Iqbal and Muslim nationalism

By Prof Sharif al Mujahid

ALLAMA Iqbals core contribution to Muslim regeneration lay in giving his people
an idea, something to live and die for. In tandem, it also lay in fostering in them the
moral fibre and the determination to realise that idea. That fostering was inspired by his
soul-lifting verses that worked almost like magic. By the last decade of his hugely
productive life, he had assumed the role of an ideologue, besides being the national poet.
Towards the intellectual and political emancipation of the Muslims Iqbals contribution
was fourfold. Through the powerful medium of poetry, he had drawn the attention of the
people to the depths of degradation to which they had fallen; he had diagnosed their
ailments and the causes of their decline; he had warned them of the dire consequences if
they failed to mend their ways in time. Above all, Iqbal had also outlined a destiny for
Indian Muslims at a most critical juncture in their history.
In so doing, he proved himself to be a man of vision. An outstanding intellectual, who
had the ability to analyse their situation in the context of their past history and current
developments and gave serious thought to both their short-term and long-term problems.
He envisioned for them a destiny which, while congruent with the Indo-Muslim
ideological legacy, provided an answer to their current problems and predicaments.
Poet-Philosopher Iqbal spelled out his vision and delineated the contours of Muslim
Indias destiny in his famous presidential address to the annual session of All India
Muslim League in Allahabad in December, 1930. By far the most important of his
various political pronouncements concerning Muslim destiny in India, this address was as
significant as Jinnahs presidential address to the Leagues Lahore Session on March 23,
1940, which provided the background and the justification for the adoption of the Lahore
Resolution (1940).
In his 1930 address, Iqbal, if only because of his wide-ranging scholarship, his deep
insight into Muslim history (both in the subcontinent and elsewhere) and his close
familiarity with the Muslim ethos, was able to attempt in a profound way the intellectual
justification of Muslim nationhood, of a separate Muslim nationalism, and for the
centralisation of the most living portion of the Muslims of India in a specified territory
a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State in a truly federal state.
Iqbal justified Muslim Indias claim to nationhood on the basis of the moral
consciousness engendered by the Muslims deep commitment to Islam, its ethics and
ethos and its institutions. He argued, Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain
kind of polity by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal
system and animated by a specific ethical ideal has been the chief formative factor in
the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and
loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups and finally transform

them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only country in the world
where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at its best. In India, as elsewhere, the
structure of Islam as a society is almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture
inspired by a specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its
remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is, under the pressure of
the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam.
Clearly, Iqbal was not despaired of Islam as a living force for freeing the outlook of man
from its geographical limitations. For one thing, he felt that religion is a power of the
utmost importance in the lives of individuals as well as States. Above all, he believed
that Islam is itself Destiny and will not suffer a destiny (emphasis added).
Despite all this, he could not possibly ignore what was happening to Islam and the
Muslims in India and elsewhere. True statesmanship, he told his Allahabad audience,
cannot ignore facts, however unpleasant they may be. The only practical course is not to
assume the existence of a state of things which does not exist, but to recognise facts as
they are and to exploit them to our greatest advantage.
Hence, Iqbal took due cognisance of the fact that in attempting to get rid of foreign
domination, to withstand western designs as well as to rehabilitate themselves, the
Muslim countries had unwittingly opted for nationalism and nationalist movements, that
the national idea was racialising the outlook of Muslims everywhere, and that the growth
of racial consciousness might as well mean the growth of standards different from and
even opposed to the standards of Islam.
Iqbal recognised that the Muslim countries could organise themselves on a national
that is, territorial lines, and yet be the chief decision-makers and masters in their own
affairs for the simple reason that since they were predominantly in a majority in their own
countries.
But the Muslims of India were differently situated. Although comprising some 70 million
and constituting of the largest bloc of Muslims anywhere in the world except Indonesia,
they were still a minority in the subcontinent, comprising only one-fourth of Indias total
population. Hence their adoption of undiluted nationalism would undermine their distinct
place in Indians body politic, depriving them of the opportunities of free development,
unthwarted by the interference of the dominant community.
Since the people of India had refused to pay the price required for the formation of the
kind of moral consciousness which, according to Renan, constitutes the essence of
national feeling and nationhood, as evidenced by the failure of Akbar, Kabir and Nanak
to capture the imagination of the Indian masses as well as the nobility, India at the
moment could not be considered a nation in the western sense. On the other hand, since
Islam had provided the Indian Muslims with a moral consciousness of their own, Iqbal
argued, they were the only Indian people who could aptly be described as a nation in

the modern sense of the word.

Having thus made out a cogent case for Muslim nationhood, Iqbal went on to suggest a
viable solution to Indias communal problem: a redistribution of British India and
territorial readjustment, which would yield a stable and largely homogeneous Muslim
province in north-western India. It is in this context that he suggested the amalgamation
of Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan into a single state (or
province), and the formation of a consolidated north-west Indian Muslim state. He also
suggested the exclusion of Ambala Division and perhaps some of the non-Muslim
dominant districts, with a view to making it less extensive and more Muslim in
population.
Iqbals reasons in favour of his solution were unassailable. Since Indian nationalism was
pro-Hindu and predominantly Hindu-oriented, the Muslims should adopt a separate
nationalism of their own. Since the whole of India could not be won for Islam, if only
because of the overwhelming Hindu majority, the life of Islam as a cultural force in
India must be saved and salvaged by centralising it in a specified territory. This must
be realised by setting up a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State, comprising
the most living portion of the Muslims of India.
It is also significant that Iqbal demanded the creation of autonomous states on the basis
of the unity of language, race, history, religion and identity of economic interests in
the best interest of both India and Islam.
Iqbals elucidation of this last point is important. For India, it means security and peace
resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the
stamp that Arabian imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its laws, its education,
its culture and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the
spirit of modern times.
Thus, while the bases or attributes of nationalism such as language, race, history, identity
of economic interests and viable territorial frontiers (and territorial unity) were sought to
be incorporated among those of the Pakistan demand in 1940, religion was retained as
the uniting factor and the consequences were to be spelled out in essentially Islamic
terms. Thus were laid the intellectual foundations of Muslim nationalism in India.
The writer is a former founding director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy and is currently a
director of The Iqbal International Institute for Research, Education and Dialogue,
Lahore. E-mail: smujahid107@hotmail.com