Sir Dr. Allama Iqbal

[halupridol]

Just a title no issues...And he is content with whatever and author is content with whatever...to each his own

Hey,,,u became mod,,,,GREATTT

 

[ghazi52]

• Iqbal: poor philosophy, rich poetry

Salma Khalid

November 9, 2018


The state and its propaganda apparatus have been a great hindrance in the development of an objective approach or objective approaches to Iqbal. Yet, one can ask whether Iqbal didn’t really come handy to a regressive state.

Letting Iqbal entirely off the hook and attributing the problem mostly to the state has been the tendency in influential segments of the liberal intellectuals and in the Marxist left in Pakistan, which suddenly discovered in Iqbal a philosophical genius that they had failed to spot before – when they were condemning him for what was seen as fascism and fascistic symbols adorning his poetry. All that changed after some Soviet scholars, perhaps working under Soviet state guidelines, saw in Iqbal a great anti-imperialist and ‘anti-capitalist humanist’.

An acute sense of social injustice is indeed powerfully present in parts of Iqbal’s poetry. What should be noted is that, despite using Marxist insights in those parts, Iqbal has no place for even a tinge of Marxism in his serious ‘philosophical’ efforts, as is evident from his ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’. In fact what these lectures make clear in places is that a fear of the spread of socialism is one of the factors driving Iqbal’s ‘Reconstruction’.

His reactionary idealism is positively at odds with Marxism. Our leftists confuse his poetic devices and a few romantic, and no doubt powerful, invocations by him of Marx and Lenin with what they call his philosophy. Often, these invocations serve to attack colonialism and fascism as evil fruits of secularism, nationalism, democracy, liberalism and reason.

What has been lacking in most of Iqbal’s admirers on both the Right and the Left is an intellectual commitment to the plain truth. Instead, what has proved irresistible is the desire to use Iqbal’s name to be acceptable to the people among whom Iqbal came to enjoy great ‘intellectual’ influence and popularity. As a result, with very few exceptions, little honest discussion on Iqbal’s lectures has taken place here.

Iqbal attacked reason, science, philosophy, literature, art and free thought at a very crucial stage of our social and political history. Which state using religion as ideology would hesitate in owning and using someone who proclaims that freedom of thought is an invention of the devil or that Muslims have no use for philosophy, literature and theoretical sciences or that Muslims should avoid studying astronomy for it renders men without courage? How far should our knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of progress and history have advanced in the 20th century for the Cambridge and Munich-educated Iqbal to know that these were dangerous utterings, of great disservice to Muslims?

Iqbal himself was candid about the fact that he was no philosopher. Still, that has not prevented us from taking him seriously as a ‘philosopher’. That also did not prevent Iqbal himself from using and abusing philosophy to demolish philosophy itself with unrestrained self-congratulation. He had the same self-defeating attitude to reason as all those before and after him who would demolish reason and philosophy but rely on reason and philosophy to do so, thus making a strange spectacle where philosophy does not remain philosophy but becomes unintelligible gobbledygook carrying little meaning and religion does not remain religion but becomes a caricature of itself.

Some commentators and critics note a multiplicity of meanings in Iqbal, rooting the presence in Iqbal of many thinkers, philosophers and mystics from different traditions in this alleged multiplicity. Quite apart from the question whether just any (if at all) sort of multiplicity of meanings should become philosophical text, such an approach gives Iqbal what does not belong to him. Multiplicity of meanings may exist where each individual layer of meaning is at least consistent within itself. With Iqbal, the situation is simply chaos in the pages of the‘Reconstruction’ with great names being dropped without restraint, to no effect except muddying the waters and overawing the readers into submissive silence and dullness of mind.

Iqbal is not without a few flashes of brilliance, vision and insight into the human condition, but they are only a few and do not jell well in the gigantic chaos he causes on the whole. And they remain mere flashes. What he gives with one hand in those flashes, he very effectively and elaborately takes away with the other.

In the ‘Reconstruction’ Iqbal uses Quranic verses extremely irresponsibly to prove his points on history, biology, physics, mathematics and what not. He was the modern originator of the harmful attitude that Muslims have since badly suffered from – their tendency to ‘discover’ everything in the Holy Quran while the rest of the world works its brains off day and night trying to unravel the workings of the universe.

Iqbal’s thinking is characterised by a lack of historical sense and almost compulsive distortion of basic historical facts. One of the most fundamental assertions – also one of most absurd in the history of ideas – made by Iqbal is that ‘Semitic’ Islam gave birth to modern science by revolting against the Aryan (the Greek legacy and the Iranian heritage influenced by it) Islam, which to him is no Islam but a movement against it. (To follow the movement of Iqbal’s thought here calls for a serious and careful study of both his doctoral thesis that he ‘disowned’ and his magnum opus ‘The Reconstruction’ which many regard as a great achievement.)

The difference between Semitic Islam and the ‘Aryan/Greek/Iranian distortion of it’ is one of the central planks of the mythology that Iqbal – the advocate of a universal Islam – created and became obsessed by. All the same, this is elaborate and intricate nothingness, made interesting only by the fact that Iqbal ends up building the whole edifice of his ‘Reconstruction’ not on Semitic Islam but on immanentist/neo-platonic/Aryan foundations.

The quality of Iqbal’s scholarship is suspect. His apparently quite deliberate misuse of Louis Massignon’s great work on Hallaj is only one example of this. His use of Rumi in the ‘Reconstruction’ to equate his (Rumi’s) neo-platonic, absolutely Aryan and entirely non-Semitic idea of the soul with the modern discovery of (biological) evolution is nothing but one of many instances of the mental gymnastics that Iqbal performs. But to what end?

Iqbal the poet is and should be a different story – not without its own tragedy though. I agree with the spirit of Marx’s comments on poets that they are strange creatures and liberties should be extended to them that we would not permit to philosophers and scientists. That is an important distinction that we often lose sight of while discussing Iqbal. A multiplicity (whether projected by the reader or actually and originally present) of meanings in poetry is not only permissible but a requisite to great poetry which, like music, can rise above its immediate context and encompass, in its own mysterious ways, facets of the human experience which calls not only for objective understanding but for a level of subjective and emotional involvement that can help us withstand the ravages of time and life.

Friedrich Engels, sharply attacking Professor Duhring’s conception of aesthetic education, wrote: “…it goes without saying that the “mythological or other religious trimmings” characteristic of poets up to now cannot be tolerated in this school. ‘Poetic mysticism’ too … is to be condemned. Herr Dühring will therefore have to make up his mind to produce for us those poetic masterpieces which “are in accord with the higher claims of an imagination reconciled with reason”, and represent the genuine ideal, which “denotes the perfection of the world.”

The best of Iqbal’s poetry surpasses any narrow confines and boundaries. Whether he is aware or of it or not is of no poetic and aesthetic consequence. That is why and how his poetry, or any great poetry, moves us. One need not be a Christian, or ‘religiously’ inclined in any other way, to be moved and inspired by Dante or Milton. One only needs to be aesthetically sensitive and alive to the best yearnings of humanity in an imperfect world to experience one’s soul being shaken. Iqbal was perhaps the greatest Romantic poet we produced. His religious zeal got the better of him and he went on to massacre much of his own Romanticism in poetry. But it never entirely died, and left us gems that can rival any in the world. What can make poetry powerfully effective can ruin philosophy and that is what Iqbal’s legacy represents.



The writer is a student of philosophy and literature at the Forman Christian College, Lahore.

Email: salmakhalid935@gmail.com

 

[ghazi52]

Understanding Iqbal: Have we come of age yet?

Dr Tufail Ahmed Qureshi

Iqbal relaxing at the residence of his friend Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan | Photo courtesy: The Allama Iqbal Collection


We are privileged that Iqbal belonged to us. He sang our lives in his songs and he thought about our past and our future in his philosophy and poetry. He was a poet, a philosopher and a revivalist of Islamic tradition, and his poetry, infused with the strength of his existential authenticity, resonates with the rhythm of his 'inwardness'. His imagination celebrates the sensitivity of his vision, and his poetic symbols emanate from the historic consciousness of the Islamic past. They are objects of cognitive power and existential ‘ownness’.

Iqbal is the exponent of the idea of khudi or ownness. The concept of khudi is the irreducible component of human existence. In other words, the essence of a thing is that without which it will not be what it is. Sugar is sweet. It will not be sugar unless it sweet. That is its essence. The khudi or ownness of a man is that without which he will not be who he is. In contemporary parlance, the lessons of Iqbal’s poetic and philosophical message centre on the necessity of man as a journeying self, someone who is always on the move, ahead of himself, towards the yet-to-be.

Iqbal believed firmly that man has no fate or predestined life.

From Bang-e-Dara-163, Tulu-e-Islam (The Rise of Islam) Stanza 8


We are, unfortunately, averse to such ideas, and that is what makes Iqbal a man whose time has not come yet. Or to put it differently, we have not yet come of age to incorporate his teachings into our life and worldview. We suffer from arrested development. We do not love change. We do not look forward to become what we are capable of becoming and that is the grief of Iqbal. He was not understood in his own time by his own people.

What is Iqbal’s relevance for our individual and collective thinking? If we are to move past the idea of him as a ‘national’ and ‘Islamic’ thinker, but are unable to apply his ideas as a society, how can we make his teachings relevant to our contemporary reality? Iqbal believed that a radical examination of our question of being and the problem of existence must precede philosophical reflection.

The intention is twofold: we need to examine our assumptions to determine their inherent flaws and contradictions. However, this is not a purely negative exercise. Instead, Iqbal meant it as a dialectically creative activity, unfolding the not-yet-visualised ideal possibilities of our being-able-to-be. As a severe critic of our intellectual persuasion, he said many things rash and noble that were also eloquent and devastating, offending those who do not like their shoddy ways of thinking exposed. Iqbal’s poetry tolerates no pretence and is distrustful of our capacity to be honest with ourselves. It was inconceivable to his straightforward nature that anyone could possibility know what honesty means without being honest. Or, that someone could tell a lie without thinking the truth. It is not possible to think of Iqbal without thinking of his humanity.

The question of Iqbal’s relevance is a question about the relevance of a philosophical attitude, of a worldview and creative faith, about our culture and self-identification. It should concern our philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and, moral and religious thinkers. His voice is needed today, but his time has not yet come. Until it does, we face a harsh indictment, and no ceremonial tributes will vindicate us of his unrequited love. How else, otherwise, could such an outpouring of his genius, his spiritual passion, his lust for life, be wasted on us? How could his great odyssey of reconstruction have such a dismal effect on our individual and collective thinking?

Allama Iqbal (centre, bottom row) with his students and colleagues at Government College, Lahore in 1910 | Iqbal in Pictures


Iqbal had no taste for a philosophy that distances the thinker from his utterances and observations — for which he incurred the wrath of those to whom he belonged and those who did not belong to him. He celebrated life and rejected everything that said no to life. He believed that philosophy must emerge from within our lived experiences and finally converge upon life as it is lived. His reverence for life manifests itself on two different levels: the level of assumption of knowing, and being on the other. To be sure, in the philosophy of life, there is nothing analytic about the identity of knowing and being.

According to Iqbal, the ultimate purpose of philosophical existence is not so much to know something, as to be something. We must, therefore, ask: what does it mean to be in relation to what we know? The summation of knowing and being, therefore, is a dialectical process of the regularity of subjective and objective behaviour. It accounts for the violent eloquence of his poetry, inspired by the boldness of his authentic being and the driving force of his creative passion. In Iqbal's philosophy, these two components are threaded into the warp and woof of cultural vision. It nurtures a transcendental orientation and generates the worldview reflected in a Muslim’s zest and reverence for life.

According to Iqbal, the spirit of Islamic culture is antithetical to morbid fear and despair. It does not encourage withdrawal from the world. The dynamic vitality of Islamic culture is rooted in the dialectical tension generated by man’s being in the world. Iqbal seeks the resolution of this tension in our constitutive-intentionality and creative faith. He warns us to reject acquiescence and the venom of isolation. He implores those who do not have the will to be larger than themselves to reject their hopelessness.

The Quranic injunction to aspire to know oneself constituted the central issue of Iqbal’s philosophic and religious reflections. His diagnostic judgments are rooted in three modalities of disposition: the attitude of self in relation to itself, in relation to the other, and in relation to God. Unlike most thinkers, Iqbal was a philosopher who, within himself, struggled to creatively fulfill the historical need of his community. Philosophically, his act of self-discovery, has a Cartesian ring to it. He uncovered the occluded vision which lies buried in the historical consciousness of Islamic tradition. For him, search for the authentic self was necessitated by his philosophical and spiritual need for the discovery and revival of his Muslim past.

Iqbal believed that man is an imperfect and incomplete creature. He is not what he can become and ought to be.

From (Bal-e-Jibril-061) Dhoond Raha Hai Farang Aysh-e-Jahan Ka Dawam


Likewise, he believed — as did Einstein — that we live in a consonantly growing and developing universe.

From Bal-e-Jibril 023 Woh Harf-e-Raaz Ke Mujh Ko Sikha Gaya Hai Janoon


If we want to understand his relevance for ourselves and our times, we must passionately read his The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.

He believed that the real content of life is discontent. The lifeless, the inert, does not suffer life, and hence it is at ease with itself. Only an object, a thing, a chair or a table, can enjoy the peace of equilibrium, but a living being cannot. How can man extricate life from his being? He is possessed by life even when he abdicates life. He affirms his existence when he says, “I do not exist.” In vain he tries to banish life from his mind, in vain he tries to seek his non-existence, and in vain he desires to flee from life.

Iqbal affirms the reality of the self and urges us to aspire for a ‘self-concentrated individuality’. Because, without the experience of ‘I’ which is I ‘myself’, how can I experience pain and happiness which is my pain and my happiness? No, the self is not an illusion. I cannot be who I am without the self, my own-self.

Iqbal was a passionate believer and a wise man, but there is indeed a touch of irony in the way he belittles himself. At times he hesitates to speak the truth for fear of unsettling our sense of certainty. But when he speaks of himself and for himself, it is as if he is thinking of his mission to destroy our assumptions in order to liberate our sensibilities from inauthentic submission. His criticism of our unexamined habits of thought and properties of life is cruel but always sincere and honest. More importantly, it acts as a liberating force and generates intellectual freedom, spiritual enthusiasm and existential self-awareness.

Such deliverance, however, is not possible without the sincerity of mind and purity of heart. For only he who has prayed sincerely and with a pure heart, even if it were but only once in his life, can experience within the depth of his being the supreme form of glory — the privilege of being known to God — and from this, his mind and his heart can enjoy the unique experience of having lived in the sight of God. He now stares life in the face. Such experience is the source of true self-transcendence and, according to Iqbal, a Muslim’s bearings in the world.

Allama Iqbal (centre; right in his characteristic headgear) sitting alongside Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah at the Round Table Conference in London | Photo courtesy: The Allama Iqbal Collection


A Muslim lives in the world transcendentally and as a journeying self. He navigates this world creatively and with the intention of changing the way it is, to the way it ought to be. Iqbal’s philosophy of life rests upon the freedom of creative endeavour. It is poetry of what is most sublime and deeply inward in our nature. He is an exponent of free will and his will was as strong as his creative faith. His philosophy of life is a blueprint of uncharted regions. He aspires for the yet-to-be-realised ideals and goals, involving courage, risk, novelty, struggle and continuous jihad to make and remake the world — our portion of the world — according to our own cultural vision.

His philosophy, as a reconstruction of our religious orientation, demands an assimilation of these traits into our habits of thought and our individual and communal struggle. Until these traits enter into the texture of our personal and collective life to make a tangible difference, we will not feel the real impact of his genius.

Iqbal holds in contempt the man who does not exert himself in the way of his being-able-to-be. Such a man makes no demands on himself. He condemns himself to being what he is, destitute of creative faith, whose being in the world makes no difference to the worldliness of the world. He takes the ‘given’ world as sufficient unto itself, as finished in its possibilities of ideal and moral reconstruction. He happens to be in the world as it is — the given world — and leaves it just the way he had found it.

Iqbal loved us dearly. He exerted his poetic and philosophical genius in describing our lives, ideally hoping to make us aware of our identity and inheritance, without opposing life in its onward rush and movement. In his worldview, man in his sojourn towards the yet-to-be, is always ahead of himself.

Iqbal wishes to release our own sense of originality into the world as creative faith and co-creative intentionality. As a transcending self, man is always beyond any place of permanent abode. In its onward rush, life is like that, always and forever different, overflowing its own bounds, constantly towards new beginnings. Iqbal’s philosophy is an original statement of this onward movement of life. It is a cultural vision and he derives it from the principle of movement in the structure of Islam.

In view of the Islamic transcendentalism, man is a journeying self and, for him, the journey by itself is sufficient. It is the journey which unfolds for him new possibilities of his being-able-to-be and new facets of worldliness. As a journeying self, a Muslim does not seek to arrive, he only strives to establish the beginning — for that is all he can hope for. Iqbal never looked beyond that hope. He emphasises an indeterminate movement from the good to the better and then, the best and beyond.

From Bal-e-Jibril 025 Tu Abhi Reh Guzar Mein Hai, Qaid-e-Maqam Se Guzer


Iqbal carries no magic wand of reason. There are times when he hesitates to speak the truth for fear of unsettling our sense of certainty. But when he does, he stealthily dismembers our entire sense of logic. There are dangers in depth and one should be well advised against wanting to descend deep into one's own-self. And yet, without this ownness, how can a man belong to himself? Iqbal urges us to belong to ourselves and, in doing so, discover in the depths of our hearts, our hearts' desire to be what we are capable of becoming.

Iqbal, the man who instilled in us a sense of pride in our ownness, died on April 21, 1938, but the shadow of his memory lingers on to colour our dreams and to fill our hearts with desire. He has left behind a legacy of anguished searching and the quest for excellence. His agonies, exultations and visions, are fiercer and stronger than death and love — these are Iqbal's gifts to us.

 

[denel]

There was a good article in Dawn newspaper yesterday.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

Sir Dr. Allama Iqbal makes all Brahmins proud.

British selected a Brahmin and a Shia to create Pakistan. Hats off to their wisdom.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

 

[maithil]

• Iqbal: poor philosophy, rich poetry

Salma Khalid

November 9, 2018


The state and its propaganda apparatus have been a great hindrance in the development of an objective approach or objective approaches to Iqbal. Yet, one can ask whether Iqbal didn’t really come handy to a regressive state.

Letting Iqbal entirely off the hook and attributing the problem mostly to the state has been the tendency in influential segments of the liberal intellectuals and in the Marxist left in Pakistan, which suddenly discovered in Iqbal a philosophical genius that they had failed to spot before – when they were condemning him for what was seen as fascism and fascistic symbols adorning his poetry. All that changed after some Soviet scholars, perhaps working under Soviet state guidelines, saw in Iqbal a great anti-imperialist and ‘anti-capitalist humanist’.

An acute sense of social injustice is indeed powerfully present in parts of Iqbal’s poetry. What should be noted is that, despite using Marxist insights in those parts, Iqbal has no place for even a tinge of Marxism in his serious ‘philosophical’ efforts, as is evident from his ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’. In fact what these lectures make clear in places is that a fear of the spread of socialism is one of the factors driving Iqbal’s ‘Reconstruction’.

His reactionary idealism is positively at odds with Marxism. Our leftists confuse his poetic devices and a few romantic, and no doubt powerful, invocations by him of Marx and Lenin with what they call his philosophy. Often, these invocations serve to attack colonialism and fascism as evil fruits of secularism, nationalism, democracy, liberalism and reason.

What has been lacking in most of Iqbal’s admirers on both the Right and the Left is an intellectual commitment to the plain truth. Instead, what has proved irresistible is the desire to use Iqbal’s name to be acceptable to the people among whom Iqbal came to enjoy great ‘intellectual’ influence and popularity. As a result, with very few exceptions, little honest discussion on Iqbal’s lectures has taken place here.

Iqbal attacked reason, science, philosophy, literature, art and free thought at a very crucial stage of our social and political history. Which state using religion as ideology would hesitate in owning and using someone who proclaims that freedom of thought is an invention of the devil or that Muslims have no use for philosophy, literature and theoretical sciences or that Muslims should avoid studying astronomy for it renders men without courage? How far should our knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of progress and history have advanced in the 20th century for the Cambridge and Munich-educated Iqbal to know that these were dangerous utterings, of great disservice to Muslims?

Iqbal himself was candid about the fact that he was no philosopher. Still, that has not prevented us from taking him seriously as a ‘philosopher’. That also did not prevent Iqbal himself from using and abusing philosophy to demolish philosophy itself with unrestrained self-congratulation. He had the same self-defeating attitude to reason as all those before and after him who would demolish reason and philosophy but rely on reason and philosophy to do so, thus making a strange spectacle where philosophy does not remain philosophy but becomes unintelligible gobbledygook carrying little meaning and religion does not remain religion but becomes a caricature of itself.

Some commentators and critics note a multiplicity of meanings in Iqbal, rooting the presence in Iqbal of many thinkers, philosophers and mystics from different traditions in this alleged multiplicity. Quite apart from the question whether just any (if at all) sort of multiplicity of meanings should become philosophical text, such an approach gives Iqbal what does not belong to him. Multiplicity of meanings may exist where each individual layer of meaning is at least consistent within itself. With Iqbal, the situation is simply chaos in the pages of the‘Reconstruction’ with great names being dropped without restraint, to no effect except muddying the waters and overawing the readers into submissive silence and dullness of mind.

Iqbal is not without a few flashes of brilliance, vision and insight into the human condition, but they are only a few and do not jell well in the gigantic chaos he causes on the whole. And they remain mere flashes. What he gives with one hand in those flashes, he very effectively and elaborately takes away with the other.

In the ‘Reconstruction’ Iqbal uses Quranic verses extremely irresponsibly to prove his points on history, biology, physics, mathematics and what not. He was the modern originator of the harmful attitude that Muslims have since badly suffered from – their tendency to ‘discover’ everything in the Holy Quran while the rest of the world works its brains off day and night trying to unravel the workings of the universe.

Iqbal’s thinking is characterised by a lack of historical sense and almost compulsive distortion of basic historical facts. One of the most fundamental assertions – also one of most absurd in the history of ideas – made by Iqbal is that ‘Semitic’ Islam gave birth to modern science by revolting against the Aryan (the Greek legacy and the Iranian heritage influenced by it) Islam, which to him is no Islam but a movement against it. (To follow the movement of Iqbal’s thought here calls for a serious and careful study of both his doctoral thesis that he ‘disowned’ and his magnum opus ‘The Reconstruction’ which many regard as a great achievement.)

The difference between Semitic Islam and the ‘Aryan/Greek/Iranian distortion of it’ is one of the central planks of the mythology that Iqbal – the advocate of a universal Islam – created and became obsessed by. All the same, this is elaborate and intricate nothingness, made interesting only by the fact that Iqbal ends up building the whole edifice of his ‘Reconstruction’ not on Semitic Islam but on immanentist/neo-platonic/Aryan foundations.

The quality of Iqbal’s scholarship is suspect. His apparently quite deliberate misuse of Louis Massignon’s great work on Hallaj is only one example of this. His use of Rumi in the ‘Reconstruction’ to equate his (Rumi’s) neo-platonic, absolutely Aryan and entirely non-Semitic idea of the soul with the modern discovery of (biological) evolution is nothing but one of many instances of the mental gymnastics that Iqbal performs. But to what end?

Iqbal the poet is and should be a different story – not without its own tragedy though. I agree with the spirit of Marx’s comments on poets that they are strange creatures and liberties should be extended to them that we would not permit to philosophers and scientists. That is an important distinction that we often lose sight of while discussing Iqbal. A multiplicity (whether projected by the reader or actually and originally present) of meanings in poetry is not only permissible but a requisite to great poetry which, like music, can rise above its immediate context and encompass, in its own mysterious ways, facets of the human experience which calls not only for objective understanding but for a level of subjective and emotional involvement that can help us withstand the ravages of time and life.

Friedrich Engels, sharply attacking Professor Duhring’s conception of aesthetic education, wrote: “…it goes without saying that the “mythological or other religious trimmings” characteristic of poets up to now cannot be tolerated in this school. ‘Poetic mysticism’ too … is to be condemned. Herr Dühring will therefore have to make up his mind to produce for us those poetic masterpieces which “are in accord with the higher claims of an imagination reconciled with reason”, and represent the genuine ideal, which “denotes the perfection of the world.”

The best of Iqbal’s poetry surpasses any narrow confines and boundaries. Whether he is aware or of it or not is of no poetic and aesthetic consequence. That is why and how his poetry, or any great poetry, moves us. One need not be a Christian, or ‘religiously’ inclined in any other way, to be moved and inspired by Dante or Milton. One only needs to be aesthetically sensitive and alive to the best yearnings of humanity in an imperfect world to experience one’s soul being shaken. Iqbal was perhaps the greatest Romantic poet we produced. His religious zeal got the better of him and he went on to massacre much of his own Romanticism in poetry. But it never entirely died, and left us gems that can rival any in the world. What can make poetry powerfully effective can ruin philosophy and that is what Iqbal’s legacy represents.



The writer is a student of philosophy and literature at the Forman Christian College, Lahore.

Email: salmakhalid935@gmail.com

Agree. Great poetry. Not so great philosophy.

 

[TMA]

Sad truth is Sir Allama Iqbal would be called a Libturd by the Mullahturds. He was a man who recieved thre finest Western education possible and his outlook therefore was through a western mind. He looked at his own society through those lens and his writings reflect that. You can see how he yearns to reinterpret Islam in light of modern world and free it from Arab influences. He would be shocked to see how his idea turned out today where the like of TLP who are opposite of what he wrote have such enormous influence.

He was called a libtard back then. Not literally of course.

And what he did was take the best from western education and combine with the best with eastern....that is our lesson to learn...a man who perhaps was reaching the meeting place of two oceans..... Do not be mistaken in thinking he thought from a western mindset. Have you read his Hindi (Urdu) and Dari poetry.?...in many cases he castigates Western outlooks and even epistemology.

The real Iqbal is in his poetry...(of course this is my opinion).

He wanted to free Islam from Arab IMPERIALISM and other IMPERIALISMS.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

Iqbal’s indifferent Brahman cousins
By reader on April 21, 2016Comments Offon Iqbal’s indifferent Brahman cousins

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By Khalid Bashir Ahmad

Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s Kashmiri lineage and pride in his roots are well known. Like the majority of Kashmiri Muslims, his ancestors, who came from a Kashmiri Brahman gotra Sapru, had converted from Shaivite Hinduism to Islam and at one stage migrated to Sialkot.
Iqbal’s taking pride in his Kashmiri origin is generally explained as his being proud about his Brahman ancestry. However, his son, Javed Iqbal disagrees. He believes that renounced beliefs carry no importance in the personal life of an individual and that their influence dissolves after a generation or a half. “Iqbal’s ancestors”, he argues, “had accepted Islam about four hundred and fifty years before his birth. Hence, what pride can Iqbal feel about his Brahman pedigree?”
For Javed, his father’s verses pointing to the Brahman lineage actually carry sarcastic reference to the infighting of the Muslims in politics and the irony that if there was anyone informed about the secrets of Islam or its bright future it was a Brahman zaadah (a scion of Brahmans), the reference being to himself.
Be that as it may, Iqbal’s acclamation of his Brahman cousins has attained proverbial status. His tribute to their qualities is extraordinary and serves as the community’s best PR statement. The Javed Nama contains verses overflowing with admiration of the Brahman zaadgaan-e-zindah dil or the ‘Scions of the Brahmans with vibrant hearts’. Says Iqbal:

A’an Brahman zaadganan-e-zindah dil
Laleh-e-ahmar zi rooye sha’n khajil
Tez been-o-pukhta kaar-o- sakht kosh
Az nigah-e-sha’n farang andar kharosh
Asl-e-sha’n az khaake-e-daamangeer ma’st
Matla-e-ein akhtara’n Kashmir ma’st

(Those scions of Brahmans with vibrant hearts, their glowing cheeks put the red tulip to shame. Keen of eye, mature and strenuous in action, their very glance puts Europe into commotion. Their origin is from this protesting soil of ours, the rising place of these stars is our Kashmir.)
In Payam-i-Mashriq, Iqbal sang praises of a Brahman maiden’s beauty like no poet could do:

Dukhtarey Brahmaney lala rukhey saman barey
Cheshm barooy-e-oo kusha, baaz ba khawaishtan digar

(A Brahman maiden, rose-cheeked and jasmine-bodied; Cast your eye on her and turn it backwards upon yourself)
Unfortunately, however, Iqbal’s warmth towards Kashmiri Pandits proved one sided. The ‘vibrant hearts’ did not feel obliged to reciprocate. Widely recognised as a learned and educated community, its scholars many of whom were well versant with Persian and Urdu, the languages of Iqbal’s poetry, simply ignored him. Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru who shared his family name with Iqbal, was an exception who came out in open support of Iqbal when the latter was sought to be dismissed as a poet for the Muslims only. He argued that Iqbal was a Universalist like Kalidas who wrote Shakuntalam and justified his voicing of Muslim concerns in the backdrop of the community being relatively voiceless compared to other communities.
In Jawaharlal Nehru though Iqbal had another Kashmiri Brahman admirer but his praise was a veiled criticism of the poet for influencing the Muslim sentiment in British India. Ironically, Nehru, besides Sapru and some others, is believed to be one of those Kashmiri Brahmans who were in Iqbal’s mind when he wrote those eulogising ‘Scions of the Brahmans’ verses. Nehru appears in two minds while expressing his opinion about Iqbal and, in fact, ends up in handing him a left hand compliment. In the Discovery of India, he presents himself as an admirer of Iqbal and his ‘fine poetry’ and greatly pleased “to feel that he liked me and had a good opinion of me.” He recognises Iqbal as “a poet, an intellectual and a philosopher’ but hastens to emphasise his “affiliations to the old feudal order.” For him, Iqbal failed to influence the masses who were “hardly affected by him”, and he was “very far from being a mass leader.” At the same time, however, he admits Iqbal’s popularity “due to his having fulfilled a need when the Moslem mind was searching for some anchor to hold on to.” It is not difficult to see through Nehru’s words an implied attempt to establish Iqbal as a failure in his vision.
Iqbal was blamed to have fathered the idea of dismembering India, and was labelled by the author of Warning from Kashmir as “one of the most dangerous sponsors of Islamic hegemony.” Despite this, there is no dearth of Hindu scholars or writers who studied and extensively wrote about him and his poetry. Jagan Nath Azad, Tara Chand Rastogi and Gopi Chand Narang are some of the many big names that instantly come to mind. The lovers of Iqbal’s poetry are in no less number in a Hindu majority India than they are in a Muslim majority Pakistan. There is also a whole body of literature on Iqbal written by Muslims of Kashmir and Kashmiri-origin Muslims. Among these Khalifa Abdul Hakeem, Akbar Hyderi, Dr. G. R. Malik, Hamidi Kashmiri, Ghulam Nabi Khayal, Mohammad Din Fauq and Muhammad Amin Andrabi are in the forefront.
On the other hand, no writer from the Kashmiri Pandit community considered Iqbal’s poetry for study. Ratan Nath Sarshar, Brij Naraian Chakbast and Daya Shankar Naseem who made it big in Urdu literature could have paid a return compliment but did not. Nand Lal Koul Talib, with command on Persian and Urdu languages, wrote a book on Ghalib but felt no compulsion to write about an equally, if not more, renowned poet from his own land. Jia Lal Koul and many other community writers could not see beyond Lall Ded, the 14th century Kashmiri mystic poetess. An article or reference on Iqbal here and there by an odd Pandit writer, [Moti Lal Saqi’s Iqbal Aur Bhagwat Geeta] is all that is forthcoming if one searches for any literary work by Kashmiri Pandit scholars and writers on Iqbal. Sixty-six years after Iqbal’s demise, Premi Romani made a humble attempt to break this community tradition by coming up with a book, Iqbal Aur Jadeed Urdu Shairi [Iqbal and Modern Urdu Poetry] in 2004.
To my mind there are three reasons for the indifference of Iqbal’s Brahman cousins towards him. First, his transformation from a nationalist poet [remember his poems, Tarana-e-Hindi (with that opening line Saare jahan se accha Hindustan hamara), Ram, Himalaya, Swami Ram Teerath] to an advocate of pan-Islamic unity [Neel ki waadi se lekar tab a khaak-e-Kashgar Aik hun Muslim Haram ki pasbani ke liye]. This transformation was negatively viewed by Hindus in general and their leadership in particular.
Second, Iqbal was seen as the brain behind the division of India and the creation of Pakistan, although many scholars do not agree with this notion and argue that Iqbal’s highlighting the Muslim identity in British India was misunderstood as his advocating a separate country for Indian Muslims. Third, his support for the cause of oppressed Kashmiri Muslims against their Hindu ruler.
Of the three reasons, the last proved the main irritant for Kashmir’s Pandit community that was in the vanguard of support for the Maharaja of Kashmir. Iqbal’s political stand, especially on Kashmir situation in the aftermath of the carnage of July 13, 1931 when 22 unarmed Muslims were gunned down by Dogra army in Srinagar, earned him disfavour from and virtual rejection by his very own Brahman zaadgaan e-zindah dil. Some of them even went further to malign him. He was accused of conspiring to overthrow Maharaja Hari Singh and one Brahman ‘historian’ even attempted scandalising his ancestry. The Hindu press of the Punjab ran a smear campaign against him for his criticism of Hari Singh’s government and highlighting its oppressive measures against Muslim subjects. Simultaneously, he was also accused of aspiring to become the Prime Minister of Kashmir.
A Kashmiri Brahman journalist turned historian, Pandit Gwasha Lal Koul appeared before the Riots Enquiry Committee, constituted by Hari Singh following the killings of July 13, 1931. He alleged that Dr. Iqbal was instigating Kashmiris to overthrow Kashmir Government. He told the Committee that he had gone to the residence of Dr. Iqbal where several suggestions to overthrow the Kashmir Government were discussed. The allegation was picked and widely circulated by the Hindu press. A Lahore based Urdu newspaper, Guru Ghantal, in its special ‘Kashmir Number’ issue dated August 30, 1931 published the contents of the purported meeting of Gwasha Lal with Iqbal under the caption: ‘Dr. Iqbal’s Mansion: A hub of Conspiracy – How a plot was hatched at Lahore against Kashmir Government.’ Koul accused Iqbal of advocating public disorder in Kashmir at such a scale that it would lead to rebellion.
The alleged conversation, in fact, was an attempt at vilification of Allama Iqbal to discredit the most influential pro-Kashmiri Muslim voice in British India. Iqbal had led a massive campaign against the atrocities perpetrated on Kashmiri Muslims and denial of basic rights to them by the Dogra regime. Abdul Majid Saalik who was quoted in the deposition as having escorted Gwasha Lal to Iqbal’s residence vehemently refuted the allegation. He said that at Iqbal’s residence issues pertaining to Kashmir were discussed but to say that the Allama advocated public disorder and rebellion is dishonesty and mischief of an extreme order.
Koul’s deposition before the Riots Enquiry Committee turned out to be a lie spoken by an individual who was alleged to be on the right side of the Dogra rule. During the recording of witnesses by the Riots Enquiry Committee, a witness, Abdul Majid, described Gwasha Lal as “riyakaar” (a hypocrite) who was on the payroll of Thakur Kartar Singh, a minister in the Kashmir Government. Majid stated that Gwasha Lal had himself confided in him about receiving money from Singh.
About four decades later, another Kashmiri Brahman ‘historian’, R K Parimu tried to scandalize the ancestry of Allama Iqbal by identifying an alleged Pandit embezzler in Kashmir’s revenue department under the Afghans as his grandfather. Parimu wrote that in 1939-40 he came across a paper in the Persian documents of the State Archives according to which one Sahaz Ram Sapru who was in-charge of revenue of Kashmir during the regime of Azim Khan had held the revenue in arrears having spent the money on his personal expenses including marriages in the family. When the embezzlement was discovered, Sahaz Ram was offered death or Islam as penalty. The Pandit, according to Parimu, accepted Islam but at the same time requested that as Muslim he would not like to live in Kashmir, upon which he was allowed to settle in Sialkot. Parimu quotes Hassan Khoihami, a 19th century Kashmiri historian, to observe that Azim Khan had sent Sahaz Sapru to Kabul to escort his wealth and family in 1818-19 and concludes that may be from Kabul he went to Sialkot.
Parimu’s observation has found way in the works of some other writers, notably Khushwant Singh. In his article, Iqbal’s Hindu Relations, published in the Telegraph, Calcutta, Singh reproduced embezzlement story but with a changed name. In his account, Parimu’s Sahaz Ram Sapru becomes Rattan Lal Sapru. Singh attributes the narration of the story to Syeda Hamid. One does not know where from Hamid had lifted it but in the ultimate analysis Singh, a writer of high calibre, ended up producing a poor piece in which at one place he writes that the Sapru family shifted to Srinagar where Iqbal and most of his cousins were born but ten sentences later, says that Iqbal was born in Sialkot on November 9, 1877.
Parimu’s linking of the alleged embezzlement with Iqbal’s ancestor is gibberish and intellectual dishonesty. He identifies the accused revenue collector under Azim Khan’s governorship as Sahaz Ram Sapru when the official’s name was Sahaj Ram Dhar, as recorded by Hassan whom Parimu summons as his evidence. Even if Parimu’s claim of finding the document is taken at face value still the two are not the same person. Hassan’s Sahaj Ram Dhar was Madar-ul-Mahaam or the Prime Minister of Governor Azim Khan who was sent by the latter to Kabul with his fortune and family when he was recalled by his minister brother Wazir Muhammad Khan, to assist him in the discharge of his duties as a minister after he had lost eyesight. All efforts to locate the purported paper in the Archives Department did not succeed. None of the index registers of the Persian record mentions this paper.
Iqbal’s grand father’s name was Sheikh Muhammad Rafiq, not Sahaz Ram Sapru as Parimu would like us to believe. The family had converted to Islam about 450 years before Iqbal’s birth. Parimu’s attempt to scandalize Iqbal’s ancestry, thus, falls flat.

—Khalid Bashir Ahmad is a former civil servant of Jammu and Kashmir cadre.

https://kashmirreader.com/2016/04/21/iqbals-indifferent-brahman-cousins/

 

[TMA]

Sir Dr. Allama Iqbal makes all Brahmins proud.

British selected a Brahmin and a Shia to create Pakistan. Hats off to their wisdom.

They did not select. How many times do you need?

The British RELUCTANTLY accepted Pakistan, and a smaller Pakistan than what was wanted....
The First Empire of the Anti-Christ came to the Subcontinent of India and managed to do what no other could do, systematically destroy Muslim culture, language, education, business and social norms and they threw acid on the soil so to speak....and they wanted a Pakistan....haha!

Agree. Great poetry. Not so great philosophy.

Au contraire; great philosophy, not so great poetry.

 

[ghazi52]

Sir Muhammad Iqbal
POET AND PHILOSOPHER

WRITTEN BY: Sheila D. McDonough

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, also spelled Muhammad Ikbal, (born November 9, 1877, Sialkot, Punjab, India [now in Pakistan]—died April 21, 1938, Lahore, Punjab), poet and philosopher, known for his influential efforts to direct his fellow Muslims in British-administered India toward the establishment of a separate Muslim state, an aspiration that was eventually realized in the country of Pakistan. He was knighted in 1922.

Early Life And Career

Iqbal was born at Sialkot, India (now in Pakistan), of a pious family of small merchants and was educated at Government College, Lahore. In Europe from 1905 to 1908, he earned his degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge, qualified as a barrister in London, and received a doctorate from the University of Munich. His thesis, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, revealed some aspects of Islamic mysticism formerly unknown in Europe.

On his return from Europe, he gained his livelihood by the practice of law, but his fame came from his Persian- and Urdu-language poetry, which was written in the classical style for public recitation. Through poetic symposia and in a milieu in which memorizing verse was customary, his poetry became widely known, even among the illiterate. Almost all the cultured Indian and Pakistani Muslims of his and later generations have had the habit of quoting Iqbal.

Before he visited Europe, his poetry affirmed Indian nationalism, as in Nayā shawālā (“The New Altar”), but time away from India caused him to shift his perspective. He came to criticize nationalism for a twofold reason: in Europe it had led to destructive racism and imperialism, and in India it was not founded on an adequate degree of common purpose. In a speech delivered at Aligarh in 1910, under the title “Islam as a Social and Political Ideal,” he indicated the new Pan-Islamic direction of his hopes. The recurrent themes of Iqbal’s poetry are a memory of the vanished glories of Islam, a complaint about its present decadence, and a call to unity and reform. Reform can be achieved by strengthening the individual through three successive stages: obedience to the law of Islam, self-control, and acceptance of the idea that everyone is potentially a vicegerent of God (nāʾib, or muʾmin). Furthermore, the life of action is to be preferred to ascetic resignation.

Three significant poems from this period, Shikwah (“The Complaint”), Jawāb-e shikwah (“The Answer to the Complaint”), and Khizr-e rāh (“Khizr, the Guide”), were published later in 1924 in the Urdu collection Bāng-e darā (“The Call of the Bell”). In those works Iqbal gave intense expression to the anguish of Muslim powerlessness. Khizr (Arabic: Khiḍr),

Notoriety came in 1915 with the publication of his long Persian poem Asrār-e khūdī (The Secrets of the Self). He wrote in Persian because he sought to address his appeal to the entire Muslim world. In this work he presents a theory of the self that is a strong condemnation of the self-negating quietism (i.e., the belief that perfection and spiritual peace are attained by passive absorption in contemplation of God and divine things) of classical Islamic mysticism; his criticism shocked many and excited controversy. Iqbal and his admirers steadily maintained that creative self-affirmation is a fundamental Muslim virtue; his critics said he imposed themes from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche on Islam.

The dialectical quality of his thinking was expressed by the next long Persian poem, Rumūz-e bīkhūdī (1918; The Mysteries of Selflessness). Written as a counterpoint to the individualism preached in the Asrār-e khūdī, this poem called for self-surrender.

Lo, like a candle wrestling with the night

O’er my own self I pour my flooding tears.

I spent my self, that there might be more light,

More loveliness, more joy for other men.

(Eng. trans. by A.J. Arberry.)

The Muslim community, as Iqbal conceived it, ought effectively to teach and to encourage generous service to the ideals of brotherhood and justice. The mystery of selflessness was the hidden strength of Islam. Ultimately, the only satisfactory mode of active self-realization was the sacrifice of the self in the service of causes greater than the self. The paradigm was the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the devoted service of the first believers. The second poem completes Iqbal’s conception of the final destiny of the self.

Later he published three more Persian volumes. Payām-e Mashriq (1923; “Message of the East”), written in response to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan (1819; “Divan of West and East”), affirmed the universal validity of Islam. In 1927 Zabūr-e ʿAjam (“Persian Psalms”) appeared, about which A.J. Arberry, its translator into English, wrote that “Iqbal displayed here an altogether extraordinary talent for the most delicate and delightful of all Persian styles, the ghazal,” or love poem. Jāvīd-nāmeh (1932; “The Song of Eternity”) is considered Iqbal’s masterpiece. Its theme, reminiscent of Dante’s Divine Comedy, is the ascent of the poet, guided by the great 13th-century Persian mystic Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, through all the realms of thought and experience to the final encounter.

Iqbal’s later publications of poetry in Urdu were Bāl-e Jibrīl (1935; “Gabriel’s Wing”), Zarb-e kalīm (1937; “The Blow of Moses”), and the posthumous Armaghān-e Hijāz (1938; “Gift of the Hejaz”), which contained verses in both Urdu and Persian. He is considered the greatest poet in Urdu of the 20th century.

Philosophical Position And Influence

His philosophical position was articulated in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1934), a volume based on six lectures delivered at Madras (now Chennai), Hyderabad, and Aligarh in 1928–29. He argued that a rightly focused man should unceasingly generate vitality through interaction with the purposes of the living God. The Prophet Muhammad had returned from his unitary experience of God to let loose on the earth a new type of manhood and a cultural world characterized by the abolition of priesthood and hereditary kingship and by an emphasis on the study of history and nature. The Muslim community in the present age ought, through the exercise of ijtihād—the principle of legal advancement—to devise new social and political institutions. He also advocated a theory of ijmāʿ—consensus. Iqbal tended to be progressive in adumbrating general principles of change but conservative in initiating actual change.

During the time that he was delivering those lectures, Iqbal began working with the Muslim League. At the annual session of the league at Allahabad in 1930, he gave the presidential address, in which he made a famous statement that the Muslims of northwestern India should demand status as a separate state.

After a long period of ill health, Iqbal died in April 1938 and was buried in front of the great Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. Two years later the Muslim League voted for the idea of Pakistan. That the poet had influenced the making of that decision, which became a reality in 1947, is undisputed. He has been acclaimed as the father of Pakistan, and every year Iqbal Day is celebrated by Pakistanis.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

They did not select. How many times do you need?

The British RELUCTANTLY accepted Pakistan, and a smaller Pakistan than what was wanted....
The First Empire of the Anti-Christ came to the Subcontinent of India and managed to do what no other could do, systematically destroy Muslim culture, language, education, business and social norms and they threw acid on the soil so to speak....and they wanted a Pakistan....haha!


Au contraire; great philosophy, not so great poetry.

Do you think both Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Sir Muhammad Iqbal were given knighthoods "Sir" by accident?

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan helped British to divide Hindus and Muslims first through Hindi-Urdu language conflicts and establishment of Aligarh Muslim University after united Hindu-Muslim revolt of 1857 against the British.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal helped British with the fight for reservations for Muslims.

They both were freemasons and were part of the order.

 

[TMA]

Do you think both Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and Sir Muhammad Iqbal were given knighthoods "Sir" by accident?

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan helped British to divide Hindus and Muslims first through Hindi-Urdu language conflicts and establishment of Aligarh Muslim University after united Hindu-Muslim revolt of 1857 against the British.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal helped British with the fight for reservations for Muslims.

They both were freemasons and were part of the order.

If Allama Iqbal were alive today I would ask him the question why did you accept? That is a contention I have with him. But this does not mean the British wanted a Pakistan. I would have preferred him to have followed the Sunnah of Quaid -e- Azaam: I prefer to be plain Mr Jinnah.

The British exploited the Muslim-Sanatanum Dharmist grievances. Why do you think that Muslims and Sanatum Dharmists were united? Of course in many cases they were but it was Indians who helped the British defeat the Indian Freedom Fighters of 1857. The fact is that India has been divided for most of its history.
It was really the Vedantists, who despised Muslim rule over so much of India, who when the First Empire of the Anti-Christ managed to take control, exerted their extremists tendencies, which naturally returned a reaction which the First Empire of the Anti-Christ duly exploited (as planned)....

Of course Muslims have much to blame for..and I do not put all the blame on the followers of Sanatum Dharm but to say that Allama Iqbal and Syed Ahmed Khan were "Sirs", therefore the British wanted a Pakistan...


One could even argue that the British tried to "seduce" the most eminent poet of British India with that title....and it failed.... (perhaps they tried to seduce many eminent British Indians)...??
Allama Iqbal was given the title in 1922...he made the famous Allahabad speech in 1930....

 

[Village life]

A true strong socialist+Afirm believer in God and His last Prophet=Iqbal, that's all of him ,

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

If Allama Iqbal were alive today I would ask him the question why did you accept? That is a contention I have with him. But this does not mean the British wanted a Pakistan. I would have preferred him to have followed the Sunnah of Quaid -e- Azaam: I prefer to be plain Mr Jinnah.

The British exploited the Muslim-Sanatanum Dharmist grievances. Why do you think that Muslims and Sanatum Dharmists were united? Of course in many cases they were but it was Indians who helped the British defeat the Indian Freedom Fighters of 1857. The fact is that India has been divided for most of its history.
It was really the Vedantists, who despised Muslim rule over so much of India, who when the First Empire of the Anti-Christ managed to take control, exerted their extremists tendencies, which naturally returned a reaction which the First Empire of the Anti-Christ duly exploited (as planned)....

Of course Muslims have much to blame for..and I do not put all the blame on the followers of Sanatum Dharm but to say that Allama Iqbal and Syed Ahmed Khan were "Sirs", therefore the British wanted a Pakistan...


One could even argue that the British tried to "seduce" the most eminent poet of British India with that title....and it failed.... (perhaps they tried to seduce many eminent British Indians)...??
Allama Iqbal was given the title in 1922...he made the famous Allahabad speech in 1930....

Of course most of leaders of the subcontinent were educated in Britain and working for the British. I do not give a pass to many of the Hindu leaders either.

Your Excellency,

The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to our minds the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India. The disproportionate severity of the punishments inflicted upon the unfortunate people and the methods of carrying them out, we are convinced, are without parallel in the history of civilised governments, barring some conspicuous exceptions, recent and remote. Considering that such treatment has been meted out to a population, disarmed and resourceless, by a power which has the most terribly efficient organisation for destruction of human lives, we must strongly assert that it can claim no political expediency, far less moral justification. The accounts of the insults and sufferings by our brothers in Punjab have trickled through the gagged silence, reaching every corner of India, and the universal agony of indignation roused in the hearts of our people has been ignored by our rulers—possibly congratulating themselves for what they imagine as salutary lessons. This callousness has been praised by most of the Anglo-Indian papers, which have in some cases gone to the brutal length of making fun of our sufferings, without receiving the least check from the same authority—relentlessly careful in smothering every cry of pain and expression of judgement from the organs representing the sufferers. Knowing that our appeals have been in vain and that the passion of vengeance is blinding the nobler vision of statesmanship in our Government, which could so easily afford to be magnanimous as befitting its physical strength and moral tradition, the very least that I can do for my country is to take all consequences upon myself in giving voice to the protest of the millions of my countrymen, surprised into a dumb anguish of terror. The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so-called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.

These are the reasons which have painfully compelled me to ask Your Excellency, with due reference and regret, to relieve me of my title of Knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.

Yours faithfully,
Rabindranath Tagore

Source: Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson, eds., Selected Letters of Rabindranath Tagore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Letter published in Modern Review (Calcutta monthly), July 1919.

http://dart.columbia.edu/library/tagore-letter/letter.html