LETTERS OF IQBAL TO JINNAH

(25.4.1973)

The mystification of the people in the name of Iqbal started soon after his departure in 1938, but the period in which his life and work was sought to be virtually buried' under a plethora of misinterpretations, falsifications, and deliberate lies really began after the formation of Pakistan.

One of the glaring exam1ples of the way Iqbal's message was sought to be emasculated is provided by the manner in which our national radio edited his poetry. It is a peripheral example but reveals the essence of the matter. This editing of verses which could or could not be used for broadcasting was a part of the process by means of which the ruling classes in our society were trying to cover up and distort the message of the man whose work comprises the fullest statement of what is now being given the high sounding name of ideology of Pakistan. This was at the same time the process of replacing the real ideology of Pakistan -- clearly stated in the life and work of Iqbal and Jinnah -- by an alternative concocted by servitors of the ruling classes. The irony of the situation is that this alternative hotch potch of reactionary and obscurantist thinking whose aim has been to protect the interests of feudalists, capitalists and bureaucrats, and to keep the people of Pakistan from realising their sovereign rights, is the work of people who were totally opposed to the formation of an independent homeland of the Muslim people. The further irony is that they are dishing out these ideas of theirs in the name of Iqbal.

The "Saqi Nama," in "Bal-i-Jibril," is one of the profoundest statements of Iqbal's ideology. The verses about the overthrow of capitalism, feudalism and world imperialism occur at the very beginning of this poem. Our radio was debarred from broadcasting these verses. Another poem from the same book which was altogether banned was the famous "God's Command to the Angels," which opens with the lines: "Arise! and awaken the poor of my world. Shake the walls of the palaces of the rich,"

These poems, and many others, which point out the processes of class struggle raging all over the world, and the side on which the Muslim people and Muslim countries have to fight in this international conflict, could obviously not be tolerated by classes in Pakistan 's society who were fighting on the side of feudalism, capitalism and imperialism. Hence the ban on them by our national broadcasting service, which continued for two decades and more.

But this was just one of the ways the ruling classes have been trying to prevent the message of Iqbal from becoming a part of the mass consciousness. A more insidious method has been to "interpret" Iqbal as an enemy of Muslim nationalism and socialism. These interpretations sum up his message as that of a man who in the world-wide conflict between Imperialism and the poor colonised nations, and between world capitalism and world socialism, was a protagonist of imperialism and capitalism against the colonised nations and socialism. A man who had written the poems "Sarmaya-o-Mehnat" and "Pas Cheh Bayad Kard ay Aqwam-i-Sharq" was put forward as a follower of J. F. Dulles, who -in "Peace and War" (1951) floated the theory of religious unity between Christian West and Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist "East" to combat Communism. This outrageous perversion of our national poet's message at the hands of reactionary ideology mongers has continued to this day.

Another ploy to cover up Iqbal's ideology by the ruling classes has been to show him as an unpractical visionary, a "dreamer" who saw the nebulous dream of Pakistan , but was like all poets, "an ineffectual angel beating his wings in the void." And this about a man whose entire life and work was devoted to politics, and whose greatest achievement was to create the political consciousness among the Muslims of the sub-continent on the basis of their national identity -- "Khudi", whose essence is a collective entity.

'One of the lesser known works of Iqbal is a small pamphlet, printed by Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf for the Quaid-i-Azam in 1942, entitled "Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah". Its sub-title is: "Allama Iqbal's views on the political future of Muslim India." .the total number of pages is 32, out of which seven are devoted to a preface by the Quaid-i-Azam. There are 13 letters in all, written between 23rd May 1936 and 10th November 1937 , the last letter about six 'months before Iqbal's death.

A study of these letters is a proof, if proof was needed, that Iqbal was no visionary, no "ineffectual angel," but a clear-sighted politician who was not only aware of the general lines of Muslim national politics, but was deeply involved in the national and class struggle then going on, and could lay down the strategy and tactics of that struggle for his companions in the Muslim League. Furthermore that he was engaged closely in this struggle.

One of the simplifications of the history of our national struggle has been that the movement of the Muslim people of the Sub-continent was a simple and uncomplicated matter of Muslims on one side and Hindus and the British on the other. This was the apparent picture it attained by 1946. But to arrive at this point we had to go through and resolve a whole lot of complex formations of class and group interests and strategies. Even after 1946 when the nation stood united behind the leadership of-the Quaid-i-Azam, the group and class interests continued to work inside and outside the national organisation. One of the causes of the disintegration of Muslim League within a few years of Pakistan 's formation is the inner struggle of groups, factions and classes of which it was composed.

At the time that Iqbal wrote these letters to the man whom he had acknowledged as his leader, the Muslim politics and the politics of the Sub-continent as a whole, was as complicated as we find it later, and even in our own time. The wonderful thing about what Iqbal wrote to Jinnah is the clarity with which he analysed the total situation and provided the guidelines for the future struggle. It was this which prompted the Quaid-e-Azam to publish the letters, as he says in the introduction:

"… these letters are of very great historical importance, particularly those which explain his views in clear and unambiguous terms on the political future of Muslim India. His views were substantially in consonance with my own and had finally led me to the same conclusions as a result of the constitutional problems facing India, and found expression in due course in the united will of Muslim India as adumbrated in the Lahore Resolution of the All India Muslim League, popularly known as the 'Pakistan Resolution', passed on 23rd March 1940."

This was a crucial period in the history of our national struggle. The major issue was the clear cut formation of the objectives of the Muslim people, and the creation of a common All India platform round which they could gather.

The main obstructions in the path were the Congress and British machinations. But even more formidable was the disunity in the ranks of the Muslims on the basis of classes, groups and factions. There were many stooges of the British and the Hindus among the Muslims. In the Punjab the Unionist Party of the landlord class held sway, whose main purpose was to divide the urban working class and middle class from the rural working classes and peasantry. It never became a mass party, and its strategy and tactics were aimed at destroying any mass party from emerging in the Punjab . It destroyed the Ahrar just when it was emerging as a progressive political organisation of the Muslim masses. And it tried to strangle the Muslim League when it was becoming an alternative to the Ahrar. As Iqbal says in his last letter " Sir Sikandar wants nothing less than the complete control of the League and the provincial Parliamentary Board All this to my mind amounts to capturing the League and then killing it." The pattern of feudal politics in the Punjab which is depicted in these letters has continued to be a feature of our national politics until the present, and will continue until the total overthrow of the feudal class.

The most vital issue which Iqbal had dealt with in these letters is the concept of self-determination of the Muslims. This is elaborated in the letter of 21st June, 1937 . Allama Iqbal begins by stating that a virtual civil war was going on in North-West India between the Muslims and the Hindus, and that this would become universal in no time: "the real cause of these events (Hindu Muslim riots) is neither religious nor economic. It is purely political, i.e., the desire of the Sikhs and Hindus to intimidate Muslims even in the Muslim majority provinces. And the new Constitution is such that even in the Muslim majority provinces, the Muslims are made entirely dependent on non-Muslims... The only thing that the communat award grants to the Muslims is the recognition of their political existence in India . But such a recognition granted to a people whom this constitution does not and cannot help in solving their problem of poverty can be of no value to them... In these circumstances it is obvious that the only way to a peaceful India is a redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities... Why should not the Muslims of North West India and Bengal be, considered as nations entitled to self- determination just as other nations in India and outside India are?"

Many people were thinking of this solution, as Iqbal has pointed out in another place in the same letter. But a theoretical solution necessitates practical steps. And the first step was to involve the masses in the political struggle for such a purpose.

The League at that time was not a mass party. Why? -- "a political organisation which gives no promise of improving the lot of the average Muslim cannot attract our masses... under the new constitution the higher posts go to the sons of upper classes; the smaller ones go to the friends or relatives of the ministers. In other matters too our political institutions have never thought of improving the lot of the Muslims generally. The problem of bread is becoming more and more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that it is equally due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him. But it is bound to come... how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League's activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure the Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before. Happily there is a solution in the enforcement of the law of Islam and its further development in the light of modern ideas."

Those who have made it their profession to pervert Iqbal's ideas see here only an exhortation to apply what they think is the law of Islam. They usually miss the words, or their significance, in the last clause. It is not the Shariat of the apologists of feudalism, but a Shariat with its "further development" -- and a development "in the light of modern ideas."

What are these modern ideas? Very precisely Iqbal has clarified them by using the term "Social Democracy" -- which at that time was the organisational form of socialism in Europe . The socialist parties of the Second International -- whose Russian section staged the first successful working class socialist revolution in the world -- were known as Social Democratic Parties. The term social democracy was equivalent to Socialism. The apologists of capitalism who wish to show Iqbal as a champion of their ideas try to wriggle out of this difficulty by saying that by social democracy Iqbal merely meant the democratic social idea of Islam. They can deceive only themselves.

What Iqbal is trying to compare in this paragraph of the letter of 28th May 1937, is the attitude of Brahmanism and Islam towards the acceptance of a socialist, economic and political form, and he uses the terms socialism and social democracy as alternatives: "The issue between social democracy and Brahmanism is not dissimilar to the one between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Whether the fate of socialism will be the same as the fate of Buddhism in India I cannot say. But it is clear to my mind that if Hinduism accepts social democracy it must necessarily cease to be Hinduism. For Islam the acceptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam. The modern problems therefore are far more easy to solve for the Muslims than for the Hindus."

Now the real importance of this passage resides in the -- formulation that for Hindus as for Muslims there are such thing as "modern problems," and "modern ideas" for their solution which have to be incorporated into the "further development" of the "Law of Islam".

For the obscurantists there are neither "modern problems" nor "modern ideas", nor the possibility of any "further development" in the Law of Islam. How is it then that they lay claim to Iqbal's inheritance?

There are many reasons. But the major reason is that along with disowning their history -- because they know nothing of it --the so-called left radicals have disowned all the steps of our national political struggle which led up to the present. Iqbal's work is one of the giant steps in this political struggle. Anybody who claims to be a Marxist Leninist, and ignores the immediate (or the remote) past of his people, or knows of it only through hearsay, or has little sympathy with the political culture of his people, may grow long revolutionary hair, but will continue to serve counter- revolutionary causes, -- through ignorance or confusion, may be, but that is no excuse for anybody, least of all for Marxist- Leninists.

It is the fault of the so-called left radicals that one of their greatest predecessors of, Socialism in Pakistan is being used for Right radical purposes. But perhaps this is in order because both the Left radicals and Right radicals, are birds of a feather. At least most of their representatives come from the kind of well-lined feudal, bourgoals and petit bourgeois nests.

NOTES:

1. Published in The Pakistan Times. 25.4.73.