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Allama Iqbal is right in saying that ultimate end of all human activity is Life

Allama Iqbal is right in saying that ultimate end of all human activity is Life
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(Adnan Shafi)

The self in man, his I—am-Ness, has specifically earthly antecedents. There are a number of Qur’anic verses which, in slightly different phraseologies assort that man has been created out of clay. Iqbal, in this connection, refers to verses from the Quran.

‘Now of fine clay have we created man, then we placed him, a moist germ, in a safe abode, then made we the moist germ a clot of blood, then made the clotted blood into a piece of flesh, then made the piece of flesh into bones, and we clothed the bones, and we clothed the bones with flesh, then brought forth man of yet another make.”

Given here is in a brief description of the various stages in the development and growth of the human individual. However, this is not the Darwinian type of evolution where subsequent stages could invariably be explained in the light of the earlier ones and in accordance with certain well-defined scientific principles. Instead, the Qur’an appears to conceive that man is the result of a process known as `emergent evolution’ i.e. a process in which at a particular stage some novel characteristics suddenly and spontaneously appear.

Thus he can be declared as a special creation in spite of his naturalistic lineage. This is evident from the sentence”…then brought forth man of yet another make” in the above quotation. Man alone has been described as the bearer of the Divine Trust which was granted to him by God and which the heavens and the earth had earlier refused to accept. The phenomenon of special creation is also clear from the verses Mike!

The word `human ego’ or Khudi used by Iqbal likewise is taken by him to mean the unity and totality of the human person. He rejects the dualist theory of mind and body because parallelism and interactionism both lead to various sorts of oddities and contradictions. The former “reduces the soul to a merely passive spectator of the happenings of the body” as to the latter, “we cannot find any observable facts to show how and where exactly their interaction takes place and which of the two takes the initiative.

The soul is an organ of the body which exploits it for physiological purposes, or the body is an instrument of the soul, are equally true proposition on the theory of interactionism”. Mind and body, in fact, belong to the same system, says Iqbal. Matter is “spirit in space-time reference”. It is “a colony of egoes of a low order out of which emerges the ego of a higher order. The physical organism reacting to environments gradually builds up a systematic unity of experience which we call the human ego

Time and again, the conservatives, the right-wingers, the atheists, and the believers have used select portions of Iqbal’s work to abet their propagations. Was he a devout Muslim? Was he a non-believer? Was he first a poet and then a philosopher? Or was he first a philosopher and then a poet? Much ink has been spilled and several words have been spoken — all to no avail. So far, attempts to entrap Iqbal’s work in any ideological cocoon have been largely unsuccessful.

It is quite incredible that such projects are still attempted. Iqbal has spoken so much on so many subjects from so many different positions that insisting on any kind of ideological purity is to read him flippantly.

He is a left-winger, a right-winger, a believer, an atheist, a conservative and a liberal in turns and if his poetry were not evidence enough to prove this, his essays are, his lectures are, his notebook, Stray Reflections, in which records his careless thoughts, is. In this notebook, which he never wished to publish in his lifetime, Iqbal was able use his pen in the delicious freedom of secrecy.

His entries comprise of short sentences on subjects as assorted as the political future of Afghanistan, the poetic relevance of infinity, the virtues of self-control, Shakespeare, Ghalib, Goethe and Hafiz. Despite the carefreeness of his thoughts, his sentences are taut and his words crisp and somehow his prose strums with the musicality of poetry. One diary entry begins and ends thus, “The psychologist swims, the poet dives” and another thus, “power toucheth falsehood and lo! It is transformed into truth.”

In the Bang-e-Dara, he might have written, “Hai wohi saaz-e-kuhn Maghrib ka jamhoori nizam/Jis ke pardon mein nahi ghair az Nawa-e-Qaisari” (The Western democratic system is the same old orchestra/Its notes have nothing but the melodies of Caesar) but in Stray Reflections, while brainstorming on democracy, he writes, “Democracy has a tendency to foster the spirit of legality. This is not in itself bad….”.

While giving a humble benefit of the doubt to the system of governance he indicates how it is not democracy per se but the mediocre implementation of democracy that irks him. It is through these writings here that we realize that ripping apart a few sentences from Iqbal’s books as evidence of his sanction for select political arguments is a practice sloppy at best.

As we look more closely at the position of Iqbal, we find that he neither holds on to absolute pantheism in the sense of sheer identity of God with the universe nor does he subscribe to theism in the sense in which a layman would do such that he fails to conceive God as having a constant, living contact and a companionship with man: this contact being available to him only when invoked in petitionary prayers.

Iqbal’s characteristic view in this regard is that which has been known as ‘pantheism’ i.e. God includes the world and at the same time transcends it. Such a relation, for instance, exists between a human person, on the one hand, and his habits and character, on the other.

The behavior of the universe comprises the habits of God, according to Iqbal, and the evolution and growth of nature, in general, and of man, in particular, amount to no less than the realization of the potentialities of Divine being himself. Iqbal’s major works are Banga-i-Dara, Bal-i-Jabril, Zarb-i-Kalim, Asrar-i-Khudi, Ramuz-i-Bekhudi, and Javid-name. He wrote in Urdu and in Persian. His chief philosophical poems are, however, all written in Persian which language he found eminently suitable for the exposition of his lofty ideas.

We in East Pakistan primarily know Iqbal through translations. The intense love for his country as expressed in poems like Himala, Tarana-i-Hindi, Naya Shiwala, move us greatly; the vigor and force of his philosophical poems like Asrar-i-Khudi and Javid Nama, stir us deeply, and poems like Tarana-i-Milli, Tulu-i-Islam, and Khizr-i Rah, act as a source of undying inspiration and guidance to us. Let me quote a few lovely lines from that famous and popular piece, Tarana-i-Milli:

اے گلستاں اندلس وہ دن ہے یاد تجھکو

تھا تیری ڈالیوں میں جب آشیاں ہمارا

اے موج دجلہ تو بھی پہچانتی  ہے ہم کو

ابتک ہے تیرا دریا افسانہ خواں ہمارا

In translations, however good they may be, the tone of the original is somewhat impaired, but even then we do not have to take any great pains to discover the poetical excellences of Iqbal. In the wealth of imagery and diction, above all, success in making his verses a suitable and adequate vehicle for the exposition of his lofty philosophical ideas, Iqbal undeniably demonstrates his greatness as a poet of a very high order.

True that sometimes his poetry seems rather heavy, over-burdened with ideas and preachings, but that happens only very rarely. And in this context, we must also remember that Iqbal was indeed a guide and a preacher and for him, as for any really great artist of any time, art was not an absolute end in itself.

It would be appropriate to quote here Iqbal’s own words regarding Art and its scope and function:

“The ultimate end of all human activity is Life—glorious, powerful, exuberant. All human art must be subordinated to this final purpose, and the value of everything must be determined in reference to its life-yielding capacity. The highest art is that which awakens our dormant will-force and nerves us to face the trails of life manfully. All that brings drowsiness and makes us shut our eyes to Reality around, on the mastery of which

alone life depends, is a message of decay and death. There should be no opium-eating in art. The dogma of Art for the sake of Art is a clever invention of decadence to cheat us out of life and power.”—

Iqbal was certainly no opium-eater in Art. He wrote because he felt that he had something definite to say. He had firm and strong views on many issues, carefully thought out, intensely rational and yet endowed with an ardent moral fervor, but he was never dogmatic. He had the temper of a true philosopher. About his own ideas he said:

“There is no such thing as finality in philosophical thinking. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other views and probably sounder views are possible. Our duty is carefully to watch the progress of human thought, and to maintain an independent critical attitude towards it.”

Iqbal is no more in our midst and we have not yet been blessed with another ‘wise one’ like him. That is however not surprising, for great personalities like Iqbal are not born every other day. But we have with us his poetry which is immortal. In this refreshing and vigorous poetry, there is an unending mine of enjoyment and wisdom for anybody who may care to study it.

(The writer is a student of literature. He writes for ‘Kashmir Vision’. The views expressed in the write up are his own)

 

 

 

 


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