Raza Mir Khudi ko kar buland itna, ke har taqdeer se pahle
Khuda bande se khud pooche, bata teri raza kya hai? Exalt your self thus, that before every twist of fate God should say, ‘My creation, on your desire I wait.’ If there is one concept that finds the most abundant expression in Iqbal’s poetry, it is that of khudi (selfhood). Taken at face value, the idea is a simple one. Iqbal thought of khudi as that essence of a person’s being that was left over when all relational aspects of their personality were set aside. A person’s name does not describe them completely. Nor do their linkages to their families, their ethnicities, their professions, their relationships, their cultural affinities and such. That aspect of a person’s being that exists beyond these relational webs is what Iqbal thought of as the true self, the khudi. According to him, everybody possessed a khudi; it is what they did with it that marked them as either free or enslaved, exalted or bowed, evolving or moribund. As the above verse suggests, Iqbal thought of khudi as a power through which human beings could determine their own fate and chart their own destiny. An exalted khudi connoted striving, individuality, originality and courage, characteristics that Iqbal found most worthy in the human race. Khudi: The Modern Self Iqbal’s poems repeatedly circle around the idea of khudi. For instance, he writes: Ye mauj-e-nafas kya hai, talvaar hai Khudi kya hai, talvaar ki dhaar hai Khudi kya hai, raaz-e daroon-e hayaat Khudi kya hai, bedaari-e kaayenaat Khudi jalva badmast-o khalvat-pasand Samundar hai ik boond paani meiN band … Khudi ka nasheman tere dil meiN hai Falak jis tarah aankh ke til meiN hai Khudi ke nigah-baaN ko hai zahr-naab Vo naaN jis se jaati rahe us ki aab Vahi naaN hai us ke liye arjumand Vahi jis se duniya meiN gardan buland Khudi faal-e-Mahmood se darguzar Khudi par nigah rakh Ayaazi na kar This flowing breath is but a sword What is selfhood but that sword’s sharp edge? Selfhood is life’s deepest secret Selfhood animates the universe itself Selfhood is wine-fuelled sharing, and secrecy too It is an ocean contained in a solitary droplet … The abode of selfhood lies in your heart Like the entire sky lies in the pupil of your eye That food earned at the cost of selfhood Verily, it is poison! The only food worthy of consumption is that Which allows you to stay with head unbowed in this world Selfhood disdains even kings like Mahmood Forsaking not just their pomp, but Ayaaz’s slavishness as well The above verses, excerpted from Iqbal’s famous poem Saaqi Naama (Ode to the Cupbearer), flesh out Iqbal’s idea of a selfhood that is proud to the point of vanity, and desires neither any special treatment nor shrinks from deprivation. The concept of khudi preoccupied Iqbal from a young age. His first book was titled Asraar-e Khudi (Signs of the Self), and his second book played off the concept as well. Even though Iqbal called it Rumooz-e Bekhudi (Enigmas of Selflessness), matters of selfhood were front and centre in it as well. For Iqbal, those humans who paid attention to their khudi and focused on strengthening and purifying it were centred beings who did not bow to those in power. They strove to become ideal humans, and their own will transcended the powers of determinism or taqdeer. They made their own luck and wrote their own fates. Those who compromised on their khudi were destined to eat the bread of slavery, to bow to beings other than their creator and to lead inauthentic, derivative lives. The idea of khudi, however, was not just a philosophical concept, but also a tool for a specific political intervention. Iqbal was coming of age as a thinker at a time when Indians were experiencing the humiliation of colonial conquest. It was but natural for them to reflect on what had gone wrong, and what they needed to do to get out of their predicament. Indian thinkers were grappling with this problem. Swami Vivekananda, a contemporary of Iqbal, was attempting to articulate a new Hinduism that would be able to resist colonial conquest. Muslim thinkers like Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) were wrestling with similar issues. The dominant theme among Muslim modernists was that the community had discarded reason, a cornerstone of Islamic thought. They felt that Westerners had become powerful because they had embraced this very quality that Muslims had abjured. Iqbal, however, was not so enamored of this idea. He disdained the idea of a rationality that was not anchored by belief and spirituality. Instead, he developed the concept of khudi, which incorporated elements of reason along with a sense of spiritual revival and intuition. For him, a person with a strong khudi possessed a clear sense of self combined with a deep belief in God and divinity. A healthy khudi incorporated a strong ego with deep devotion. It was independent, evolving and modern, but was also religious and spiritually inclined. For Iqbal, there was a continuity between the acme of human potential and divinity itself. In the words of one of his intellectual biographers Hafiz Malik, ‘for Iqbal, man becomes unique by becoming more and more like the most unique individual [God]’. The concept of khudi has an earlier history in Sufi thought and is associated with thinkers such as the Iranian mystic Fariduddin Attar (1145–1221). Attar’s famous quote, Ehf az khudi un khuda sheefast, ‘selfhood has become my god; I need no god of yours’, is a famous Sufi proclamation. Attar was one of the first who had connected the human to the divine: Har rag-e-jaaN taar gushta, haajat-e zunnaar neest, every vein of my body connects me to the divine; I no longer need a sacred thread. While Iqbal was struck by the manner in which Attar saw humans as possessing the potential for divinity within themselves, he layered the Attarian khudi with Western/modernist ideas to produce a concept that he felt was more attuned to the contemporary world. Iqbal considered himself a follower of Sufi tradition, but for him, Sufism contained two dominant strands. The first one, which he derided as ‘pantheistic’ was represented by the philosophy of the twelfth-century mystic Ibn-e Arabi and his concept of wahdat-ul wujood. This approach demanded that the individual dissolve their personality into a collective/divine self. Iqbal found this approach unacceptable, derided it as quietist and decadent and blamed it (along with greed and indolence) as the primary reason for the decline of Muslims. The Sufism he advocated was beholden to the thirteenth-century mystic Jalaluddin Rumi, whose method he considered ‘active’. In his understanding, the passivity of Ibn-e Arabi and his followers had reduced religious subjecthood to ‘nothingness’. Instead, following Sufi thinkers like Rumi and Attar, he placed the human on an evolutionary continuum, the ultimate end of which was God. One of the best-regarded masters of the Sufi tradition is Mansour al-Hallaj, the ninth-century mystic whose pronouncement of Ana-al Haq (‘I am the Truth’) was misinterpreted as apostasy (‘I am Truth’ was taken to mean ‘I am God’) by the Abbasid caliph Al-Muqtadir, leading to Hallaj’s execution. The Ibn-e Arabi Sufis interpreted Hallaj’s statement as saying that he had drowned himself in the divine. Iqbal begged to differ, suggesting ‘the true interpretation of [Hallaj’s] experience, therefore, is not a drop slipping into the sea, but the realization and bold affirmation … of the reality and permanence of the human ego in a profounder personality’. In other words, rather than seeing the drop as dissolving in the ocean, Iqbal encouraged the human to see the ocean in the drop they symbolized. This could be done only if the drop saw itself as unique. Other modernist thinkers had made similar statements, but Iqbal wished to locate the ego alongside a steadfast belief in the divine. A simple arithmetic may explain things: For Iqbal, the modernist notions of ego plus the spiritual understanding of the divine plus submission to it equalled a strong khudi. The world for Iqbal was ever evolving, and in order to achieve their potential, humans needed to evolve with it: Ye kaayenaat abhi naa-tamaam hai shaayad Ke aa rahi hai damaadam sadaa-e kun-fayakooN This universe is still a work in progress maybe For there still echo commands of ‘become’ and ‘be’ Modernity was everywhere. It was transforming modes of production and economic activity, socio-political relationships, power equations and human psychology. To remain contemporary, relevant and inventive, human beings had to transform themselves, without losing their identity, their sense of self. Khudi was the force that allowed humans to evolve alongside the world, without losing their identity. Iqbal’s Khudi: A Critical Analysis Iqbal’s concept of khudi was an important intervention in Sufi debates. He framed a binary between the passive Sufis (where he also placed the notable fourteenth-century poet Hafez, criticising his work as a cup that was ‘full of the poison of death’) and the active ones (where he placed Rumi, who he considered his spiritual teacher). One is not very clear whether this bifurcation was a result of a near-deliberate misinterpretation of the symbolism of Farsi poetry, which might have emerged from an unacknowledged influence of Western philosophy. Iqbal’s thought was a constant attempt to understand Eastern philosophy in light of Western ideas and vice versa. Occasionally, he did succumb to the tendency to evaluate one system according to the yardsticks of the other. For example, his critics have commented on the fact that often, Iqbal’s concept of khudi was excessively beholden to the ideas of the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes, who saw reason as being materially anchored. They implied that despite Iqbal’s protestations, his khudi is mostly a Western derivative. They also faulted his excessive preoccupation with reconceptualizing Islamic ideas in the age of colonialism. Likewise, while Iqbal’s s idealism and optimism breathes life into the concept of khudi, it is difficult not to see in his articulation a sense of impatience with those who are cheated and defeated by circumstance. Studying the corpus of Iqbal’s poetry and prose on khudi, one cannot help feeling that he was needlessly scornful of contemporary Muslims and Muslim polity. Iqbal inhabited a world where the global Muslim psyche was in retreat. The empires of the Middle East were being routed in battle after battle by European powers. In the subcontinent, the space for Muslim self-expression was shrinking with every political compromise struck between the Indians and the British, as Indians grappled with the inevitability of decolonization. Moreover, Iqbal perceived Muslims as having become passive, cowardly and whiny. In short, they could use an injection of the right kind of khudi, which he was ready to administer. One could be forgiven for thinking that some of of Iqbal’s verses that excoriated Muslims for being lazy and past-beholden were needlessly hectoring, arrogant and judgmental. To return to the sher that we began this chapter with, two of Iqbal’s ideas are on display in that verse: his conviction that adherence to the principles of truth, morality and action can overcome misfortune, and his implication that taqdeer (fate) was nothing but an excuse. In this sher and other ruminations on selfhood, Iqbal is positioning khudi against Sufi ideas of fana, where the individual sacrifices the self to achieve the divine. Iqbal saw khudi as the ocean itself, albeit in a drop, as the earlier verses in Saqi Naama show. He elaborates further in the matla of one of his ghazals: Khudi vo bahr hai jis ka koi kinaara nahiN Tu aabjoo ise samjha agar to chaara nahiN Selfhood is a boundless ocean without shore Be not foolish; think of it a stream no more It is not as if Iqbal was unfamiliar with the structural constraints faced by the masses. He was aware of the depredations of capitalism, and the ways in which the owners of wealth rendered the efforts of the working class fruitless. We may recall his clarion words in Khizr-e Raah (The Way of the Prophet): Banda-e mazdoor ko ja kar mera paighaam de Khizr ka paighaam kya hai ye payaam-e kaayenaat Ai ki tujh ko kha gaya sarmaayadaar-e heelagar Shaakh-e-aahoo par rahi sadiyoN talak teri baraat Convey my message to the toiling labourer It is not the prophet’s word, but the word of the universe You who were swallowed whole by the cunning capitalist Your wealth was as if pierced on the antlers of a deer What then caused him to discount the real obstacles faced by those whose problem was not one of self-realization, but the mere act of keeping their body and soul together? Could he not summon up some more empathy for those victims of capitalism and racism who were not so much being struck down by fate as being held back by structural barriers to mobility? The puzzle of Iqbal must remain unresolved in this respect. It is worthwhile reiterating that Iqbal’s German sojourn had put him in close touch with the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche. He was too much of an original thinker to be beholden to another philosopher’s ideas, but the idea of khudi as articulated by him owes at least some of its colour to the Nietzschean idea of self-improvement as man strives to transform into Superman. Unlike Nietzsche, however, Iqbal locates the fulcrum of selfhood in the belief in God. In his words: Khudi ka sirr-e-nihaaN laa-ilaaha-illallaah Khudi hai tegh fasaaN laa-ilaaha-illallaah The secret origin of the self: ‘There is no God but Allah’ The self is a sword, its whetstone: ‘There is no God but Allah’ Iqbal wants it every way. On the one hand, the Western idea of individualism animates khudi, but on the other hand, Iqbal is clear that without adherence to the protocols of faith and spirituality (which are essentially collectivist), the individual cannot achieve their potential. Likewise, while he is sympathetic to the idea that powerful structural forces are arrayed against the subalterns, he is not averse to some ‘you are responsible for your own misfortune’ finger wagging.
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