Literary talk on Taraana-e-Hind

Chandigarh, January 3

The First Friday Forum organised a literary interaction programme with a talk on poet Allama Iqbal’s Taraana-e-Hind, ‘Saarey jahaan sey achha Hindustan hamaara’, at Le Corbusier Centre here.

The speaker Dr SS Bhatti, a multilingual poet and former principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture, said each of the nine couplets conveyed a different sentiment. For example, the opening couplet was an eulogy to national pride which is much more than self-praise, something that is convincingly borne by the other eight couplets. In the descending order the couplets that follow convey nostalgia, natural security, resources, history, religious tolerance, uncanny enduing power, immutability, and national agony.

He concluded that Iqbal was the greatest poet of all time, unmatched for his mystical stance, profundity of thought, probing insight and overwhelming vocabulary, mastery of the architectonics of poetry, originality, versatility, and proliferation of literary creativity. — OC