Re: Urdu as our national langauge
What is literacy rate of areas forming part of Pakistan today? What percentage of that literate population can be said to have literary circle?
Now consider the above questions for period 68 years ago. Not that I’m against any language or its writers, but the fact is literary circles of a language should not be criteria for judging popularity of a language among masses at large. Its like judging popularity of Persian in Pakistani areas due to Molana Rumi, Saadi and Hafiz. Their works were being taught in Madarsas of sub-continent way before partition. Though Persian was court language, but it was not popular among masses.
As far as Iqbal is concerned, no doubt he is a great poet, but all his popularity to masses level came after partition in Pakistan area. Iqbal was not popular in Balochistan, rural Punjab, Sindh (including Karachi except literary circles as you mentioned), Bengal and in KPK before partition. Reciting the beautiful ‘Lab pe aati hai dua’ in schools is post partition phenomenon.