Faiz on Iqbal - 3
By Dr. Rizwana Rahim
TCCI, Chicago, IL
10. Faiz has an emotional, romantic view of the ‘ultimate’ theme of Iqbal’s poetry: “man and the universe of man … [and] man’s loneliness and of man’s grandeur. He speaks of Man’s loneliness because Man is pitted against so many enemies. First, against the forces within him, like the forces of greed, cowardliness, of selfishness, exploitation, and secondly the forces outside him like the forces of inanimate hostile nature. So he speaks of man as a small atom of passion set against the entire universe. He speaks of man’s greatness, in that man is the only creature to accept the challenge of creation, man the microcosm of pain accepts the challenge of the stars and the moon and the sun and the universe. It is this great theme which elevates the verse of lqbal, towards the end of his days, from the beautiful to the sublime.”
11. Faiz defends Iqbal against what he thinks was “far from satisfactory” criticism, being mostly narrow reactionary that exaggerated some isolated segments of Iqbal’s thoughts/philosophy to the exclusion of others and failed to view things properly in the larger context or circumstances. One particular focus was on Iqbal’s religious views: Faiz recalls how Iqbal’s concept of religion “was in many ways totally opposed to the concept of the orthodox Muslim theologian. In fact the Mullah … is the subject of some of [Iqbal’s] bitterest satirical verses.” The other was over Iqbal’s poems (e.g., ‘Lenin, Khuda kay hoozoor main’ in ‘Baal-e-Jibreel’) about his “genuine appreciation of the egalitarian character of socialist society” that had some progressive critics confused.
Faiz, who himself had a soft corner for socialism, offers a dose of reality on Iqbal’s socio-political leanings: “These critics ignore that Iqbal’s approach to social and economic problems was idealistic and abstract and the scientific basis of Marxist materialism did not enter into his concept of socialism. Actually he [Iqbal] frequently confused the materialist and capitalist points of view and according to his way of thought, a materialistic approach to reality without some idealistic or spiritual belief inevitably lead to exploitation and self-aggrandizement … [and that] his work reflected all the inner intellectual contradictions, all the confusing impulses, all the confused dreams and aspirations of the middle strata of Indo-Pakistan Muslims during the first three of four decades of this [20 th] century and it is precisely because of this that his work is popular among progressive and reactionaries alike and makes for his title as the national poet of Pakistan.”
12. Every single thinker-philosopher or poet is (has been) influenced by the times and his/her predecessors to develop and leave his/her own unique brand for posterity. This is what Dante, Milton, Goethe, Nietzsche did. So did those who followed them including Iqbal, Faiz and many, many others interested in the philosophical growth around the world. Or else, we wouldn’t have anything like a stream of continuing of evolutionary thoughts throughout the generations. Iqbal was influenced by and assimilated Hegel, Kant, Marx, Bergson and others. Nietzche’s Ubermensch (or Superman) seeped into Iqbal’s thinking, just as it did George Bernard Shaw’s in his ‘Man and Superman’.
13. Faiz also believes that Iqbal tried to “cleanse the House of God of all false idols, of scribes and Pharisees, the obscurantist Mullah, the withdrawn mystic, the charlatan and the demagogue,” as in :
….. Kyuun khaliq wo muqh-looqh main ha-yel rahain purday
pai-raan-e- kaleesa say kaleesa sau ut-ttha do
Haq-e-rah ba-sujh-day, sa-num-aan ba-thwaa-fay
beh-thur hai chiraagh-e-harum wo veer bujha do
Mein na-qhush wo bay-zaar hoon mer-mer ki sil-awn say
mayray li-yey mitt-ti ka harum aur bana do
[From Baal-e-Jibreel: Fermaan-e-Khuda : Fa-rish-thawn Say]
“….Why should there be a veil between
the Creator and his Creation?
Get the priests out of the Temple.
The believers bow before Him,
others hover around their Idols,
better you snuff out the candle
from the Mosque and the Temple.
I am tired of the marbled walls,
build me another with walls of mud …”
[Translated by Dr. Zafar Iqbal]
“Only thus,” Faiz says, “could this House be made deserving of the ‘vice-regent of God’ on earth, Man.” For Iqbal, Faiz adds, “No form of reality is so powerful, so inspiring and so beautiful as the spirit of man. The fall of Adam was not a fall from grace but the opposite: his elevation to the position of a ‘Co-worker with God’ in the process of creation…… For our world… is still in the course of formation and man has to take his share it inasmuch as he helps to bring order into a portion of this chaos.”
14. Faiz adds that “Iqbal applied the Muslim concept of ‘tauheed’, the unity or Oneness of God, to the unity of the terrestrial and celestial worlds, thus replacing the concept of transcendence of God by His Immanence and obliterating the duality of sacred and secular, spiritual and material.”
To Iqbal, “In this world, the only change has permanence” [Baang-e-dara]. In this and other things, according to Faiz, “Iqbal discards equally emphatically the dogmatic theologian and his static orthodoxy.”
‘Nahin thay-ra na-shay-mun khiz-e-sultaani kay goon-bud per !
Tho Shaheen hai, basyara ker phaar-awn ki cuaan-awmn main.’
[From baal-e-jibreel: Eik Nao-Jawaan kay Naam]
“….Your place is not on the dome of a King’s palace,
You are an Eagle, you live on the tops of the mountains.’ [Translated by Dr Zafar Iqbal]
Iqbal is often considered philosophically different from Faiz, but I see in these essays by Faiz a certain fond commonality, and that their paths did cross some times. For instance, doesn’t this from Baal-e-Jibreel strike a familiar chord? Fermaan-e-Khuda : Fa-rish-thawn Say:
“…… Jis khaith say deh-qaan to ma-yessur no ho rozi
oos khaith kay her kho-sha-e-gundum ko jala do”
….The field that cannot provide
the farmer his livelihood,
burn every spike of its wheat. [Translated by Dr. Zafar Iqbal]
I can only wonder how would Iqbal, and for that matter Ghalib, have thought of Faiz’s contribution to Urdu poetry and literature, and how would they have voted on Faiz’s membership to their own highly exclusive club. (Concluded)
