Daily Times

Every country in the world has a famous city, place or town, which is famous for its history, and in Pakistan this place is tagged with the one and only Lahore. There are so many places in Lahore that tell a lot about the country’s past and one such place is the Allama Iqbal Museum which is an eye catching white colonial building with an impressive garden at the front.

This building previously was known as Javed Manzil named after his son Javed Iqbal.

It’s situated on a dilapidated historical road of Lahore in Garhi Shahu. On the one side we can see this museum and on the other side is the Cairns Railway Hospital. Very interestingly, this museum was declared a Pakistani national monument in 1977 and later the government changed its name to Iqbal Museum in 1984. Converting this building into a museum was a tribute to the great poet.

This museum covers the historical period from 1877 to 1938, and contains handwritten drafts of Iqbal’s works, photographs, certificates, letters written by him or written to him, awards and medals and educational degrees. There is a library and nine galleries in the museum. However, this museum does not have any sound items related to Iqbal. The famous poet of sub-continent Muhammad Iqbal lived here in this building for just three years, and also died here on April 21, 1938.

The museum covers the historical period from 1877 to 1938, and contains Iqbal’s handwritten drafts besides his photographs, certificates, letters, awards and medals, and educational degrees. There are nine galleries and a library in the museum

Iqbal lived most of his life in Lahore. Originally, he was born in Sialkot, a city that is famous for sports goods for international market, and then he moved to Government College, Lahore for pursing his education and lived in a hostel. As the story goes and as per my research work, he also lived in Lahore’s Bhatti Gate and before shifting to Javed Manzil he lived near McLeod Road. Interestingly, wherever he lived, the place became famous for myths and mysteries.

Coming back to the museum which remains open every day from 9am to 4pm, but sadly not many people visit the Javed Manzil to catch glimpses of the relics of the great thinker and poet even on his birth anniversary which lies on November 9 and death anniversary on April 21 every year though the entry is absolutely free. Mostly, the younger generation is not aware of this historic building. Even schools or university curriculum’s do not cover information about the Iqbal Museum. For this very purpose, I conducted a brief survey, in which I asked my friends and some school going kids about this famous building, but they all seemed uninterested.

My request to the government of Punjab is to arrange school or college trips, so that the younger generation can learn, explore and research about their national great heroes, however anyone who visits Lahore must visit this museum if heshe is interested to learn about Allama Iqbal’s lifestyle.

While concluding this write up, hereby, I want to make public some important points about Iqbal, which I observed from this building and also during discussions with some historians who write extensively on Iqbal’s life. In Pakistan, Iqbal is celebrated like every great man and various educational institutions, roads, parks and other infrastructure is named after him. Just to make my readers informed that he was the one who wrote in India, “Saray jahan se acha Hindustan hamara” one of the most popular and crowd-pleasing Indian patriotic poems of all time.

On the other hand, if we talk about the ideology of Pakistan, as it was started during the 1960s, the father of that ideology was designated to be Allama Muhammad Iqbal, poet and philosopher. Many historians and leading intellectuals of Pakistan claim that Iqbal’s poetry was to create emotions of nationalism and Pan-Islamism after his return from Europe. Here I am not denying the importance of Allama Iqbal as a poet and as a philosopher. All I am saying is that we need to project a balanced image of Iqbal and refrain from exaggerated history.

The writer is a social and political activist based in Lahore and can be reached at salmanali088@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 11^th 2017.