Daily Times

I believe that Gabriel’s wing is a metaphor indicating the closest proximity with the Creator where even the wings of the Arch-angel burn under intense celestial light.

Allama Iqbal has been my first love. As a student, while returning to Lahore from my hometown after weekends or vacations, I would not enter the city without first paying homage at Iqbal’s mausoleum, which fell on my way to the college. I would serenely squat at the foot of his grave and recite verses from Baal-e-Gibriel; venting my heart out in a manner I never did before or after. It thrilled me to see Iqbal confronting God in varying moods, ranging from Man’s severe indictment against Him to questioning Him for meanings for which there are no answers to even holding him responsible for the riddle of existence till the angry mood gradually dissolves into utter humility. He then finds solace by bowing to His will, which must always prevail.

Iqbal’s Ghazals, in which he throws the gauntlet at God Himself and confronts Him with great questions of existence, particularly fascinated me. In them, I found a strange interplay of love between two love-birds, in which one of the lovers tries to seek the attention of his beloved by posing his affected annoyance over some matter to get his attention. But, on finding him cold, he does some other tricks. Finding him still unmoved, he turns his face away, as if expecting the Creator to come down from His high pedestal to coo and woo him. It never happens but in the process, the answers automatically flow out from this confrontation for the discerning readers.

The nerves and audacity to confront the Creator on a typically human level were something, which only a person of Iqbal’s genius could think of. No person of lesser calibre than that of Iqbal could perform this feat. All great poets raise questions, letting the posterity find their answers because there can never be one answer to a situation in a world in which everything is in flux. This is the finest poetic trick, which pre-eminently suited the genius of Iqbal, the poet-philosopher.

I believe that Gabriel’s wing is a metaphor indicating the closest proximity with the Creator where even the wings of the Arch-angel burn under intense celestial light and heat of the Divine presence. Moulana Zafar Ali Khan has beautifully used this metaphor in this meaning in one of his great poems.

Iqbal’s way in Baal-e-Gibriel is to raise a question in a way, which masquerades the answer, but he leaves it to the wisdom of his reader to decipher it for himself. This is the height of his poetic craft. He insists that the answer should not be direct but it should emanate from the question itself like a game of hide and seek wherein the aesthetics of his art lies. As a poetic craftsman, he is comparable to none in the world, for which he freely employs his dexterous skill in using imagery, allusions, metaphors, similes, hyperbole, allegory and symbolism with a command and mastery hitherto not found in Urdu or Persian literature.

Baal-e-Gibriel contains the finest of Iqbal’s Urdu poetry. It consists of ghazals, poems, quatrains, epigrams and displays the vision and intellect necessary to foster sincerity and firm belief. The work contains 15 ghazals addressed to God and 61 ghazals and 22 quatrains dealing with the ego, faith, love, knowledge, intellect and freedom. The poet recalls the past glory of Muslims as he deals with contemporary political problems.

The method of dialogue is the most effective of all styles in which in a session of question and answers the theme is laid bare with all its pros and cons. The same method was employed by poets, including Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Hafiz and Rumi, with great success. The same technique is employed by Iqbal in his other works, ranging from “Shikwa” and “Jawab Shikwa,” “Peer-o-Mureed”(Peer Romi and Mureed Hindi, which in effect are Iqbal’s own doubts and their answers by his spiritual mentor Moulana Rome), “Gibraiel and Iblees,” “Iblees ki Majlis e Shoora” and in most parts of “Javid Nama.” All these poems can be included in the best literature in the world.

Iqbal is one of the greatest literary icons in whom poetry and philosophy produce a blend, which is rarely found in world literature. It is often debated whether he excels as a poet or as a philosopher, and one has to conclude that he excels in both as a poet and as a philosopher. Philosophy lends depth while poetry lends beauty and their blend creates the highest form of literature. I, however, find it difficult to encompass all aspects of his poetic art in the small space of this article.

Since Baal-e-Gibriel is my subject, and Man’s confrontation with God is my special emphasis, therefore by way of illustration, I take the privilege of quoting two poems from Baal e Gibriel, one illustrating this dialogue between Man and God, and the other between Gibriel and Satan. There are a number of its English translations, but the one I have selected has been ably done by Naeem Siddiqui to whom I owe my gratitude:

“Arise, and soar with the sun’s new-born rays,

To breathe new life into dying nights and days.”

“If the stars are astray,

The heavens are Thine, not mine;

Why should I fret about the world?

The world is Thine, not mine.

“If Thy world is cold,

Devoid of the warmth of passion,

Whose fault is it, my Lord?

That world is Thine, not mine.

“How dared he defy Thee,

At the dawn of life?

It was he who was

Thy confidant,

It is Thy secret, not mine.

“The apostle is Thine, and Gabriel,

And so is the Holy Word,

But whose life does the Holy Word concern?

Is it Thine or mine?

“Man is the star that brightens

Thy lonely, desolate world;

Will the eclipse of this star

Be a loss of Thine or mine?

____________________

Gabriel:

“Hail my old friend,

How is the world of sight and sound?

Satan:

“Pain and passion; quest and yearning.

Gabriel:

“Thou never talkest of anything but the heavens.

Is there no cure for thy constant pain?

Satan:

“Thou knowest not, alas, the secret of my pain!

The loss I have suffered, has increased my passion more-,

How silent is this world; desolate and wild!

I cannot ever live here; I cannot!

For one whose despair throbs in the heart of the universe,

What is better—despair, or hope?

Gabriel:

“By thy refusal thou hast lost thy place in heaven-

And disgraced the angels in the eyes of the Lord.

Satan:

“My courage gave a speck of dust the impulse to grow;

My cunning is the fabric of man’s intellect.

Thou watchest the battle of good and evil, safely ashore,

And who is battered by the storm—thou or I?

Ask God, if thou hast the time to ask:

Whose blood gave colour to Adam’s inglorious tale?

I am a thorn in the Almighty’s mighty heart,

And thou but mumblest His praise day and night.”

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence