Alama Muhammad Iqbal

Allama Dr. Sir Mohammad Iqbal is one of most outstanding poets, writers, intellectuals and thinkers or theologist of modem times.

Iqbal was born at Sialkot on November 9, 1887. He held a brilliant academic record. He did his Masters in Philosophy from Government College, Lahore and joined there as a lecturer. He left for Europe in 1905 and studied Philosophy and Law at the Trinity College, Cambridge, Lincolin's Inn, London and the Munich University. He was awarded a 'Ph. D' by the Munich University.

He returned home in 1908 and rejoined service in the Government College, Lahore. He resigned after sometime and started practicing Law. He was elected Member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly in 1926 for three years. In 1930 Iqbal was elected President of the Muslim League session held at Allahabad. In 1931 he attended the Round Table Conference which met in London to frame a constitution for India and took active Part in its various committees.

He was the first to give a concrete shape to the Muslim aspirations in India for 'a separate homeland'. In his Presidential Address at the Annual Session of the Muslim League at Allahbad (1930) he boldly asserted the Muslim demand for the creation of a Muslim India within India, and said "I would like to see the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State".

It was Iqbal's fervent appeal which persuaded the Qaid-e-Azam in 1934 to return from England and lead the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistan Sub-continent in their struggle for constitutional rights and it was in his letters to the Qaid-e-Azam that he elaborated his scheme in its political as well as cultural context. He succeeded in convincing the Qaid-e-Azam that Pakistan was the only solution to the Political problems of the Muslims of India, and it was on the foundations laid by Iqbal that the Muslim League’s historic Pakistan Resolution of 1940.

He believed, on the one hand, in the emancipation and freedom of the Muslims of the Indo-Pakistan Sub-continent and on the other, he argued for the unity of Muslim nations all-over the world. Iqbal's political philosophy is not atomistic but organic in that it implied the formation of an association of the Muslim countries to betten their own lot and be the upholder of peace and justice throughout the World. His verses in Urdu and Persian and his monumental treatises have been translated into almost all the important languages of the world and found wide recognition in Iran, Turkdy, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Italy, USSR, etc.

He died on April 21, 1938 at Lahore and was laid to rest near Badshahi Mosque. An academy named after him has been established by the Government of Pakistan to promote and disseminate the messages and teachings of Allama Iqbal.