Advice of Tipu Sultan - 2
Translation and Commentary of Ghazal by Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal
By Dr Basheer Ahmed Khan
Garden Grove, CA
Advice of Tipu Sultan
When on the journey of your longing
Destination should have no meaning
Comfort will make you lose your sight
Refuse the palanquin with beloved beside
Refuse the peace of shore,
Embrace the tides
It is not the peace of shore but tides
That advances you in your race
Let not the distractions of universe
Shift your gaze from your focus
You are a man and mean of change
Do not be a conformist with the caucus
I heard this from Gabriel
On the first dawn that we met
Let not your heart to be content
When your mischievous mind
Misleads it by argument
Falsehood recommends path of ease
To make you lose your determination
Truth all through history has shown
There is no easy way to your Freedom.
The summary of this advice is that those who venture to bring a meaningful change in this world should not worry about how small a force they are and how formidable are the odds; nor fear about the obvious and hidden threats to success, and should pursue relentlessly the goal which they have set for themselves.
Tipu seems to be saying that if he had a second chance he would not develop a war fatigue but continue his mission to defeat the imperialist Britain and reach beyond Pondicherry to Calcutta, Delhi, and Punjab and even beyond to keep India free. Tipu is regretting that he ignored the advice of Gabriel AS to be wary of the excuses which the mind creates to shun responsibility and pursue the path of ease. Had he taken this advice he would not have died a death of disappointment by the betrayal of his own people as he saw later. If he had ignored the threat to his capital city after the death of Haidar Ali and continued his expedition, it might have been presumed as strength and would have warded off revolt. This seems to be the advice of Tipu Sultan through the pen of Iqbal.
With his limited resources, with France being an inconsequential player in India, the mission of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan looks steeped in blind nationalism and devoid of any rationalism. As a rational person I had real difficulty in accepting this advice of Tipu through Dr Iqbal’s pen till recently when I saw some interviews of Gen Mattes in which he talked about his book and the present situation in Afghanistan and the Middle East. He attributed the indecisiveness of political leadership to abandon the goals of the mission assigned to army prematurely as the cause for the conflict to continue in these regions for 18 years with no tangible result even after spending a lot and losing lots of lives. Wavering in the middle of a mission because of the developing situation is an error, he said.
Dr Iqbal seems to have inferred the same lesson from the life of Tipu Sultan two centuries ago as one of the highly read and distinguished General of the most advanced army is a tribute to Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s genius and to the fact that he shares the same Aryan genes and Spartan spirit of Alexander.
Compromise of a politician may lead to prolongation of a status quo. Real change requires the determination of a statesman to undergo all suffering and give all sacrifices for the cause of the mission. An easy way of political compromises is not the way to bring about a great and meaningful change but the betrayal of aspirations of people due to the political expediency of politicians. Insisting on going the wrong way to reach the correct destination is not ingenuity but outright madness. History is replete with both to have reached the present critical juncture.
This world does not run on the political expediency of politicians, or the madness of madmen, or the talking points of the tutored intellectuals on mass media. It works according to realities which are beyond the understanding of the minds of philosophers, thinking of think tanks or political considerations of politicians. That is where prophetic insight and their rules for a decent personal life and its collective observance become essential which Iqbal has expressed abundantly in ten volumes of his poetry.
The French way of renaissance may be appealing, but it was the result of frustration against religion, kings and politicians. No meaningful change is possible on the basis of just frustration. Therefore, it became a movement without any anchor, and it was hijacked by the same forces that were responsible for the instability of Europe in the first place and spread all over the world. A plethora of incoherent, impractical thoughts appealing to our baser instincts propagated by those who wanted to grab power through all means was not allowed by God to destroy His world and His people. God-given freedom has to be used in accordance with the restraint He has imposed. By ignoring this and using the God-given freedom in accordance with our whims in the name of awakening has created chaos in every sphere of human life. What was needed then, and what is needed now, is to reform the religion, royalty and politics to make man the vicegerent of God and not a member of the Nation of Gomorrah. Unfortunately, we are doing exactly this.
The mission for India’s freedom was laudable and sacred, but it was not in the interest of the Indian subcontinent to achieve it on liberal French thought. The chaos in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa where French interest was dominant is a clear evidence of it. The afterthought of Tipu given in this advice by Dr Iqbal was known to him when he was in London and Germany and observed the society there closely. A lot of his poetry is a testimony to it. Iqbal is not regretting the failure of Tipu Sultan in keeping India free with the support of the French. What Iqbal is regretting is that instead of dying during the campaign fighting the enemy, Tipu Sultan had to die a death of disappointment in his capital city with the pain of betrayal by his own people.
As Muslims did not learn any lesson and corrected the course after hundreds of failures from the martyrdom of Imam Hussain RA till Tipu Sultan, because of the betrayal of their own people, they continue to ignore the ground realities and become a pawn in the hands of the forces of disruption. As a result, they continue to suffer and along with them the world. While Muslims are suffering because of their naivety and callousness of their leaders, the world is suffering for taking advantage of this situation and not giving them a respite and helping them to understand their situation to recover.
God has kept the responsibility of making his religion prevail for Himself (Ch.9 V33); He is going to do it at the time of His choice through the people He chooses. Our job is to struggle to understand Him and the way His writ is controlling our lives and our world and lead our lives in consonance with it (Ch.22 V 78). By making Jahidoo Fillah as Jahidoo Lillah we have assumed the responsibility which Allah has kept for himself, namely, making His religion prevail, and ignored our basic duty of understanding God and His ways. This attitude of people of all religions all through history has denigrated religion and debased our humanity all the more when they use religion for their partisan agendas.
Understanding people like Iqbal and Rumi correctly through a critical study of their work will be a better first step towards restoring the importance of religion in our lives and thus raise the status of mankind from social animals to real human beings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
