Iqbal’s ‘Khudi’: a clarion call to revive stagnant society

If we are to make a mark on the world, we have to make our society a knowledge-based one.

These views were expressed by Dr Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui, former vice-chancellor of Karachi University and presently the VC of Ziauddin University.

He was speaking as chief guest at an inter-university declamation contest to mark the birth anniversary of Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal, titled, “Allama Iqbal’s ‘Khudi’ is a clarion call to revive a stagnant nation”. The contest was organised by the Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace at the Beach Luxury Hotel on Friday afternoon.

Dr Siddiqui said that today we were loaded with knowledge but we had no awareness of ourselves in the sense pertaining to Allama Iqbal’s concept of Khudi. November 9, he said, reminded us of a whole lot of things like the national flags fluttering atop houses and national buildings, but these flags should be fluttering in our hearts all the time.

“We have to determine the concept of Khudi, or self, which means tolerance, knowledge and command of the self, tempered with knowledge. We have to have awareness of ourselves, our potentialities and confidence and only then can we be a great nation strengthen Muslim nationhood.”

He regretted that today, we find people from all walks of life on the media, but seldom is an academic seen alongside an anchorperson. “Our welfare depends on the undiluted acquisition of knowledge,” he stressed.

Back in history, Muslims were a great people because alongside expansionism, there was also the proliferation of knowledge, he said.

Justice (Retd) Haziq-ul-Khairi, who presided over the function, stressed man’s relationship with God, which in simple terms meant living as good human beings, something Allama Iqbal emphasized.

He said that the concept of Khudi boiled down to “Rizq-e-Halal”. That, he said, was the first step to ‘Khudi’. If all of us were to go by the concept of Rizq-e-Halal, there would be no need for accountability, he said.

Earlier, Nargis Rehman, chairperson, Pakistan Women’s Foundation for Peace, in her very erudite discourse, said, “Our commemoration of Allama Iqbal’s birth anniversary is at a time which makes the subject highly relevant. The day which should have been a day of remembrance and expression of gratitude to the person who got us a separate homeland, has been converted into a day of protests and strike calls. Even the holiday declared earlier has been withdrawn.”

Outlining the literary achievements of Allama Iqbal, she said that he wrote fifteen major works in prose and poetry in Urdu, English, and Persian like Asrar-e-Khudi, Payam-e-Mashriq and Bang-e-Dara.

She said that his works like “The development of metaphysics” and “The reconstruction of religious thought” were meant to lift intellectually, socially, mentally economically, the depressed Muslim masses of the subcontinent who had lost the legacy of inspiring faith and were reduced to demoralising serfdom.

She said, “He had but one objective in mind which was to lift the Muslim masses of India from their stupor, intellectual paralysis, and social losses.”

It was, she said, the strength and sincerity of his convictions that persuaded Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah to return to India and lead the Muslims. We need Iqbal as much today as in the times that he lived.

There were speeches by young people from various universities of Karachi who displayed ample talent in oratory and maturity of thinking. They spoke both in English and Urdu.

A really remarkable speech was that of Hammad Mukhtar, a blind student of Habib University. His speech was both touching and inspiring as he spoke of conquering his crippling drawback through ‘Khudi’ and said that when people, taking him to be blind, offered to give him alms he bitterly resented and resorted to selling newspapers to sustain himself.

The first prize went to Syed Iqbal Rizvi, Hamdrad University. The second prize went to Javeria Raees, Benazir Bhutto University, Lyari. The third prize went to Kashaaf Iqbal of the University of Karachi. Dr Fatima Hassan was the chief judge.