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Ideology of Pakistan Ifkar-e-Iqbal (in Urdu)
Javid Iqbal wrote The Ideology of Pakistan as a response to the questionnaire that the-then Pakistan President Ayub Khan had sent to a number of intellectuals, administrators and public men including the author, seeking their views on building Pakistan as a potentially vibrant and strong state worthy of recognition in the world. In other words, things were not going well in Pakistan, and therefore it was necessary to know what ought to be done and in which direction the country should move to satisfy the aspirations of the people. The present volume is a revised edition of the book published in 1959, including some new material. The book ends with an epilogue containing views of a few leading thinkers from outside Pakistan on the issues raised by the author. The second study, Ifkar-e-Iqbal, contains interpretations and dispersed meditations of the author on his father, the poet-philospher Sir Mohammad Iqbals concept of khudi. Both these scholarly works reflect Javid Iqbals erudition, firm grasp of Islamic thought and ethics, a wide historical sweep, and political insight in international politics. In Ideology of Pakistan, the author asserts that the country was founded on the basis of a two-nation theory, which was derived from a distinct Islamic way of living. Thus Pakistan nationhood cannot be the basis of the foundation of Pakistan.
Sir Mohammad Iqbal was a profound Islamic thinker, and he was passionately committed to Islam, but as a brilliant tactician, Jinnah used the Islamic idiom to attain his political objective of a separate homeland. Javid Iqbal is disenchanted with the existing political situation in Pakistan. He is opposed to setting up a theocratic state. He dislikes Mulladom and its pervasive hold on the masses. Sufism, he discards, for breeding a spirit of escapism among its followers. Western capitalism, he thinks, is unsuited to Pakistan because it is exploitative. He rejects Communism and Socialism because of their antipathy to religion, the guiding principle of the Muslim way of life. The author is committed to Islam and considers it a real panacea for the ills of Pakistan. He insists that Pakistan should make Islam a vital organ of the state. Javid Iqbal wants Pakistan to be a welfare state, and suggests the adoption of the model of a Democratic Islamic Republic working for social justice and economic advancement of its people by drawing inspiration from the highest ethical values nourished and sustained by Islam. He cautions that "Constitutionally the head of the state of Pakistan must belong to the majority community," meaning the Muslims. Is not this proposal anti-democratic in spirit? For strengthening Pakistans policy, the author suggests the establishment of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the administrative reorganisation of provinces, reviving the spirit of ijtihad (personal opinion), retaining English as the State language, setting up a Research Centre and Faculty of Islamic languages and making the teaching of Quran compulsory in the State-run institutions, etc. Chapter 6, The Ideal Citizen, is easily the best. The strength of a country depends on the stuff its people are made of. Javid Iqbal wants his countrymen to imbibe the spirit of a Momin, a unique individual, a God-fearing man imbued with Spartan energy, detached and determined, with a tearing spirit, who would never ever give in, but stand firm to fight for the preservation of finest human values. Such individuals of rare qualities are seldom to be found in the topsy-turvy world. There falls a shadow between hopes and reality. Of course, there are lyrical sentences that cry to be quoted. The author stresses the need for reforming Islamic law in the light of ijtihad and ijma (consensus). He insists on having a balanced social order between capital and labour. The problem in Pakistan is the military-mulla nexus, which is largely due to the absence of a potentially strong, fearless, forward-looking middle class, capable of fighting independently for freedom, social and economic justice. The author looks more to Islamic inheritance than to the cultivation of rationality and scientific temper among his compatriots. This attitude is rather puzzling as is his claim for Kashmir on religious grounds. Ifkar-e-Iqbal concludes with a short essay on Iqbal, and his place in Urdu literature. According to Javid Iqbal, the poet Iqbals concept of Khudi embodies the striking features of universal love, detachment, solitude and single-mindedness to scale the heights of excellence. This concept is Napoleonic in spirit, in that there is nothing impossible in the world to find, discover and create. Iqbals Khudi is elan vital, the spark of Divine Life, a hidden guide like the Daemon of Socrates, or a psychic individuality, to use Aurobindo Ghoshs expression. The author thinks that his father was a poet of the future, a visionary for the Muslims. He emphasises that the poet drew his inspiration from the Quran. This is true indeed, but Iqbal also had a dancing mind, bubbling with ideas derived from a great many other sources, and a genius like him cannot be confined, cabined and cribbed within a single mould of thinking. Iqbal wrote on a variety of themes of universal human value. Despite his deep concern for the Muslims and for the separate Muslim homeland, he continues to be a poet of humanity, and occupies as high a place in literature as Milton, Dante or Wordsworth. |
T
Poet Iqbal had projected
the vision of a separate Muslim state within or without India in 1930,
but to say, as he does, that Jinnah was not secular like Iqbal, who
regarded Islam as the foundation of Pakistan, is rather going too far.