History, they say, is written by the victor. In India’s case, history has been largely written by leftists who have often twisted facts and events to either demonize figures who don’t fit into their blinkered narrative or to put the undeserving on lofty pedestals. One fine example of the latter is Mohammad ‘Allama’ Iqbal.

Muhammad Iqbal wrote "Sare Jahan se Accha", formally known as "Tarānah-e-Hindi" ("Anthem of the People of Hindustan"), in an Urdu language, a patriotic song for children in the ghazal style of Urdu poetry. The poem was published in the weekly journal Ittehad on 16 August 1904. Publicly recited by Iqbal the following year at Government College, Lahore, British India (now in Pakistan) it quickly became an anthem of opposition to the British Raj. The song, an ode to Hindustan—the land comprising present-day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, was later published in 1924 in the Urdu book Bang-i-Dara.

Iqbal was a poet-philosopher whose work promoted the philosophy of self-hood and dealt with the intellectual and cultural reconstruction of the Islamic world. He was born on November 9, 1877 in Sialkot Punjab (now in Pakistan) into a family with Kashmiri Brahmin ancestry. His grandfather left his ancestral village of Looehar in Kashmir after 1857 and settled in Sialkot and peddled Kashmiri shawls. Iqbal’s father was a reputed tailor in the area. Therefore, it was not until Iqbal’s elder brother Shaikh Atta Muhammad joined the Mechanical Engineering Services of the Army, that his family’s economic position became better: from a being a working-class family to a middle-class one. 

Iqbal, all of us have had it drilled into our heads by our history books since childhood, was a staunchly secular poet who penned that sweet and oh-so-patriotic ‘Sare Jahan Se Achchha’ that quite a few still hold ought to have become our national anthem but didn’t, since it was the creation of a Muslim. India’s so-called secularists suggest very volubly that Iqbal has been wronged and hasn’t got the respect and attention that he really deserves.

It is, thus, necessary to demolish the myth that has been spun around Iqbal.

Let’s start with his ‘Saare Jahan Se Achchha’. It is the 6th stanza of this poem, which came to known as ‘Tarana-e-Hindi’ or the ‘song of Hindustan’ that contains the famous lines:

“Mazhab nahin sikhata apas mein bair rakhna,
Hindi hain hum, watan hain Hindustan hamara”
(Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will towards each other, we belong to Hind, our homeland is Hindustan).

Noble sentiments written very well. And none can doubt their secular character. Truth is, the then 27-year-old Iqbal viewed Hindustani society as a pluralistic and composite Hindu-Muslim culture.

But the Iqbal of 1904 underwent a total transformation after he went to England to study law in 1905 and then to Germany to obtain a doctorate in philosophy and retuned sometime in 1909 as an Islamic philosopher with a narrow worldview and intolerant of Hindus. In 1910, he wrote the ‘Tarana-e-Milli’ (song of the community) which was a total repudiation of the sentiments expressed in ‘Tarana-e-Hind’.

The first stanza of ‘Tarana-e-Milli’, composed in the same metre and rhyme scheme as ‘Sare Jahan Se Achchha’, reads: “Chin o Arab hamaara, Hindustan hamaara, Muslim hain hum, watan hain sara jahaan hamaara” (China and Arabia are ours, Hindustan is ours, we are Muslims, the whole world is our homeland). This can hardly be called secular; in fact, Iqbal is lionized in Pakistan today for expressing precisely such hardline Islamic sentiments. Our history books mention only the ‘Tarana-e-Hind’ and conveniently ignore ‘Tarana-e-Milli’.

Muhammad Iqbal penned Tarana-e-Milli ( ترانۂ ملی ) an Urdu poetry  where he has expressed his pride in living and being a Muslim rather than racial nationalism . He wrote this poem in response to Tarana-e-Hindi , when he changed his approach and accepted the two - nation theory.

 In the 1958 Hindi film Phir Subah Hogi, Sahir Ludhianvi, as talented and as secular and as leftist a poet you could find on the face of the earth, used the first few lines of ‘Tarana-e-Milli’ (rejecting and deleting the Islamist overtone) to create one of the most poignant Hindi film songs ever that revealed the pathetic reality of Nehruvian India. You can see the song below:

What our history books also don’t tell us is that Iqbal was the first advocate of the two-nation theory that ultimately led to the partition of India. He first articulated this demand at the Allahabad session during the 25th annual session of the All-India Muslim League, on the afternoon of Monday, 29 December 1930, at Allahabad, British India. In this address Iqbal outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India, thus becoming the first politician to articulate what would become known as the Two-nation theory—that Muslims are a distinct nation and thus deserve political independence from other regions and communities of India.

Iqbal was elected the president of the session and in his address on December 29, 1930, in his speech he said:

"India is a continent of human groups belonging to different races, speaking different languages, and professing different religions [...] Personally, I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India."

A speech that would galvanise not only the Muslim League but would be taken forward by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and sever the subcontinent into a painful partition in 1947 (wounds of which are yet to heal in many cases, and the deep scars of that split haunt the history of South Asia and shapes the thought process of citizens of three nations which cumulatively house 1/6th of all humanity)

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

Allama Iqbal defined the Muslim of India there could be no possibility of peace in the country unless and until they were recognized as a nation and under a federal system, the Muslim majority units were given the same privileges which were to be given to the Hindu majority units. It was the only way in which both the Muslims and the Hindus could prosper in accordance with their respective cultural values. In his speech, he emphasized that unlike Christianity, Islam came with "legal concepts" with "civic significance," with its "religious ideals" considered as inseparable from social order: "therefore, the construction of a policy on national lines, if it means a displacement of the Islamic principle of solidarity, is simply unthinkable to a Muslim."

The Hindu-Muslim question had great importance and stood crucial to British Indian history after 1857, especially in the 20th century. But the key issue for Muslims remained "separate identity." On several occasions and addresses, the issue gets highlighted that the Muslims are a separate nation with different culture and civilization, interests and rights. The Two-Nation Theory was not accepted by the Muslims, Hindus and the British peoples because they believed in "territorial nationalism". The Congress' perspective of Hindu Muslim relationship was that any perceived rift between the Hindus and Muslims was the product of the British divide and rule policy. According to the Congress, the British had consciously created splits and divisions, therefore it was an artificial issue which should not be emphasized. For Muslims it was the core issue, "I" was the central issue, it related to their culture, civilization, heritage and the type of arrangement that were to be done in the future political and constitutional arrangements of India

The articulation of this theory was born out of Iqbal’s firm conviction, ever since his travels to the West and his study of Islam and Islamic philosophy since then, that Hindus and Muslims are “two separate nations” and cannot live together. He says this in almost all his writings, whose primary focus was to remind Muslims of the sub-continent of the past glory of Islamic civilization and promoting pure Islam as a source of sociopolitical liberation and greatness.

His ultimate dream was to get Muslim nations to rise above their political divisions and forge a global Muslim community, the Ummah. Strangely, for a man who dreamt of an Ummah, Iqbal never criticized the dismembering of the Ottoman Caliphate by the British. He, in fact, was opposed to the Khilafat Movement (1919 to 1926) and far from taking on the British for what they did to the Ottoman empire, Iqbal accepted knighthood from them in 1922!

Iqbal was hardly the liberal that he’s portrayed as. In his six English lecture series first published from Lahore in 1930 and then by Oxford University Press in a book titled The Reconstruction Of Religious Thought In Islam in 1934, Iqbal expressed deep fears of secularism weakening the spiritual foundations of Islam and Muslim society and of India’s Hindus crowding out Muslim heritage, culture and political influence.

That he was narrow-minded and deeply suspicious is evident from a letter he wrote to Iranian diplomat Ghulam Abbas Aram on June 27, 1932, in the wake of Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to Iran that year. “Tagore travelled to Persia in order to develop Aryan affiliations between Hindus and Persians,” he complained in the letter.

Tagore, of course, had no such agenda. Tagore had also travelled to Mesopotamia in that same voyage and made a statement that India’s Muslims were not participating in the freedom struggle. Iqbal wrote on this:

“Tagore did another injustice to India’s Muslims. Complete freedom is not and, in the present circumstances, could not be the demand of Hindus alone. His (Tagore’s) sole aim is to secure complete control over the destinies of Indian minorities. That is what he means by freedom. And this freedom only means a change of masters for the minorities of India”.

Anyone who has studied Tagore would know that seeking to control the destinies of minorities through majoritarianism would have been an anathema to the Nobel laureate and the last thing on his mind.

Iqbal was also instrumental in coaxing and cajoling Muhammad Ali Jinnah to not only assume leadership of the Muslims of the sub-continent, but also embrace the two-nation theory and voice the demand for partition of India. At the time Iqbal first articulated this theory in 1930, Jinnah was still engaged in negotiations with the Indian National Congress (Iqbal frequently termed the Congress a ‘Hindu nationalist party’) to secure guarantees for Muslims. Iqbal was instrumental in convincing Jinnah to end his self-imposed exile in London (Jinnah, disgusted with petty squabbles between Muslim League leaders, left for London in 1930 and settled down to practice law there) and return to India.

One of his many letters to Jinnah beseeching him to return reads:

“You are the only Muslim in India today to whom the community looks up to for safe guidance through the storm which is coming to North West India and, perhaps, the whole of India”.

The point here is that while India’s left-liberal community would like to portray Iqbal as a secular leader, the fact is that Iqbal’s only concern was the political future of Muslims. He had no qualms in stating this in as many words. No wonder, then, that he’s regarded in Pakistan as the spiritual founder of that country. He’s officially known there as ‘Mufakkir-e-Pakistan’ (thinker of Pakistan) and ‘Hakeem-ul-Ummat’ (Sage of the Ummah).

There were significant differences between the two men — while Iqbal believed that Islam was the source of government and society, Jinnah was a believer in secular government and had laid out a secular vision for Pakistan where religion would have "nothing to do with the business of the state." Iqbal had backed the Khilafat struggle; Jinnah had dismissed it as "religious frenzy." And while Iqbal espoused the idea of partitioning Muslim-majority provinces in 1930, Jinnah would continue to hold talks with the Congress through the decade and only officially embraced the goal of Pakistan in 1940. Some historians postulate that Jinnah always remained hopeful for an agreement with the Congress and never fully desired the partition of India. Iqbal's close correspondence with Jinnah is speculated by some historians as having been responsible for Jinnah's embrace of the idea of Pakistan.

Allama Iqbal (centre, bottom row) with members of the Circle of Islamic Studies in Lahore, 1933 Iqbal in Pictures

Iqbal, commenting on the future of Muslims in India, wrote in Tolu-e-Islam (a politico-religious-social journal of Muslims):

"There is only one way out. Muslims should strengthen Jinnah's hands. They should join the Muslim League. Indian question, as is now being solved, can be countered by our united front against both the Hindus and the English. Without it, our demands are not going to be accepted. People say our demands smack of communalism. This is sheer propaganda. These demands relate to the defence of our national existence.... The united front can be formed under the leadership of the Muslim League. And the Muslim League can succeed only on account of Jinnah. Now none but Jinnah is capable of leading the Muslims."

To him, both Hindus and the British were enemies bent on shackling the Muslims.

In his travels to Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, he promoted ideas of greater Islamic political co-operation and unity, calling for the shedding of nationalist differences. 

He also speculated on different political arrangements to guarantee Muslim political power; in a dialogue with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Iqbal expressed his desire to see Indian provinces as autonomous units under the direct control of the British government and with no central Indian government. He envisaged autonomous Muslim provinces in India. Under one Indian union, he feared for Muslims, who would suffer in many respects especially with regard to their existentially separate entity as Muslims.

In 1937, Iqbal wrote two letters to Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In the first one dated May 28, 1937, he wrote:

“After a long and careful study of Islamic Law, I have come to the conclusion that if this system of Law is properly understood and applied, at last, the right to subsistence is secured to everybody. But the enforcement and development of the Shariat of Islam is impossible in this country without a free Muslim state or states. This has been my honest conviction for many years and I still believe this to be the only way to solve the problem of bread for Muslims as well as to secure a peaceful India.”

In the second letter marked “Private and Confidential” dated June 21, 1937, Iqbal wrote:

“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? Personally I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought at present to ignore Muslim[-minority] provinces. This is the best course to adopt in the interests of both Muslim majority and minority provinces.” 

Iqbal’s confidence in Jinnah is believed to have sprouted from Jinnah’s integrity since he was the only Muslim leader with an unchallenged national status and because he did not have provincial or regional ties and Iqbal’s need to concretise his philosophy of “communalism of a higher kind” reflecting Iqbal’s interpretation of the universal values of Islam, according to the book, “Iqbal, Jinnah, and Pakistan: The Vision and the Reality”.

On some rare occasions, Iqbal was also critical of Jinnah for associating with leaders like Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan of Punjab (a liberal Muslim) who, felt Iqbal, was “not committed to Islam as the core political philosophy”. Iqbal was also critical of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as the ‘frontier Gandhi’, for being a liberal.

Significantly, Jinnah’s speech at the Lahore session of the Muslim League on 22 March, 1940 showed how much he was influenced by Iqbal.

“We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation. We (the Muslims) are a nation of a hundred million and what is more, we are a nation with our distinct culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature…”

Jinnah’s address to the 1940 session of the League, a part of which is quoted above, was heavily influenced by an article Iqbal in 1936. This appeared in the journal Tolu-e-Islam, of which Iqbal was a patron.

Allama Iqbal (far right) in London for the Second Round Table Conference in 1931 - Iqbal in Pictures

Jinnah, of course, bade farewell to the two-nation theory—on August 11, 1947; he spoke of a composite Pakistani nationalism, negating faith-based nationalism. Jinnah spoke of how all minorities in a Muslim-majority Pakistan would be guaranteed equal political, social and religious rights and that the new nation (Pakistan) would not be based on religion!

Iqbal’s premise that Hindus and Muslims cannot co-exist as one nation has been proved utterly wrong by India’s Muslims. The two-nation theory that he advocated was proved hollow once again in 1971—Islam could not bind East and West Pakistan together. Altaf Hussain of Pakistan’s Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) puts this succinctly:

“The idea of Pakistan (born out of Iqbal’s two-nation theory) was dead at its inception when the majority of Muslims (in the Muslim-minority ares of India) chose to stay back in India after Partition, a truism reiterated in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971”.

How, then, can Iqbal be called great? How can he be called secular? How can he be called an advocate of Hindu-Muslim harmony? How can a person who advocated a dangerous theory that resulted in so much grief and bloodshed be called great?

And ultimately, how can a person whose theory has proved to be such an utter failure be elevated to a pedestal? It is fine for Pakistan to idolize Iqbal. But should Indians do the same? Iqbal, in the final analysis, may have written a lovely poem when he was a young lad of 27 in 1904, but for the majority of his adult life (from the age of 32 till he died at the age of 61) he was primarily a regressive, narrow-minded Islamist who was responsible, perhaps more than Jinnah, for the partition of India.

References: 

Swarajyamag.com -  The Real 'Allama Iqbal' - byJayant Chowdhury - Jul 27, 2015
en.wikipedia.org - Sare Jahan se Accha, Allahabad_Address
Indianexpress.com - Explained: Allama Iqbal and his role in the creation of Pakistan by Mehr Gill, Updated: October 25, 2019
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/m/Muhammad_Iqbal.htm