3pm-6pm at Ahsan Memorial.

Khurram Ali Shafique discussed the mysteries of Iqbal and shed new light based on his research on the two popular poems of Baang-e-Darra; Khizar-e-Raah and Tuloo-e-Islam in this session. This session explores a fresh insight for analyzing the poems of Iqbal and continues the exploration of the themes running through the various pieces of poetry in Baange Dara. Exploration of these themes indicates that there is an inter link which may be missed by considering each piece as different. The themes get reemphasized repeatedly through the poetry.

Khizr-e-Raah is a long poem in Baang-e-Daraa, in the form of a dialogue between the poet and Khizr, in which poet at the time of night when came to know that Khizr is in a pleasant mood and is ready to answer his questions then asks few important questions about Khizr’s desert life, life, empire, revenue and labor, and the Islamic world.

Khizr then answers these all questions in detail one by one. About his desert life he says that the change that comes in life is very necessary in order to strengthen the fountain of life and the secret of eternal life is being hidden in this revolution of time and space.

For the life, Khizr states that life is nothing in slavery but is an Ocean in freedom and thus one should have the enough courage to create his own life as life is defined in three words, a goal, the tool to reach the goal and the resistance to reach the goal and one has to be through all these in order to get the real meanings of life.

Describing the government or empire, Khizr actually describes that the modern western nations are actually trying to induce the sleep to their people by changing the standards of democracy.

At this point, one has to understand the ideology of Iqbal about the democracy. Iqbal strongly believed that Islam presents the model of spiritual democracy and praised the British for bringing back the democracy to India, which was initially under the rule of kings but then Iqbal also clarified it through his writings that after the first world war, the western nations are not further following the model of democracy and they have changed the real meanings of democracy. The fourteen point documents by President Johnson in which he had favored the Turks for their right of sovereignty was classified and just came out after a year. That year between 1922 and 1923 the literature in the western countries was brought to another standard which could be understood by the termination of Toin. B. from the King’s college of London just due to a reason that he wrote a paper in which he presented the idea that Turks were somehow right in their claims and Greeks shouldn’t have done what they did, and the college was sponsored by Greeks.

So, according to Iqbal this was the beginning of another type of colonialism and western nations were not further able to provide a real democracy.

About the revenue and labor, Iqbal had given an indication about the Russian revolution in the voice of Khizr however he was himself wasn’t in the favor of that revolution. When Khizr answers the poet that the whole efforts of labors are ruined when they are just paid like a charity and the time for change has been arrived. One has to come out of the slavery and discover himself.

About the Islamic world, Khizr states that Muslims have to stand together for their sake and there, Iqbal gives another indication that Muslim civilization is going to be born from its ashes again and one has to believe on fate as we believe “La Yukhlif-ul Miaad”.

Tuloo-e-Islam which is a very next poem starts from the ending point of Khizr-e-Raah and it seems that the Sun of the morning of that night where poet was talking to Khizr, has been risen. There are nine stanzas in this poem and at the end of each stanza, there is a separate couplet, in this way these nine couplets represent the nine stanzas and these nine couplets when are being compared with the nine couplets of Tarana-e-Hindi then a parallel imagery is seemed to be followed in both of them where in one poem he is giving this imagery for the country and in other one the same imagery is for Islamic nation.