Revisiting the Spirit of Pakistan Resolution—IV

What, then, are the possibilities for Pakistan in the twenty-first century? What role can it play in the new Islamic polity that encompasses s one fifth of the world’s inhabitants? Are there any choices Pakistanis need to make? Are there any goals they need to set for themselves? The default case is obvious: do nothing and let others define the way in which future generations would live. But this passivity is not part of Islam’s vibrant message; it is also not a choice any self-respecting Muslim would make. The social, political, economic, and cultural consequences of not making a choice are also unacceptable to a vast majority.

Thus, very first need is to reformulate Pakistan’s foundational philosophy. As previously stated, this reformulation needs to remain anchored in the initial Two Nation Theory which stated that there exist two distinct polities in the Indian subcontinent. The logical expansion of this theory would state that “there exist two distinct polities on earth: Islamic and non-Islamic.” This redefinition is not only important for Pakistan, it is the most basic aspect of all future developments in the Muslim world. Therefore, we need to be extremely careful in its formulation and explanation.

What is being said is not a revolutionary idea; the seeds of this logical expansion of the original “Two Nation Theory” are present in its initial formulation. Iqbal was acutely conscious of this when he stated in 1930 that “what I mean to say is that Muslim society, with its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is, under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture of Islam. The ideas set free by European political thinking, however, are now rapidly changing the outlook of the present generation of Muslims both in India and outside India. Our younger men, inspired by these ideas, are anxious to see them as living forces in their own countries, without any critical appreciation of the facts which have determined their evolution in Europe.”

Note the lucidity of Iqbal’s formulation of the historical currents of his times. He has not only clearly perceived the future forces that will operate on Muslim imagination and pull the Islamic polity into the West’s sphere, he is foretelling what actually happened in the new nation-states. At the same time, Iqbal also understood that the role of Islam in the Muslim world is distinctly different from the role played by Christianity in Europe. He understood the revolt of Luther against the Church as being a revolt against the misuse of Christianity and stated that “Luther was perfectly justified in rising in revolt against this organisation; though, I think he did not realise that in the peculiar conditions which obtained in Europe, his revolt would eventually mean the complete displacement of the universal ethics of Jesus by the growth of a plurality of national and hence narrower systems of ethics. Thus the upshot of the intellectual movement initiated by such men as Rousseau and Luther was the break-up of the one into mutually un-adjusted many, the transformation of a human into a national outlook, requiring a more realistic foundation, such as the notion of country and finding expression through varying systems of polity evolved on national lines, i.e. on lines which recognise territory as the only principle of political solidarity.”

Let us recall that Iqbal is speaking at Allahabad, not Sorbonne, and he is addressing a gathering of Muslims, most of whom were landlords, not intellectuals, but nonetheless men who would lead the struggle of independence. He is uncompromising when it comes to principles. He stated that the “conclusion to which Europe is consequently driven is that religion is a private affair of the individual and has nothing to do with what is called man’s temporal life. Islam does not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter. In Islam God and the universe, spirit and matter, Church and State, are organic to each other. Man is not the citizen of a profane world to be renounced in the interest of a world of spirit situated elsewhere. To Islam matter is spirit realising itself in space and time.”

This, then, is the basis of the new theory: a unified vision, in which there is no separation of the spiritual and the temporal. Iqbal had foreseen that “mutually ill-adjusted [European] States, after trampling over the moral and religious convictions of Christianity, are today feeling the need of a federated Europe, i.e. the need of a unity which the Christian church organisation originally gave them, but which, instead of reconstructing it in the light of Christ’s vision of human brotherhood, they considered it fit to destroy under the inspiration of Luther.”

It is also to Iqbal’s Allahabad Address that we owe one of the finest responses to the latter-day proponents of an enlightened Islam: On that twenty-ninth day of December 1930, Iqbal had proclaimed in a most lucid manner: “A Luther in the world of Islam is an impossible phenomenon”. This is true today, as it was yesterday: “In the world of Islam we have a universal polity whose fundamentals are believed to have been revealed but whose structure, owing to our legists want of contact with the modern world, stands today in need of renewed power by fresh adjustments. I do not know what will be the final fate of the national idea in the world of Islam. Whether Islam will assimilate and transform it, as it has assimilated and transformed before many ideas expressive of a different spirit, or allow a radical transformation of its own structure by the force of this idea, is hard to predict.”

This is what needs to be understood most clearly by all, and especially by those who have idolized Iqbal as the founding father of Pakistan as a nation state; Iqbal clearly understood the historical movement that was “racializing the outlook of Muslims, and thus materially counteracting the humanising work of Islam.” Also note that in his philosophical parlance, the phrase “humanising work of Islam” is not equivalent to what is generally understood by European Humanism. But Iqbal also realized that “the growth of racial consciousness may mean the growth of standards different and even opposed to the standards of Islam”. These currents, which gave birth to racial, territorial and national units, have now reached their ultimate cul-de-sac not only in the Muslim world but in Europe as well.

Future possibilities for Pakistan exist in reference to, and only in reference to, an expansion, both in ideological and geographical sense. The expanded version of the “Two Nation Theory” previously states is not a poet’s fancy, just as the original theory was not; both are historical necessities. What remains, therefore, is to formulate a concrete workplan for this inevitable expansion.

(Concluded)