Iqbal's idea of Nationalism: Wataniyat

This paper attempts to study how concept of Nationalism was an idol carved by Western imperialism and wantedto replace this Wataniyat. The Muslim Renaissance in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent was primarily inspired andactivated by Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, pragmatic genius as he was, hadlaid its foundation in the late nineteenth century; and later in the twentieth century, Dr Iqbal, through his poetic visionand political insight, as reflected in his writings, speeches, and political works, elaborated for the Indian. Iqbal is bestknown as the composer of Saare jahaan se acchha (from Taraanaa-e-Hindi), which extols wataniyat, or love for thehomeland, where all its denizens are bulbulein, or songbirds, in this garden/country.His early poems “made him the darling of the Indian people". Iqbal wrote of freedom from all distinctions andoppressions: religion, caste and class. His words evoked the syncretic impulses that remain at the heart of India’sdiversity. Bacche Ki Dua (A Child’s Prayer) was ubiquitous in classrooms in India even in his time. Self-CommunityIqbal's concepts of Self (Khudī) and community (Millat) are fundamentally derived from the Quranic source. Theindividual believer in Islam is described in the Qur'ān as Muslim (one who surrenders his will to the will of Allah) andMumin (one who has faith in the oneness of Allah) whom the Muslim mystics usually call the perfect man (insān-ikāmil). According to the Quranic cosmology, Adam, the first man, was created as the masterpiece ofGod's creations—highest of all beings (ashraf al-makhlūqāt) and was endowed with the Divine virtue of knowledge (allamah al-ismā ) andthe rare gift of free will Obviously, therefore, in, the Qur'an man is called the vicegerent of Allah on the earth (khalīfah ).In a nutshell, it is the potentiality of self-awareness, moral consciousness, and spiritual vitality for ceaseless strugglewhich distinguish man from other creatures. He wrote of the land and its geography in poems like Himalaya andTaraanaa-e-Hindi; its great seers and deities in ‘Nanak’ and ‘Ram’ (whom he called Imam-e-Hind, or Prophet of India);and its poets in ‘Mirza Ghalib’ and ‘Dagh’. Iqbal even translated the Gayatri mantra from the Sanskrit into Urdu verseas Aaftaab (The Sun). In Nayaa Shivala (New Temple), Iqbal deifies his homeland. Using a vocabulary more Hindi thanPersian, his views are syncretic of Hindu and Muslim thought