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The 83rd death anniversary of great philosopher, thinker, and Poet of East, Allama Dr Muhammad Iqbal is being commemorated today to pay homage to his services for the Muslims of the subcontinent.
Allama Iqbal was a great visionary poet, who conceived the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent, which was ultimately materialized in the shape of Pakistan.
Various functions have been arranged to pay tributes to this great philosopher, who played a pivotal role through his thoughts and poetry in motivating and mobilizing Muslims of subcontinent for the creation of a separate homeland.
Mohammad Iqbal was born on 9 November 1877 in an ethnic Kashmiri family in Sialkot. After a traditional education in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, he was exposed to a modern education that defined the contours of his thought and his poetry during the entire period of his life.
Beginning his educational career at the Scottish Mission School, he went on to acquire his M. A. in Philosophy, before joining Trinity College, and later earning the degree of Bar-at-Law.
He furthered his education by getting the degree of doctorate from Germany. He worked in different capacities at different points of time. He taught philosophy, practised law, got involved in politics, and also attended the second Round Table Conference in 1931.
Iqbal was elected president of the Muslim League in 1930 at its session in Allahabad. In his presidential address on 29 December 1930, he outlined a vision of an independent state for Muslim-majority provinces in India:
Iqbal wrote both in Persian and Urdu, and is often regarded as the poet-philosopher who addressed the Muslim ummah and propounded the philosophy of khudi, or selfhood, which called for self-realisation and the discovery of the hidden talent with love and perseverance.
He has left behind his collections of poems, Asraar-e Khudi, Rumooz-e Bekhudi, Baang-e Daraa, Baal-e Jibreel, Payaam-e Mashriq, Zaboor-e ‘Ajm, Javed Naama, Zarb-e Kaleem, and Armaghaan-e Hijaz, apart from his lectures collected in English as ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,’ and other works on the Eastern worldview.
Iqbal has been referred to as the ‘Poet of the East’ and is regarded as the ideological founder of Pakistan. Iqbal died in Lahore on 21 April 1938 without seeing the realization of the state he envisioned for Muslims of the subcontinent.
