The Truth about Allama Iqbal ( 1877-1938 )

While I regard Iqbal as a good poet, I intensely dislike him for his strong support of dividing India and creating Pakistan.

Some people say that Iqbal wrote ' Saare jehan se achcha Hindustan hamara ' . Such people also quote the the sixth stanza of Saare Jahan Se Achcha (1904),  as proof of Iqbal's secular outlook:

Maẕhab nahīṉ sikhātā āpas meṉ bair rakhnā

Hindī haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai Hindūstāṉ hamārā

or,

Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among ourselves

We are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan.

Such people say that this proves that Iqbal never wanted Partition of India. These people forget that this poem was written in 1904, when Iqbal was only 27 years old, and his later communal views had not developed.

 However, his views evidently changed subsequently. Thus, in Tarana-e-Milli  written in 1910 he writes

Chīn o-ʿArab hamārā, Hindūstāṉ hamārā

Muslim haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai sārā jahāṉ hamārā

or,

Central Asia and Arabia are ours, Hindustan is ours

We are Muslims, the whole world is our homeland.[3]

Iqbal's world view had now changed; it had become pan Islamic. Instead of singing of Hindustan, "our homeland," the new song proclaimed that ' We are Muslims , and the whole world belongs to us '. (See also 'Shikwa' and 'Jawab-e-Shikwa ).

 Gradually, Iqbal became highly communal, and a strong supporter of creating Pakistan, a separate homeland for Muslims in India

.This, in his presidential address to the Muslim League annual conference in Allahabad in 1930, he strongly supported a separate nation-state in the Muslim majority areas of the sub-continent, an idea that inspired the creation of Pakistan.

Thiis is why I strongly dislike him

Allama Iqbal

I like some of Iqbal's poetry, but I intensely dislike him for advocating creation of Pakistan, and for preaching pan Islamic nonsense e.g. in his poems Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa. He throughout supported that rascal and British agent Jinnah ( that rascal Gandhi, too, was a British agent ).

 Iqbal was elected president of the Muslim League in 1930 at its session in Allahabad, in the United Provinces as well as for the session in Lahore in 1932.

In his presidential address on 29 December 1930, Iqbal outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in northwestern India:

"I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated Northwest Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of Northwest India."