Remembering ironies and a lament
khas hai tarkeeb mein Qoum-e-Rusool-e-Hashmi
(Judge not your nation on the criteria of the West;
Special in composition is the Prophet’s community)
Three days back, Pakistan’s army chief invoked this verse of Iqbal to anchor a rant on the validity of the two-nation theory, going as far as hinting at Islamic statehood of being a superior ideology. Superior to whom, one might ask?
Within the rubric of the Pak army’s version of the ‘theory’, this must be the Hindus. The idea of a second nation — if one is to accept the theory, which by design India should not — is for the Hindutva camp to lap up. But even this line of logic runs into trouble, for Mohan Bhagwat — a voice of the Hindu nationalists — has said all Indians are Hindus. So, if you do not accept it, what you are left with is some 24 crore ‘Indian Muslims’ in the subcontinent’s northwest being rendered just ‘Indians’. Now, that is an existential threat for the Pak Army for sure.
Anyway, let’s skip this tangent. Coming to Iqbal, Allama Iqbal — the learned poet of the East! During his Muslim League presidential address at Allahabad in 1930, he referred to himself “as a man who is not despaired of Islam as a living force for freeing the outlook of man from its geographical limitations”. That, to even unlearned ears, must sound like a reference to the limitations of a nation-state — a community that, in his own words, “cannot afford to part with the monopolies which circumstances have placed in our hands, and (thus we) conceal our egoism under the cloak of nationalism, outwardly simulating a large-hearted patriotism, but inwardly, as narrow-minded as a caste or tribe.”
And just like that, Haryana dare ask Punjab for water without triggering some Punjabi pride via Moosewala, rest in peace. It is true, Iqbal never called for Pakistan, but he sure is seen as the spiritual founder of it. He called on Muslims to utilise religion to rise above parochialism, yet he painted them as a distinct nation.
Removed from this poetic realm, and in the jargon of science, what is a hard fact is that all religious experiences activate the body’s reward circuits in much the same way as drugs. It is a readily available high branded in myriad ways. The euphoria of a zikr can also be felt in the rave that is a jagrata. Brahm is Allah and so on with non-dualism which nearly every major reformed religion validates.
Let’s keep this substance consumption private, Iqbal sahab? For your piercing lament of disharmony in South Asia still hurts! O Himalaya! O Attock! O Ganges! how long shall we go on living sordidly like this?
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