Allama a Pakistani?
WITH MALICE TOWARDS ONE AND ALL | Khushwant Singh
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_788868,00120002.htm
May 29
Technically not: he died on April 21, 1938, more than nine years before Pakistan came into being. But he was the first Muslim of eminence to voice fears for the future of his community in a Hindu-dominated India. A majority of Muslims shared his fears and supported the demand for a State of their own, either within or outside the Indian federation. I don’t blame them for feeling uncomfortable in the company of Indians striving for freedom from British rule: as things turned out after Independence, their fears were justified. I do not care whether or not Iqbal wanted to separate Muslims from Hindus, as he contradicted himself on many equally important issues. The debate on whether or not he was for Pakistan is today a futile academic exercise. He was a great poet and to me this is all that matters.
For reasons best known to them, Indian Muslims are forever trying to dig up evidence to prove that Iqbal was opposed to the idea of a separate, sovereign, independent Muslim State. The latest in the exercise to exonerate Iqbal from the charge of supporting Pakistan is the republication of The Idea of Pakistan & Iqbal: A Disclaimer by the late S. Hasan Ahmed of the Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library. The slender book is based on a few letters written by Iqbal to his friend E. J. Thompson of Oxford University between 1933-34. Professor Hasan Ahmed found them in 1979. Not much notice was taken of them. Hence the reprint.
In a letter (June 20, 1933) Iqbal writes: “I am not interested in politics as such; it was my interest in Islam as a moral polity that drove me to politics. I felt that Hindu nationalism would eventually lead to atheism.” This proves how naïve Iqbal could be to equate Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) to atheism:
A year later he asserts: “You call me protagonist of the scheme called Pakistan. Now Pakistan is not my scheme. The one I suggested in my address was the creation of a Muslim province i.e. a province having an overwhelming Muslim population in the north-west of India. This new province will be, according to my scheme, a part of the proposed Indian federation.” Four months later Iqbal was convinced that “the introduction of democracy in the vast indisciplined and starving country would lead to anarchy and bloodshed.”
Iqbal denounces Nehru as “a godless socialist” and believed no Muslim would accept him as leader. He was woefully wrong in his conjecture. The only explanation I can offer of Iqbal’s jaundiced views on politics is that he was obsessed with rise and fall of Muslims as a political power. He was a great poet and could have been a greater one if he had written less on religion.