Allama Iqbal- Is he still relevant?

Inshallah.

Re: # 128

Mantolives

Thank you dear for your suggestion. But it is for the young-ones to rescue him. Hopefully I see some glimpse of him in Imran Khan. May God help him.

Re: # 124

``I saw Quaide Azam as a young boy and had followed his chariot in a `jalloos`. But today I see him hanged alone on a dune in front of my home on Shahraae Islamabad. Often tears flood to my eyes when I see that great man sad and lonely, hanged on a scaffold where the traffic zooms past him nonchalantly. ``

It is time then to rescue him...

Re: # 125

Welcome dear Nehal! You are right; only an Atta Turk can perhaps save the world now from these fundoo hate-mongers. I am afraid they are taking the world to a holocaust by mushrooms.

I just ran across this one.....


The Telegraph – Calcutta, India
Saturday, June 30, 2007

IQBAL’S HINDU RELATIONS
this above all - Khushwant Singh

I am beholden to P.V. Rawal of Jammu for sending me a photograph of Allama Iqbal’s Kashmiri Brahmin family taken in Sialkot in 1931. At this time Iqbal was in his mid-fifties. He had already risen to the top as the greatest Urdu poet, at par with Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Although he was proud of his Brahmin descent, he had nothing to say about his Hindu relations. In this picture, the elderly lady seated in the middle is his grandmother, Indirani Sapru, nicknamed Poshi, wife of Pandit Kanhaya Lal Sapru. The man standing on the left in a shawl is Iqbal’s cousin, Amarnath Sapru; note the close resemblance to the poet.

The family traces its origin to one Birbal. They lived in the village of Saprain (hence, the surname Sapru) on Shopian-Kulgam road. Then the family moved to Srinagar where Iqbal and most of his cousins were born. Birbal had five sons and a daughter. The third one, Kanhaya Lal, and his wife, Indirani, had three sons and five daughters. Kanhaya Lal was Iqbal’s grandfather. His son, Rattan Lal, converted to Islam and was given the name Nur Mohammad. He married a Muslim woman — Imam Bibi. The Saprus disowned Rattan Lal and severed all connections with him. There are different versions of Rattan Lal’s conversion. The one given to me by Syeda Hameed, who has translated some of Iqbal’s poetry into English, maintains that Rattan Lal was the revenue collector of the Afghan governor of Kashmir. He was caught embezzling money. The governor offered him a choice: he should either convert to Islam or be hanged. Rattan Lal chose to stay alive. When the Afghan governor fled from Kashmir to escape its takeover by the Sikhs, Rattan Lal migrated to Sialkot. Imam Bibi was evidently a Sialkoti Punjabi. Iqbal was born in Sialkot on November 9, 1877. As often happens, the first generation of converts are more kattar than others. Iqbal thus grew up to be a devout Muslim. It is believed that once he called on his Hindu grandmother, then living in Amritsar. But there is no hard evidence of their meeting and of what passed between them; Iqbal did not write about it. Though he had many Hindu and Sikh friends and admirers, he felt that the future of Indian Muslims lay in having a separate state of their own. Iqbal was the principal ideologue of what later become Pakistan. Iqbal’s mother-tongue was Punjabi but he never wrote in it. He used only Persian and Urdu, as did many Urdu poets before him.

There are many aspects of Iqbal’s personal life which have not been fully researched by his biographers. We know he married two or three times and that his favourite son was Javed, who became a judge of the Lahore high court. Iqbal’s affair with Atia Faizi of Bombay when they met in London is well-known. There must have been some correspondence between them to show the kind of relationship they had. When in Heidelberg, he was taken up by his young German tutor, Emma Veganast. This secret was divulged by the mayor of Heidelberg in a speech in which he named a part of the bank of the river Neckar after him — Iqbal Weg. The Pakistani ambassador to Germany had the mayor’s speech mentioning the girl’s name suppressed. Iqbal and Emma continued to write to each other till the end of his life. The correspondence should be available in archives in Lahore and Heidelberg. Lovers of Iqbal, among whom I count myself, deserve to be presented with a fuller picture of their idol. We have biographies of Rabindranath Tagore revealing all his love affairs but none of the Allama telling us of the kind of man he was.

Look, the guy was confused, died long time before Pakistan was being hatched by britain, the best i can say is he was a copycat of Nietzche ( compare momen ``the overman`` / Ubermensch, even his thinking pose ). Only that he went the opposite of what Nietzche line of thoughts were.

Anyhow in the absence of any leading figure within Punjab of pakistan, Iqbal fit perfectly for the early dictatros, in my opinion this fabrication of a leader has caused most of the problems for the region, first thougts of past glories were ingrained in the mind of youths, making them go back to the roots, and what roots it has taken us to one may ask, misguided support of taliban, kashmir insurgents, kargil, and now lal masjid.

Most of these folks are now disillusioned, which leave the illitrates to now take the meshal (torche) , and you see the whole talibanization of the region through force and terror.

Now where does this leave us, can`t think of any other way but a turkish style kamal ata turk that could force the secular up everyone`s ass, the alternate is a nuke strap to potbeley of mullahs raining down on earth !

Re: # 118

Oh dear Manto! You are mixing up `Watan` and `State` and `geographical` and `idealogical` entities. Just think, Bengali Muslims who were in the fore-front of the Paki Movement have shed their subjectivism and reverted to their `Desh`, an objective reality. Today ask a Bihari in Bangladesh about his motherland he would definitely say `Pakistan` and rightly so because when he was born there was no Bangladesh. If they insist calling former West Pakistan as Pakistan or New Pakistan, as Bhutto used to call it, let them do so but it is no longer the Quaide Azam`s Pakistan, a Two-Nation wala Pakistan. The fact is that there was no Paky nation to clamour for Pakistan as Bengalies did for Bengladesh who discarded West Pakistan because they had come to hate the very name of Pakistan. Oh! I forgot! The only paky thing in the residual Pakistan, in fact, is the Pak fouj, and so for that matter a rightful claiment to rule the country. So why not call it now as `Foujistan` or `Mushistan`?

Excuse me this harangue as `Aaj dard kuchh dil mein sawa hota he`. I saw Quaide Azam as a young boy and had followed his chariot in a `jalloos`. But today I see him hanged alone on a dune in front of my home on Shahraae Islamabad. Often tears flood to my eyes when I see that great man sad and lonely, hanged on a scaffold where the traffic zooms past him nonchalantly.

Regards

After this article I was trying to make a mental picture of YLH. Then comes the other one.

2 Things strike me

This man`s passionate commitment to his country.

An attempt to construct the ``Ideology of Pakistan`` (let us call it that for want of a better word) without Islam or rather without Islam as its core.

So I am thninking why is he trying that?? Is it because he is an Ahmadi and has faced persecution.

Also what is troubling is his passionate hatred towards India and Indians to the point where he puts false hood and half truths to support his PoV.

Interesting character but still one wonders why is he doing this Sisyphean task at all.

Sanatani

@ Yasser Latif

Your article is insightful. However you have skipped to mention another type of critique of Iqbalian thought. It is the criticism on Allama Iqbal`s philosophical ideas. I consider Syed Ali Abbas Jalalpuri as an important this type of critique of Iqbalian though. Please check my following articles about Iqbalian thought. I have accepted many points of Syed Ali Abbas Jalalpuri in this connection.

Allama Iqbal`s Anti-Rational Approach & Some important Historical Roots of Iqbalian Ishq

Regards!

zeemax:

that line --misra` -- `tuu faqat Allahu, Allahu, Allahu` is NOT about `sufis` but a part of a dialogue between Iblis and Gabriel and the poem is actually entitled, Gibril aur Iblis. It is said by Iblis to Gibril in the poem...

Stuka #115: True. But he was just one of a number of writers in his particular genre (i.e. south asian) of writing. I think it is the fatwa that made him the internationally known figure that he is.

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Dear teshah,


With all due respect...I don`t know who this ``Our`` is that you speak for... I am definitely not part of this ``our``. You may go on saying this but know that today people like you are less than a few hundred thousand... and even most of them don`t share your conception.

In any event ...your ``Watan`` Hindustan- as one state- was - whether you like it or not- a British creation ... unless you mean the geographical entity called the Indian subcontinent...

Iqbal is relevant today and would remain so, if for nothing else, then his `Taranah-e-Hindi` which says `` Hindi hein ham watan he Hindostan hamaara, ham bulbalein hein iski yih gulsitaan hamara``.

Our `watan` is, no doubt, still Hindostan, despite the fact that it has been divided into states of `Bharat`, `Pakistan`, `Bangladesh`, etc., etc.

Iqbal is relevant today and would remain so, if for nothing else, then his `Taranah-e-Hindi` which says `` Hindi hein ham watan he Hindostan hamaara, ham bulbalein hein iski yih gulsitaan hamara``.

Our `watan` is, no doubt, still Hindostan, despite the fact that it has been divided into states of `Bharat`, `Pakistan`, `Bangladesh`, etc., etc.

#88 by tahmed32 on June 24, 2007 4:59am PT
#87 zeemax: If there had been no iranian fatwa against Rushdie, he would have been just another mediocre, little known writer, competing for attention on chowk with Hamidm (and Hamidm would have beaten him flat out).

TAhmed, u are dead wrong on this ojne. Salman Rushdie was very well known in the 80s itself due to two novels; Midnight`s Children and Shame.