpose of Islam. But the purpose itself is not
lost. The re-discovery of the original common purpose is bound to give
common aims and thus to bring about unity in divided ranks. It should not be
forgotten that Iqbal is not addressing only the Muslims. His message is for
“men of faith “, wherever they may be found, under whatever outward
environment. As he says: If there is love (behind a conception or behind an
action), even infidelity is faith!: if there is not, even the man who calls
himself a Muslim is (in fact) an idol-worshipper and an apostate!” In fact,
Iqbal is addressing humanity at large. He is especially addressing the Nations
of the East: re-interpreting the Message of the Orient for the Orient. One of
his poetical works in Persian is entitled Payam-e-Mashriq–“Message of
the East” Another long poem, fittingly enough, is published under the title: “Pas
chi bayad kard ai Aqwam-e-Sharq?” meaning, “What, then, ought to be done, O
Nations of the East?”
The philosopher-poet Iqbal’s vision was never
blinded by narrow or merely utilitarian considerations. He was a constructive
thinker. He was not a shallow-minded politician. Once or twice, those
around him forced him into politics. But he did not lose sight of the ultimate
value of things. He refused to pander to the popular thought of the day, with
the inevitable result that he was misunderstood. Holding the beliefs that he
did and thinking along lines detailed in this paper, he could not have been a
narrow-minded communalist, as his enemies in the political world called him. At
the same time, it was obviously impossible for him to uphold the tenets of a narrow
nationalism, based on merely geographical and racial considerations of his way
of thinking, a concourse of people herded together within certain geographical boundaries
does not constitute a nation or “millat”. He demanded freedom–cultural
freedom–for each individual and for each community. But the common herd
could not understand him at the time.
It will be clear now that Iqbal has a definite and
positive message. The core of the message is this: Each individual should
stabilise and strengthen his own self-hood (khudi) to the highest pitch,
under conditions of the most perfect self-control. Man’s stage in evolution
demands that–completely and inevitably. Community or nation (millat) is
nothing but a concourse of individuals. If each individual raises his
self-hood, the self-hood of the nation cannot help rising. When the nation has
raised its self-hood, in the collective sense, the right kind of
historical knowledge should be brought to bear our the projected action of the
nation, as “history is the memory of the nation”. Above all, in the attempt to
strengthen and to stabilise self-hood, an individual–and also a nation–must
learn to discriminate: the Self from the Not-Self, the self from other
selves, the limited human self from the Ultimate Self. Man, the “limited”, can
never become God the Limitless, nor could he be absorbed in God, because God is
indivisibly One and Unique. At the same time the individuality and the
personality of man can never be lost. By raising his own self-hood man becomes
more unique; he thus approaches God by creating in himself (in the words of the
Prophet) the attribute (ikhlaq) of God. But he can never become God or
be lost in God. The power to preserve the personality is inherent in the
separated self. It may dormant, it may be inactive, but it is there. Though the
self can never become the Self, it can, and it must approach the Ultimate Ego
by rising higher and ever higher through the inevitable process of evolution.
That is the taqdir-e-umam, the Grand Destiny of Man. The “drop”
therefore should not aim at losing itself in the Ocean–the word fana,
annihilation, is not applicable to Man. The drop should attempt to hold the
Ocean within itself, “as the pupil of the eye holds the heavens!”
1 Personal liberty of
interpretation by striving in thought.
2 Consensus of
opinion.