Some Aspects of Iqbal’s Thought

[The philosopher-poet, Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938) was one of the most outstanding personalities of modern Asia. Among others, the late Dr. Rabindranath Tagore considered Iqbal’s works as of deep cultural significance and of universal application. Iqbal was a Muslim descendant of the famous Sapru clan of Kashmiri Brahmins.

After a brilliant career at school and college, where he came invariably at the top and won gold medals and scholarships, Iqbal came first in M.A., in the University and was appointed Professor of Philosophy and History and Assistant Professor of English in the Government College, Lahore.

In 1905 he went to Cambridge and obtained a degree in Philosophy and Ethics. At the same time he obtained a diploma from the London School of Political Science. A little later he obtained the Ph.D., from the Munich University for his brilliant thesis which made him famous throughout Europe as a scholar of the first rank. When the professor of Arabic in the London University, Thomas Arnold (under whom Iqbal had studied earlier in India), went on leave, Iqbal was selected to fill this important post. At this time he also had the distinction of being selected to edit a volume in the famous Gibb Memorial Series. In addition he also studied law and was called to the Bar. All this was accomplished in a bare three years’ stay in Europe!

On his return to India Iqbal resumed his post as Professor of Philosophy and also practised law, but shortly he gave up his post as professor. For a living he practised law and all his spare time he devoted to deep philosophical and religious studies and to higher poetry. Both the Aligarh and Allahabad Universities conferred on him the honorary degree of D. Litt., and the Government recognised the worth of this erudite scholar by conferring on him a knighthood.

At the insistence of some friends Iqbal took an active part in politics and attended two Round Table Conferences in London, but soon he retired from political life altogether. In 1928-29 he was invited to the Deccan to deliver a series of lectures at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Mysore. These learned lectures in English have been published in book form and are well worth serious study by scholars interested in philosophy and the modern interpretation of higher Islamic thought. Another work in English well worth perusal is Professor Nicholson’s translation in English of Iqbal’s “Secrets of the Self”.]

The death of Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal has removed from the world one of the greatest constructive thinkers of Islam in the last six centuries. The outstanding achievement of Iqbal was that, to a very great extent, he succeeded in arriving at a synthesis of the Eastern and Western modes of thought. He himself says at one place: “The teachings of the philosophers of the West illumined my intellect: the companionship of the Seers (of the East) illumined my heart.” It is yet too early to judge what permanent effect the teaching of this virile thinker will have on future generations. At the same time the remarkable extent to which the intelligent and intellectual sections of the youth of Muslim India have been stirred by Iqbal’s thought is portentous and significant.

The Muslim descendent of a family of intellectual Brahmins of Kashmir and a keen student of Western–especially German–philosophy, he was well-equipped to re-interpret certain aspects of Islamic teachings to the modern world. His two prose works in English, “The Development of Metaphysics in Persia” and “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,” show clearly how far ahead he was in religious and philosophic thought. The study of these two prose works is imperative for an understanding of the basic thought underlying all his poetical works.

Iqbal was a philosopher-poet. This is a contradiction in terms, but only apparent so. A poet looks at life as a whole. It is the function of philosopher-poet to show the purpose of the life of the individual, and of the community, by looking at the philosophy of civilisation as a whole. He does that by infusing feeling and deep emotion in the expression of his philosophic concepts. This has ever been the method of the higher poetry of Asia. In the Muslim world of six centuries ago, the great Maulana Rumi is an outstanding example. And Rumi is the Master whom Iqbal constantly holds before him as his preceptor and mentor.

Like Rumi’s message, Iqbal’s message, if interpreted correctly, is for the entire humanity; but, like Rumi, bearing in mind the limits of effective expression of a definite message by the poetic method, Iqbal addresses one particular community, the Muslims. “Community” or “Nation” or, to use Iqbal’s own term, millat, as understood by Iqbal, transcends both geographical and racial limitations. He is opposed to a narrow “nationalism” as conceived in the modern utilitarian and commercialized West. “Nation” or millat, in Iqbal’s view, is a group having a common spiritual and ethical purpose, which purpose alone influences its worldly ends. Nationalism has thus to be interpreted in the broadest manner, so as to be nearest to the conception of an Ideal Humanity. According to Iqbal, the conflict between nationalism and racialism is inherent in the modes of life the world has so far experienced. By laying stress on this conflict the gulf between the two only grows wider, making the attainment of an Ideal Humanity difficult, if not impossible. He therefore opposes this with all the vigor of a virile mind and a deep emotional nature. As a poet-philosopher he fervently desires, and therefore ardently attempts, the complete reconstruction of the imaginative faculty in man, because it is the imaginative faculty that gives direction to man’s desires and intellectual pursuits. In this, his aim is opposed to that of the mere poet trying only to picturize emotions and sentiments. In other words, Iqbal follows the poetic method for philosophic ends.

To understand this it would be well to look a little and to consider the methods of two great Indian Muslim reformer-poets who immediately preceded Iqbal. Hali, the dynamic, aimed at stretching the imagination of the Muslims into the future by reminding them of their great past. He poetically argued that a similar greatness was within their reach, if only they modeled their present behaviour on the past. On the other hand, Akbar the static, merely stressed on the past culture by criticizing almost every new development, in humorous verse of a quality that even Iqbal could not achieve, despite repeated attempts. A third great personality and constructive thinker of this period, though not a poet, was the late Sir Syed Ahmed. He had faith enough in the inherent virility of Muslim culture and civilisation to urge Muslims to fearlessly strike out into the future by assimilating as much of the Western culture as came their way. This vas treading on dangerous ground. Nevertheless battle was given. It was a great fight and many fell by the way–as the intuitional Akbar had foreseen.

All the three–Hali, Akbar and Sir Syed–prepared the ground for Iqbal. The two poets, Hali and Akbar, were necessarily limited in their vision. They were yet too near the disintegrating past to gauge to a nicety the real causes of disintegration. Akbar thought the disease was merely “irreligion” (bedini). Hali thought it was partly the lack of striving in thought and partly the constriction of thought, the result of blind following, which had killed out the faculty of creative imagination. Though both diagnosed the disease, each in his own way, neither suggested a sane and applicable method of treatment. Neither could even say why the disease had set in. Both were sure of only one thing; that the disease was there which was eating the very vitals out of the body politic of Islam. In their frantic efforts to find a remedy they could only look at history–looking ward, instead of forward–comparing the past with the present, to the inevitable detriment of the present. There was something lacking in their vision, and hence in their diagnosis.

What they lacked was supplied by Iqbal. He also looked . But not only at Muslim history. He studied the history and also the philosophy of civilisation, taken as a whole. Further, he looked at both in true perspective,–in the light of human psychology. He realised that mere outward facts of history, that is, the acts of individuals and groups at certain periods and under given circumstances, cannot kill out the roots of a particu1ar type of civilisation and culture, unless the roots themselves are diseased and hence deprived of their inherent vitality. He made sure that the disease had attacked the very roots and then, logically enough, he set to arrive at the correct diagnosis.

Originally Islam is a purely monotheistic system. According to Iqbal the disease that has attacked the very roots of the thirteen-centuries-old tree of Islam is the pantheistic mode of thought, which has undoubtedly percolated through from extraneous sources, especially after the fall of Baghdad. This has resulted in the wrong interpretation of the value of the individual to society. If the individual comes to think that his own personality is philosophically non-existent and not of any ultimate value, he cannot but discount personal responsibility for events and happenings. Thus “effort” and “action” cease to be justly evaluated, either in relation to t individual or in relation to society. Iqbal opines that Persian philosopher and poets were mainly responsible for bringing these extraneous pantheistic notions and ideas into the purely monotheistic system of Islam. While the fertile brain of Persian thinkers attacked the philosophic concepts of Islam, Persian poets enveloped the heart of the average Muslim with pantheistic imageries. The basic idea presented to the Muslim was: “Nothing truly exist but God.” So far so good. But the effort and the action of an individual that of a nation, are entirely dependent on the right interpretation–or the misinterpretation–of this basic idea. It was the misinterpretation of this basic idea in the pantheistic sense that Iqbal abhorred and endeavoured to set right.

Thus it will be seen that unlike the average Oriental poet enwrapped in his own imaginings, however ethical and moral in appearance, the philosopher-poet Iqbal was intensely practical in his outlook. He did not say things for the sake of saying them, nor even for the sake of self-satisfaction, intellectual or emotional. He had a definite and practical purpose in view and he burned with the fire of intense desire to bring this purpose to fruition. He held that the reconstruction of the Muslim world is impossible unless the thought and imagination of each Muslim world is impossible unless the thought and imagination of each Muslim has first been reconstructed along right Islamic lines. Above all, he wished to divest the mind and the heart of every Muslim of the un-Islamic accretions of the last five or six centuries. To understand all this better it would be helpful to look into some of Iqbal’s basic conceptions.

In his conception of the Ultimate Ego, Iqbal lays stress on the Will and Wisdom aspects, which ultimately resolve into Activity. To achieve self-expression and to bring these into manifestation, the All-Sufficient ultimate Ego voluntarily divides itself, by its own volition, into perceptual concept of the Self and the Not-Self. The manifestation is a long sequential evolutionary process. The last, and hence the most perfect, stage of this evolutionary process so far is man. Man is superior because he is aware of the fact of his superiority to the sub-human kingdoms, through knowledge born of higher understanding and conceptual power (idrak). Man’s own existence is to him a fact. For him it is the fact of facts. To him the existence of the rest of nature is conceptual, as opposed to the irrefutable fact of his own being. This is reminiscent of the eminent European philosopher Descartes. According to this great French philosopher, even if a man were to doubt the fact of his own being, something yet remains which doubts this fact. That “something” is the innermost consciousness which is the real man. Iqbal repeats this often, in ever varying imageries.

Thus, if the most fundamental fact of a man’s life is the absolute and irrefutable consciousness of his own being, the purpose of his life is to strengthen and stabilise this basic feeling of ego-hood which Iqbal calls khudi. One cannot help remarking that the term khudi, because of its other connotations such as pride, conceit, etc., does not seem to have been well chosen. Unfortunately the use of this term has given rise to much misunderstanding and even wrong interpretation of Iqbal’s basic thought by many superficial readers. But once the term is correctly understood in the sense Iqbal used it, there is not much danger of misunderstanding the rest of his thought. Man has the power inherent in him to strengthen and stabilize this fundamental feeling of self-hood to the highest pitch. As Iqbal says at one place: “Raise thy self hood to such a high state that, before fixing each fate, God Himself may deign to ask His slave, ‘Say! What is thy wish?” That is the meaning of self-realizations.

To achieve this self-realisation–this perfection of self-hood–man has to wage a constant war against the “Not-Self “. In this war to the bitter end he must continually be changing his immediate objectives so as not to lose sight of the ultimate purpose of life–the attainment of the state of the Perfect Man or, what the German philosophers less correctly called, the “super-man”. All that is extraneous to this feeling of selfhood is the Not-Self. The “Not Self” is the inner and the outer environment of the ego which he must, of necessity, subjugate and control. Under no circumstances is he to succumb to it, whatever the temptation of pleasurable feelings or selfish thoughts or easy physical life. In the attempt to overcome the disabilities of his environment, man is called upon to sharpen his perception in the fields of emotion; intellect and activity. When he does this the “fire of self-hood” burns more brightly in his “heart”. He aspires ever higher and higher. Or, rather, he aspires to stabilize more and more the center of fixity within him. There is no “peace” in the sense of rest for him. Rest spells death for him, even though it be the rest and the “peace” of heaven. Further, his feeling of Ego-hood must transcend both Time and Space. It is not possible to deal with Iqbal’s conception of Time and Space in this short paper. The serious student would do well to refer to his “Six Lectures” in English. Briefly, Iqbal agrees with Professor Whitehead that the “four dimensional spatio-temporal continuum” is merely a conceptual mode of cognition of the Not-Self. In reality serial time and space do not exist. Iqbal bases this conception on certain verses of the Quran and on certain well-authenticated sayings of the Prophet. His whole conception is expressed in a small couplet of entrancing beauty: “The intellect has become the worshipper of the (false) idols of Time and Space: There is neither Time nor Space: There is no God save Allah!”

Obviously the strengthening and stabilisation of the basic feeling of self-hood is a very difficult task to undertake unaided. To tread this Path of progress a “Perfect Man” is needed as a guide. Having found such a guide, the wayfarer must have in his heart an intense love (ishq) for such a guide, for only he can show the wayfarer how to make his own effort fruitful by strengthening his own feeling of self-hood. But, at the same time, Iqbal insists that if the aspirant’s vision of Reality is not clear enough, “love” for the guide can only lead him into the bog of self-forgetfulness and thence into self-annihilation, which is the very opposite of self-hood. On the other hand, if he has his goal clearly in view, the same “love” for the guide will bring him to self-knowledge, resulting in the accentuation and the stabilising of the feeling of his own self-hood. The love of an eternal purpose transmutes the frail heart of man into something as eternal as the purpose itself. As Iqbal says: “The action of a Man of God is illumined by Love: Love is the Essence of Life: Death for it is a sin!”

This aspect of Iqbal’s thought must be very carefully examined and understood. To bow before the Perfect Man, the so-called “superman”, the guide who can really lead, is to ask for much needed help. Not only that. It is to obtain the right kind of help that would enable one to strengthen one’s own self-hood. On the other hand, to bow before the false “idols” of riches, possessions and popularity–all forms of the “Not-Self”–is to weaken the basic feeling of self-hood, which is the only reality man is aware of. Hence the need for istaghna, which literally means “not depending upon” anything external. Hence also the need for faqir, which means not standing in essential need of any external object. The two terms are really complementary. A true faqir does not stand in need of anything, and so he asks for nothing. He is the very opposite of gada–a beggar–who begs because he feels the lack of something external which he craves. Iqbal again and again calls himself a qalander, that is, a non-conformist faqir who does not either beg or conform to even the ceremonies and usage’s of any order of faqirs. Above all, servility is far removed from the make-up of a true qalander. He dares to tell the truth in the face of any odds. As he says: “In the eyes of a faqir what is (the worth of) the grandeur and pomp of an Alexander?–What is that (false) rulership worth which (is dependent on and) begs for contribution (and taxes from the populace)?

It is evident that Iqbal favours a form of renunciation, or rather, dis-attachment, where worldly affairs are concerned. Iqbal does not favour the type of renunciation that makes a man run away from the struggle of life. Nor does he advocate the kind of renunciation that makes an intelligent and self-dependent being servile and dependent on the charity of others. He merely insists that the Not-Self, at no time and under no Circumstances, should be taken to be something identifiable with the Self. You cannot separate the two aspects; but the Not-Self is there to be conquered and subjugated. Only thus can self-hood be strengthened. The Not-Self, therefore, serves an essential purpose in the evolutionary life-process.

When self-hood, which Iqbal calls khudi, has first been established and then strengthened gradually to the highest pitch, by the positive method of love (ishq) and the negative method of non-dependence on the environment (istaghna), all the hidden forces of nature become subservient to the Will of Man. The problem before him now is how to use these forces for constructive and useful purposes. Iqbal is fully conscious of the danger of the position. In fact, he utters a word of solemn warning. The power of khudi, the feeling of “I am”, can be used to destroy or it can be used to build and to re-build. To make it serve constructive purposes it must always be controlled and regulated: “I” must always have under full control the feeling of “am”. He cites the example of Iblis, Satan, who attained to the high state wherein the tremendous power of the self inherent in him was fully liberated. But he could not, or would not, regulate it!

Then, how to regulate this power of self-hood when attained? Iqbal suggests a two-fold method. First, by prayer, that is, by following in the footsteps of the Perfect Man, the true guide on the path; second, by the control–not the suppression–of one’s own desires. Desire (arzoo) is a great power entrusted to man. But it must be fully controlled. Desire can only be controlled by overcoming attachment to all forms of the Not-Self which constitutes the inner and the outer environment of the ego. At the same time, it is necessary to overcome fear of anything or in any shape whatsoever. Fear must be overcome because it is an elementary and elemental feeling, ever pulling the aspirant wards and downwards, involving him in attachments to subtle forms of the Not-Self.

It is only after passing through all these stages that a man can hope to approach the state of Perfect Man. It is only thus that the human ego can get nearer to the Ultimate Ego, though it can never be absorbed in and lose itself in the Greater Reality. In fact, the very purpose of human life is to transcend all human limitations and to rise to the higher stage. Thus, self-discipline is the secret of the evolutionary process, equally applicable to individuals as to communities and nations. But first the individual forming a community must rise to the heights of self-hood, individually and singly. Before any community or nation, as a whole, can rise, For, says Iqbal “If a hundred asses are agreed in an idea, it therefore does not make the idea any the more valuable!”

It will be seen that, from this point of view, the key-note of Iqbal’s thought is personal freedom of thought and action, but under conditions perfect self-control. He does not believe in any of the new-fangled theory of contemporary Europe entailing the curtailment of personal freedom and hence of personal responsibility. Iqbal believes that self-controlled personal freedom as conceived in the Quranic system, and as practiced by the Arabian Prophet, is as perfect for humanity as it is possible to make it at the present stage of the evolution of man. This conception is based on firm faith in Unity and Unique-ness of the Ultimate Reality. The accretions of later centuries, embodying extraneous influences, have to a very large extent hidden this original, pure monotheistic teaching. The present-day conception of the Muslims is, therefore, not free from pantheistic tendencies, incipient or otherwise. Hence, times without number, Iqbal does not hesitate to run down the mullas and to attack the sufis. According to Iqbal, both these classes are responsible for the misinterpretation–in different directions–of the original message. He urges the Muslims to make none but the Prophet himself as their Perfect-Man Guide. He urges the necessity of going to the original teachings of the Quran, disregarding the interpretations the later-day commentators. He openly says that ijtihad¹ must be understood and practiced so as to make the decisions arrived at by ijma² worth being put into practice. His lecture on “The Spirit of Muslim Culture” deals with this delicate question in a thoroughly sound manner.

The original Quranic teaching transcends, both Time and Space. The Prophet showed by the most convincing practical example how it could be made to apply successfully to a community of individualists, transcending both geographical and racial limitations. It is not enough to slavishly follow in acts all that was done in the past. What is necessary is to understand and to assimilate the lesson of the original teaching and of the life of the Prophet. Only thus can Wisdom be attained and the Will properly trained leading to Action, which, though new and exactly suited to overcome the present environment, would yet be rooted in the original Islam–the Islam the Quran, the Islam practiced by the Prophet. He refers over and over again to the battles fought by the Prophet and also to Imam Hussain’s action at Kerbela, to show what right action really is and what it can do for the entire millat. One cannot help remarking that in this respect Iqbal’s conception rises much higher than even the great Rumi’s, for in the Mathnavi of Maulana Rumi one finds no appreciation or the proper evaluation of Imam Hussain’s action at Kerbela and its incomparable importance to the Muslim world. Indeed, there is only one reference to the martyrdom of Imam Hussain in the whole of the Mathnavi, which is positively derogatory! It is difficult to say why Rumi missed the significance of Kerbela, even though he was fully six hundred years nearer to the incident than Iqbal!

According to Iqbal the Muslim community (millat) has lost sight of the original purpose of Islam. But the purpose itself is not lost. The re-discovery of the original common purpose is bound to give common aims and thus to bring about unity in divided ranks. It should not be forgotten that Iqbal is not addressing only the Muslims. His message is for “men of faith “, wherever they may be found, under whatever outward environment. As he says: If there is love (behind a conception or behind an action), even infidelity is faith!: if there is not, even the man who calls himself a Muslim is (in fact) an idol-worshipper and an apostate!” In fact, Iqbal is addressing humanity at large. He is especially addressing the Nations of the East: re-interpreting the Message of the Orient for the Orient. One of his poetical works in Persian is entitled Payam-e-Mashriq–“Message of the East” Another long poem, fittingly enough, is published under the title: “Pas chi bayad kard ai Aqwam-e-Sharq?” meaning, “What, then, ought to be done, O Nations of the East?”

The philosopher-poet Iqbal’s vision was never blinded by narrow or merely utilitarian considerations. He was a constructive thinker. He was not a shallow-minded politician. Once or twice, those around him forced him into politics. But he did not lose sight of the ultimate value of things. He refused to pander to the popular thought of the day, with the inevitable result that he was misunderstood. Holding the beliefs that he did and thinking along lines detailed in this paper, he could not have been a narrow-minded communalist, as his enemies in the political world called him. At the same time, it was obviously impossible for him to uphold the tenets of a narrow nationalism, based on merely geographical and racial considerations of his way of thinking, a concourse of people herded together within certain geographical boundaries does not constitute a nation or “millat”. He demanded freedom–cultural freedom–for each individual and for each community. But the common herd could not understand him at the time.

It will be clear now that Iqbal has a definite and positive message. The core of the message is this: Each individual should stabilise and strengthen his own self-hood (khudi) to the highest pitch, under conditions of the most perfect self-control. Man’s stage in evolution demands that–completely and inevitably. Community or nation (millat) is nothing but a concourse of individuals. If each individual raises his self-hood, the self-hood of the nation cannot help rising. When the nation has raised its self-hood, in the collective sense, the right kind of historical knowledge should be brought to bear our the projected action of the nation, as “history is the memory of the nation”. Above all, in the attempt to strengthen and to stabilise self-hood, an individual–and also a nation–must learn to discriminate: the Self from the Not-Self, the self from other selves, the limited human self from the Ultimate Self. Man, the “limited”, can never become God the Limitless, nor could he be absorbed in God, because God is indivisibly One and Unique. At the same time the individuality and the personality of man can never be lost. By raising his own self-hood man becomes more unique; he thus approaches God by creating in himself (in the words of the Prophet) the attribute (ikhlaq) of God. But he can never become God or be lost in God. The power to preserve the personality is inherent in the separated self. It may dormant, it may be inactive, but it is there. Though the self can never become the Self, it can, and it must approach the Ultimate Ego by rising higher and ever higher through the inevitable process of evolution. That is the taqdir-e-umam, the Grand Destiny of Man. The “drop” therefore should not aim at losing itself in the Ocean–the word fana, annihilation, is not applicable to Man. The drop should attempt to hold the Ocean within itself, “as the pupil of the eye holds the heavens!”

¹ Personal liberty of interpretation by striving in thought.
² Consensus of opinion.