LETTERS OF IQBAL TO JINNAH

(25.4.1973)

"Mr. Jinnah is the real leader of the Muslims. I am a mere soldier of his."

-Iqbal

Iqbal died in 1938, 27 years ago. From the time of his birth in 1877 to the moment of his death he lived through a period which because of its criss-cross patterns of political, economic and social reality, because of the confusions that we had to face and above all because of the sad lack of historical documentation, is unparalleled in our .history. Indeed it is difficult to point out any other period in the history of the Muslims of the sub-continent about which we know as little with certitude as this -- the time of our emergence out of chaos.

We Muslims pride ourselves on our sense of history. We are, as Iqbal said, a people who have a date with history. But it is a sad and ironical fact that our sense of history today, especially in connection with this most fruitful of periods, has given way to a sense of mythology. It is myth we are more concerned with today than history.

Dr. Abdus Salam, the first lecturer in the Radio series of Iqbal Memorial Lectures, pointed out the basis of scientific knowledge as a search for unity and unified consciousness. Man has always held to the faith in an eventual unity, simplicity and symmetry .in any basic laws which may govern the universe. This faith' is holy because it is also the basis of that search for the One Essence which is the creative principle of the universe, and whose affirmation at the individual and collective level is the very source of the religion of Islam.

But this search for putting order into chaos, of discovering simple principles of understanding of Nature and Reality has, in the present context, led us into adopting a few formulas on the history of the Pakistan Movement and the relation of Iqbal to that movement. The formulas are simple, but by cutting out the details of the pattern of movement they have become dangerous.

Since Iqbal's elevation to the level of a myth, much has been written about him. He has been described as a fascist, as a progressive, as a social reactionary, as a communalist, as an anti-science anti-rational demagogue, as a sufi, as an anti- sufi, and as a liberal democrat. The supposed contradictions in his writings have been sought to be resolved at the uncomplicated level of understanding of his critics. Always, and again and again, the essential aspect of his life and work has been forgotten. His message which was for the entire humanity, even as Islam was, has been sought to be appropriated by a single group of people according to the language in which he sought to put his ideas. In the last (the seventh) lecture of his series on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, he says:

"Surely the present moment is one of great crisis in the history of modern culture. The modern world stands in need of biological renewal. And religion, which in its higher manifestation is neither dogma, nor priesthood, nor ritual, can alone ethically prepare the modern man for the burden of the great responsibility which the advancement of modern science necessarily involves and restores to him that attitude of faith which makes him capable of winning a personality here and retaining it hereafter. It is only by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a society motivated by an inhuman competition, and a cirlisation which has lost its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religious and political values." (l)

But while this vision of Ijtihad was for the entire humanity, and every man who calls himself a Muslim need not pat himself on the back that Iqbal had him in mind when he made 'the Muslim' and 'the 'Mard-i-Momin' as the acme of human evolution, it should also be understood that Iqbal's personality and thinking arose out of specific human conditions in a certain specific time-space situation.

This time-space situation --the society of the Punjab in particular and of the Indian sub-continent in general --was, and is, one of the most confusing. For the first time, in a book recently published by the Central Majlis -i-Iqbal of Karachi, 2 an effort has been made to determine the material sources of Iqbal's thought. Written by a lieutenant of Iqbal during the last phase of his life, it lays bare the strange political and social phenomena that caused, at the same time, the exhilaration and disappointment with which Iqbal's closing years were characterised. The author, Dr. Ashiq Hussain Batalvi, has made a very clear analysis (as clear as the almost general disappearance of source material would allow) of the history of the Muslim League Movement, especially in the Punjab , with which Iqbal throughout his life was associated.

Much that happened in the first decade after the establishment of Pakistan cannot be understood if reference is not made again and again to the criss-cross of Muslim politics in the sub-continent, and specifically in the Punjab , over the entire period. Why, for instance, the politicians of the Unionist Party came to occupy such monopoly positions of power in Pakistan , while their entire career in the period of Independence movement was disruptive and anti- national, is a question on the answer to which depends the solution of some of our problems today.

Again and again the pattern is repeated. Mian Fazal-i-Hussain, whose towering personality was at one time the symbol of the progressive movement among the educated Muslims, is seen here succumbing to the power of the reactionary landlord class, who were flirting at the same time with the emerging forces of the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress as well as with the British Imperialists. He arose as a beacon of unity at the time when Sir Michael O'Dwyer sowed the seeds of division between the city Muslims and the country Muslims. He fought against this tendency -- which was to cause the poor masses of the countryside to be alienated from the democratic message of the Muslim League. But that was in the earlier period. Later, political exigency made him join hands with the landlords, and then he succeeded in keeping the Muslim League out of the Punjab . But having served the purpose of the Unionist landlords he had to quit life as an embittered man whom the alliance with the landlords did not bring salvation. We see here the entire conspiracy of the so-called National Congress which tried to bypass the Muslim League as representative of the masses, first with the help of their Muslim Mass contact movement and then in alliance with the reactionary landlords of the Punjab. Flushed with the sense of power after the 1936 elections, the Congress closed the door finally on any reapproachment between themselves and the real leaders of the Muslims, who at that time undoubtedly were Jinnah and Iqbal.

It is a panorama of constant struggle and continuous betrayal of the Muslims by their landlord class - not merely in the Punjab but everywhere else. And on this betrayal then is based their betrayal later, only the whole story has so cleverly been covered over that now, like the good generous Muslims that we are, we do not let our right hand have any idea of what our left hand does.

The necessity of an authenticated and well-documented history of the national movement is immense. Without it, all our talk of Iqbal's participation in this movement, of his being the initiator of the idea of Pakistan , is abstract and without any meaning. Iqbal --as a soldier of Jinnah -- was fighting not only in a general struggle for the regeneration of the people, but also in a particular battle in that long war. Dr. Batalvi's book has revealed a part of that story the fuller revelation will only come when our research scholars stop being myth-makers and start being historians.

NOTES:

1. Published in The Pakistan Times. 25.4.73.