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Iqbal,
the Poet-Philosopher of Islamic Resurgence
by Sayyid Ali Khamene’i
This is a translation of President Sayyid Ali Khamene’i's speech
delivered at the opening session of the First International Conference on Iqbal, held at
Tehran, March 10-12, 1986, on the occasion of the 108th birth anniversary of the poet of
the Subcontinent.
translated from the Persian by Mahliqa Qara’i
I should admit candidly that today when I see that our country is
holding a seminar for paying tribute to our beloved Iqbal, I am obliged to feel that this
day would prove to be one of the most memorable and exciting days of my life. That
luminous spark that washed out from our hearts the darkness of the days of suffocation and
repression (through his impressions, poetry, counsel and teachings) and projected a bright
picture of the future before our eyes, is now transformed into a bright torch to have
attracted the attention of our people.
Our people who were the first foreign addressees of Iqbal were
unfortunately very late to recognise him. The particular conditions in our country,
especially the political domination of the colonialist powers during the last years of
Iqbal's life in his favourite country, Iran, never allowed Iqbal to visit this country.
This great poet of Persian language, who composed most of his poetry in Persian and not in
his own mother tongue, could never breathe in his dear and desired climes. Not only that
Iqbal never came to Iran, but the same politics with which Iqbal was at war throughout his
life did not allow his ideas, his ideology and his teachings to reach the ears of the
Iranian people, who were ever eager to receive his message. I have an answer to this
question as to why Iqbal did not come to Iran.
At that time, when Iqbal was at the pinnacle of his fame and glory and
was known all over the Subcontinent and all the renowned universities of the World
recognised him as a great thinker, philosopher, scholar, humanist and sociologist (of
course none of these titles corresponded to the title by which Iqbal desired to be known),
in our country the politicians who ruled the country could not tolerate Iqbal and his
ideas in any way. For this very reason he was never invited to Iran and the ground for his
visit to this country was not prepared. Not only were none of his books published for
years in Iran, even the titles of his books remained unknown to us. During the days when
the literary works and culture alien to both the Iranians and Muslims were flooding this
country like a devastating deluge, not a single poem or work of Iqbal was allowed to catch
the public eye. Today the Islamic Republic (i.e. the embodiment of Iqbal's dream) has been
established here, Iqbal, whose heart ached to see the Muslim people having lost their
human and Islamic personality, and who viewed their loss of identity and spiritual poverty
as the greatest danger to their existence and tried with all the power at his disposal to
uproot this vicious weed from the human soul in general and from the inner being of the
people of the East in particular and especially the Muslims, had he been alive today, he
could have seen a nation standing on its feet, infused with the rich Islamic spirit and
drawing upon the inexhaustible reservoirs of Islamic heritage, a nation which has become
self-sufficient and has discarded all the glittering Western ornaments and is marching
ahead courageously, determining its own targets and moving to attain them, advancing with
the frenzy of a lover, and has not imprisoned itself within the walls of nationalism and
racialism. I am glad to have this opportunity (though for a brief time) to introduce to
our people this great figure, a great thinker, a great reformer of our age, a
revolutionary and an unrelenting warrior. I would, of course, be pleased if my presence in
this function be free from all formalities, so that, firstly, I may enjoy with
satisfaction this commemorative ceremony and, secondly, I may be given an opportunity to
give vent to a fraction of my emotions about Iqbal before the audience. I request the
brothers and sisters to allow me to speak frankly like a person who for years had been a
follower of Iqbal and has lived emotionally in his company, so that to some extent I can
give him what is due to him on behalf of myself. Iqbal is one of the eminent personalities
in the history of Islam. His is such a profound and sublime personality that it cannot be
described and measured by only one Dimension of his life. Iqbal was a scholar and a
philosopher, but at the same time other dimensions of his life are also so bright that if
we consider him to be just a philosopher and a scholar, we feel that we have belittled
him. Undoubtedly Iqbal is a great poet and is reckoned among the greatest. Those who know
Urdu very well and have written about Iqbal’s Urdu poetry maintain that Iqbal's Urdu
poems are among the best in Urdu. Of course this may not be a great tribute to him as the
poetic Tradition of Urdu is not so rich. But it cannot be disputed that his Urdu poetry
made a great impact on large numbers of people, on Hindus and Muslims equally, living in
the Subcontinent during the early decades of the twentieth century, and motivated them to
participate in the struggle (for freedom) that was reaching its climax. In his mathnawi
(a long poem consisting of rhymed couplets) Asrar-e khudi (The Secrets of the
Self), he refers to this point:
The gardener tested the force of my speech.
He sowed a verse of mine and could reap a sword from it.
I infer from these lines that he had been composing his Urdu poetry for
quite a long time and was known to all Urdu-knowing people of the Subcontinent . But in my
view Iqbal's Persian poetry is to be regarded as one of the miracles of poetry. We have a
large number of non-Persian-speaking poets in the history of our literature, but I cannot
point out any of them whose poetry possesses the qualities of Iqbal's Persian poetry.
Iqbal was not acquainted with Persian idiom, as he spoke Urdu at home and talked to his
friends in Urdu or English. He did not know the rules of Persian prose writing. A specimen
of Iqbal's Persian prose is available to us in his prefatory note to his mathnawi,
Rumuz-e bikhudi (The Secrets of the Selflessness) and Asrar-e khudi (The
Secrets of the Self). If you read them you will see that it is hard for the people whose
mother tongue is Persian to understand it. Iqbal never studied Persian at any stage in a
school or college during the years of his childhood or youth. In his father's house he
used to speak Urdu. Iqbal chose the Persian language as his medium of literary expression
only for the reason that he felt that his ideas and themes could not be effectively
expressed in the Urdu language. As such he was attracted towards Persian and he studied
the collections of the Persian poets like Sa'di, Hafiz and Mawlawi as well as the Persian
poets who wrote in Indian style like 'Urfi, Naziri Nishaburi and others. In spite of not
having tasted the Persian way of life, never living in the cradle of Persian culture, and
never having any direct association with it, he cast with great mastery the most delicate,
the most subtle and radically new philosophical themes into the mould of Persian poetry,
some of which are unsurpassable yet. In my view this is what can be explained as his
poetic genius. When you compare his poetical works with those of other non-Iranian poets
who wrote poetry in Persian, you will realise the greatness of Iqbal. Some of the ideas
that he has expressed with ease in one couplet, if one tries to render them into prose it
will take a long time and great deal of effort to do so. It is not an easy job even for us
whose mother tongue is Persian.
There can be no better introduction of Iqbal than his poetry. In no
other way we can introduce Iqbal more truly. Some of the Persian poems of Iqbal are the
most sublime pieces of Persian poetry. Iqbal's verses are in different styles, in Indian
style, in Iraqi style, in Khurasani-style, and in various poetic forms, like mathnawi (poetry
composed of distichs corresponding in measure, each consisting of a pair of rhymes),
ghazal (sonnet), qat'ah, dobayti (couplets) and ruba’i (quatrains).
Their themes as well as their renderings are sublime; notwithstanding, he did not know how
to speak and write Persian (prose), and this needs extraordinary genius. At the same time
to commend Iqbal as a poet is to belittle him, for he was a great reformer and a great
freedom fighter as well. Though Iqbal's position and status as a freedom fighter and
social reformer is very high, he cannot be regarded as a mere social reformer either. In
the Indian subcontinent several Hindu and Muslim contemporaries of Iqbal were considered
as social reformers, whose works are known and whose participation in the freedom struggle
needs no introduction. Among the Muslims themselves there were great personalities like
Mawlana Abu al-Kalam Azad, Mawlana Muhammad 'Ali, Mawlana Shawkat 'Ali and the late
Muhammad Ali Jinah. They also belonged to the same period and to the same Generation and
were great freedom fighters; but the greatness of Iqbal's work cannot be compared with any
of them. It does not mean in any way to minimise the great importance and value that we
attach to Mawlana Abu al-Kalam Azad, an eminent figure in his own right, or to Mawlana
Muhammad 'Ali and Mawlana Shawkat 'Ali (who were untiring Muslim freedom fighters who
struggled for long years to drive out the British from their country), but Iqbal's ease is
different from all of them. Iqbal's problem was not the problem of India in particular,
but his concern was for the whole Muslim world in general. In his mathnawi, Pas chi
bayad kard ay aqwam-e Sharq, he addresses himself to the Eastern nations and it
indicates that his keen eyes had an all-inclusive view of the entire Muslim world. He was
not concerned with the problems of India alone. Therefore, if I describe Iqbal as a social
reformer, I will fail to cover his entire personality. I cannot find a proper term that
can describe him. You can see that his personality, his greatness, his mind rich with
ideas and the totality of his being, elude the power of comprehension of people like us.
To be true to ourselves we have to confess that we have been far away from Iqbal. As such
this conference is one of the most useful things we have done so far. Even this is not
enough. I would ask the honoured Minister of Higher Education and Culture and my brothers
in universities to think about the possibilities of establishing foundations in Iqbal's
memory, and to name , university halls and cultural centres in our country after Iqbal.
Iqbal belongs to this nation and this country, and one of his famous poems is dedicated to
the people of Iran which begins with the following verse:
I am burning like a tulip’s lamp on your path,
O youth of Iran, I swear by my own life and yours.
And he says:
The man is coming who shall break the chains of the slaves,
I have seen him through the cracks in the walls of your prison.
This poem also strengthens my belief as to why Iqbal could not visit
Iran. He considered Iran as a prison and addressed the people living here in the way the
prisoners are addressed. There are plenty of poems in Iqbal's collections which show his
dissatisfaction with India at least the India of his own time. It was for this reason that
he turned his attention to Iran so that the flame that was burning inside his heart could
be converted into a bright blaze in Iran. He was waiting for a miracle to occur here. This
is Iqbal's due that we owe to him, and we should always remember our indebtedness to him.
If we wish to understand Iqbal and the significance of his message, it
is necessary for us to know the conditions of the Subcontinent during Iqbal's lifetime -
an epoch that culminated in Iqbal. Without this study we cannot understand the real
meaning of Iqbal's message, the melody of his tone and the inner fire that kept him
restless. The Subcontinent went through the hardest phase of its history during Iqbal's
lifetime. Iqbal was born in 1877, that is, twenty years after the quelling of the
Muslim’s revolt against the English in 1857, when they inflicted a final blow upon
the Islamic rule in the Subcontinent. A great revolutionary upsurge overtook the whole
country and continued for several years, but four months (the middle of 1857) marked its
culmination. The British used this opportunity for making an assault on Islam, which they
were contemplating to make for the last seventy or eighty years, and they imagined to have
uprooted Islam from the Indian soil.
They put an end to the Muslim rule that was breathing its last breaths.
The only obstacle in their way of the total colonialisation of the Indian subcontinent was
the existence of the same rule, which they had succeeded in weakening during the course of
time They liquidated its chief fighters and eminent personages in order to eradicate the
deep-rooted Islamic civilisation and to completely uproot this corpulent and old tree
which was shorn of any power of resistance at that time, and to make India a part of the
British empire. The year 1857 was the year of absolute victory for the British in India.
After having officially annexed India to Britain and named their country as the Empire of
Britain and India, the colonising of India did not pose any problem, for India was treated
henceforward as one of the provinces of the Great Britain. After that they took all
possible precautions to crush every revivalist, nationalist or religious movement in that
country. Their aim was to wipe out completely the Muslim population, as they knew it well
that it were the Muslims who resisted them in India. They already had tested this. The
Muslims fought with the English and their mercenaries, the Sikhs, who were serving them
since the early nineteenth century. This was known to the English very well and to those
who were acquainted with the Indian affairs, who used to tell them. that the Muslims were
their real enemies in India and that they were to be eliminated. From the year 1857, which
was the year of their victory, an extremely oppressive and tyrannical plan was chalked out
to suppress the Muslims. If we go into its detail it will take a long time. Many books
were written on this subject. The Muslims were subjected to economic pressures as well as
to cultural and social discriminations. Collectively they were subjected to the worst kind
of humiliations. As regard to the conditions of employment their declared policy was to
recruit non-Muslims only.
The awqaf (endowments) that ran Islamic institutions and mosques
were in large number and they were taken away. The Hindu merchants were motivated to lend
money to the Muslims in order to seize their property in return for their debts. It was
resolved that their relationship with the land be cut off and their sense of belonging to
the land be uprooted.
This process continued for a long time. The Muslims were killed without
reason and arrested for no fault of theirs. All such people who were suspected of carrying
on any activities against the English were suppressed and eliminated ruthlessly. These
conditions prevailed for several years. After one or two decades of this repression, which
has no parallel anywhere in the world - not in any of the colonised countries were the
people suppressed so severely as the Indian Muslims - ultimately some people began to
think about the possible remedy for this Situation but of course the angry resistance
against the English was not given up. India should never be forgetful of the fact that the
Indian Muslims played the most vital part in the battle against the English. In fact it
will be an act of thanklessness on the part of India to forget her indebtedness to the
Muslims of India. The Muslims did never sit idle during the freedom struggle as well as
during the great revolution that was brought about there.
During the years after the incident of 1857, when there was peace and
calm everywhere, the militant Muslim elements were active in every nook and cranny. There
were two courses of action open to them, that is, either the politico-cultural movement,
or a purely cultural movement to meet the challenge threatening the position of the
Muslims. One of the movements was led by the 'ulama' and the other was initiated under the
leadership of Sayyid Ahmad Khan. These two movements represented two cross-currents
opposing each other, and this is not the occasion to go into detail concerning them.
The 'ulama' believed in waging war against the English. They resolved
to boycott the English and their educational institutions and not to accept any grant from
them. The course followed by Sayyid Ahmad Khan was in opposite direction. He believed in
having good relations with the Englishmen, benefiting from their institutions and making a
compromise with them. Unfortunately both of the two movements, though opposed to each
other, ended in disastrous consequences for the Muslims. The first one that was led by the
eminent Indian 'ulama', many among whom were distinguished historical figures. Their
struggle was rightly guided and their ideology was also based on right thinking, but they
tried to keep away the Indian Muslim community from acquiring the first and foremost thing
they required and which could enable them to master modern developments in science and
technology; for example, they did not include teaching of the English language in their
school syllabi. Perhaps they were justified in doing so at that time, as the English
language was to replace the Persian language, which had been the favourite language of the
Muslims for centuries as well as the official language of the Subcontinent. They viewed
English as an intruder. Anyhow, their opposition to the English language and their lack of
interest in modern civilisation, which at any rate had to govern the modes of the life of
the people, kept the Muslim Ummah out of modern sciences along with their benefits and
advantages, which were ultimately essential for the development of asociety.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan's movement was more dangerous, and here I would like
to express my considered opinion about him. (It is possible that some of the brothers may
not agree with me.) Sayyid Ahmad Khan did not do anything positive for Islam and Indian
Muslims. in my view, the movement initiated by Iqbal was a protest against the movement
whose standard-bearer was Sayyid Ahmad Khan in India. Sayyid Ahmad Khan based his movement
on friendly relations with the Englishmen under the pretext that after all the young
Generation of the Muslims had to be acquainted with the modern culture and that they could
not afford to keep them alienated from and ignorant of the new currents. In his view it
was essential to reconcile with the Englishmen so that the Muslims might not be mistreated
by them and the Muslim men, women and children might not suffer due to this antagonism. He
was very naive to believe that he could win the sympathy of the English and could soften
the hearts of those seasoned and villainous politicians by being friendly and humble
towards them.
As a consequence, the English spared Sayyid Ahmad Khan himself, his
associates and the intellectuals around him whereas the Muslims in general remained
exposed to all sorts of victimisation till India won independence. Therefore, this policy
of pleasing the Englishmen on the part of Sayyid Ahmad Khan proved to be harmful for the
Muslims and brought disgrace and humiliation to them.
More than anything what helps us to understand the significance and
worth of Iqbal is the knowledge of the general conditions of the Muslims in those days.
For the Muslim masses, intellectuals, scholars and all those who entered the broader
fields of social. life could acquire knowledge, master modern science and gain degrees and
positions, but were completely oblivious of their Islamic identity. Gradually the future
hopes were lost for the colossal Muslim society of India that had the largest Muslim
population in the world. (Even today we do not have a country that has such a big
population of the Muslims as was at that time in Indian subcontinent.) A bleak future
stared them in the face, they did not possess any awareness of their Islamic identity, and
