ALLAMA IQBAL'S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

Allama Iqbal's Presidential Address

1930

PRELUDE

The main leadership of Muslim including the Quaid-e-Azam was in London for the first roundtable conference in 1930. In the absence of main leadership from the sub-continent, Allama Iqbal was asked to preside over the annual session of the Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930.

HISTORICAL ADDRESS OF ALLAMA IQBAL

                                In the session of Muslim League at Allahabad Allama Iqbal proposed that the Muslims should have their own state. It was the desire of the Muslims of India. That they should be acknowledged as a separate identity. Allahabad address clearly reveals this fact. Therefore, they demanded a separate homeland.

1.                   Concept of Separate States

Allama Iqbal said in his Allahabad Address:

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

2.                   Separate Recognition of Muslims

Iqbal made it clear,

“Inida is not a country, it is a Sub-continent of human beings belonging to different languages and practicing different religions. Muslim nation has its own religious and cultural identity.

3.                   Condemnation of Western Democratic Concepts

Iqbal was strongly against the western concept of Democracy. Despite flourishing all over the world, this system cannot provide solution of the problem of Islamic world. Iqbal was of the view that all social and political problems can be solved with the help of Islamic system.

He said, ‘Western democracy is devoid of depth, it has merely an attractive outlook).’

4.                   Idea of Single Nation is Impractical

In March 1909, when Iqbal was asked to address a meeting by Raj Amritsar, he refused the single National theory and said,

“I remained the supporter of this idea but now I am of the view that preservation of separate nationhood is useful for Hindus and Muslims birth. To have the concept of single nation in India is no doubt poetic and beautiful but impractical regarding present circumstances.”

5.                   Two Nation Theory

Iqbal said explaining the two nation theory.

“Despite living together 1000 years, Hindus and Muslims have their own individual ideologies so the only solution of political conflict in India is to have a separate independent parliament for each nation.”

6.                   Eradication of Racial & Regional; Prejudices:

Once Iqbal said,

“Concept of nation and homeland is confusing the Muslims. That is why Islamic humane objects are becoming dim. It is also possible that these concepts may destroy the real concepts of Islam.”

7.                   Islam is not separate from politics:

Iqbal was in the favour of basic Islamic concepts that politics is a part of religion and religion particularly Islam provides complete guidance about it,

“Islam does not consider matter and soul separate from each other. Allah, Universe, worship and state all are the basic elements of single unit. Man is not so alien that he should leave worldly affairs for the sake of religion.

REACTION OF THE HINDUS AND THE BRITISH

The Hindus and the British criticized a lot on Iqbal’s address. The Hindus declared it the dream of a mad man or a poet, not that of a sensible man. They said that this was an illegal solution and could not be practiced in the sub-continent.

IMPORTANCE OF ALLAHABAD ADDRESS

It was the desire of the Muslims that they should be acknowledged as a separate identity. Allama Iqbal’s Allahabad address clearly reveals this fact. The Muslims could not tolerate that their religious, political and social rights should be denied to them.

Most of us remember the 1930 Allahabad Address with the following famous statement by the Allama:

‘Personally, 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 North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.’

But there is indeed much more to understand from that address made by a man of profound wisdom, with in-depth vision in the history and philosophy of Islam, extensive study of contemporary issues, and active involvement in the political process of his time. The address covers the philosophical, the historical, and the futuristic prospects of the Muslims of the Subcontinent; in fact, it makes history by submitting the true, eye-witness sentiments that ran between the Muslims, the Hindus and the British at those sensitive times. Moreover, it gives us an insight into how things gradually grew up to the demand of ‘Pakistan’, something impossible even as an idea at the beginning.

The Muslims of the Subcontinent, 70 million at that time – a Muslim community bigger as compared with the number of Muslims living in any other Muslim state of that time – did not have a necessary idea of dividing their homeland, India, for the solution of the miseries that had surrounded them. To this time and even later, the Muslims were pushing only for separate electorates for Muslims according to their population in any province, so that they would eventually form governments in the Muslim majority provinces. In this background, Iqbal was a thinker who could look beyond the canvas of time, and remind the Muslim how they become a nation, and how being a distinct Muslim nation, it is their prerogative to have a political identity in addition to the social and cultural one.

Iqbal calls the time of his address to be one of the most critical moments in the history of Muslim political thought and activity in India. With the opening of his address, he made it clear upon his audience that the secular ideal of a state machine that works regardless of the belief of its people is not possible for Muslims, he said:

“It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India.”