Allama Iqbal - The Brahmin Khalifa of Pakistan:
Sitting (from left): Raj Kishori Rawal, d/o Amarnath Sapru; grandmother of Iqbal, and Pandit J.N. Rawal - h/o Raj Kishori.
Ref: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070630/asp/opinion/story_7992715.asp
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By Khushwant Singh:
I am beholden to P.V. Rawal of Jammu for sending me a photograph
of Allama Iqbal’s Kashmiri Brahmin family taken in Sialkot in 1931. At this
time Iqbal was in his mid-fifties. He had already risen to the top as the
greatest Urdu poet, at par with Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. Although he was
proud of his Brahmin descent, he had nothing to say about his Hindu relations.
In this picture, the elderly lady seated in the middle is his grandmother,
Indirani Sapru, nicknamed Poshi, wife of Pandit Kanhaya Lal Sapru. The man
standing on the left in a shawl is Iqbal’s cousin, Amarnath Sapru; note the
close resemblance to the poet.
The family traces its origin to one Birbal. They lived in
the village of Saprain (hence, the surname Sapru) on Shopian-Kulgam road. Then
the family moved to Srinagar where Iqbal and most of his cousins were born.
Birbal had five sons and a daughter. The third one, Kanhaya Lal, and his wife,
Indirani, had three sons and five daughters. Kanhaya Lal was Iqbal’s
grandfather. His son, Rattan Lal, converted to Islam and was given the name Nur
Mohammad. He married a Muslim woman — Imam Bibi. The Saprus disowned Rattan Lal
and severed all connections with him.
There are different versions of Rattan
Lal’s conversion. The one given to me by Syeda Hameed, who has translated some
of Iqbal’s poetry into English, maintains that Rattan Lal was the revenue
collector of the Afghan governor of Kashmir. He was caught embezzling money.
The governor offered him a choice: he should either convert to Islam or be
hanged. Rattan Lal chose to stay alive. When the Afghan governor fled from
Kashmir to escape its takeover by the Sikhs, Rattan Lal migrated to Sialkot.
Imam Bibi was evidently a Sialkoti Punjabi.
Iqbal was born in Sialkot on November 9, 1877. As often
happens, the first generation of converts are more kattar than others. Iqbal
thus grew up to be a devout Muslim. It is believed that once he called on his
Hindu grandmother, then living in Amritsar. But there is no hard evidence of
their meeting and of what passed between them; Iqbal did not write about it.
Though he had many Hindu and Sikh friends and admirers, he felt that the future
of Indian Muslims lay in having a separate state of their own. Iqbal was the
principal ideologue of what later become Pakistan. Iqbal’s mother-tongue was
Punjabi but he never wrote in it. He used only Persian and Urdu, as did many
Urdu poets before him.
There are many aspects of Iqbal’s personal life which have
not been fully researched by his biographers. We know he married two or three
times and that his favourite son was Javed, who became a judge of the Lahore
high court. Iqbal’s affair with Atia Faizi of Bombay when they met in London is
well-known. There must have been some correspondence between them to show the
kind of relationship they had. When in Heidelberg, he was taken up by his young
German tutor, Emma Veganast. This secret was divulged by the mayor of
Heidelberg in a speech in which he named a part of the bank of the river Neckar
after him — Iqbal Weg.
The Pakistani ambassador to Germany had the mayor’s speech
mentioning the girl’s name suppressed. Iqbal and Emma continued to write to
each other till the end of his life. The correspondence should be available in
archives in Lahore and Heidelberg. Lovers of Iqbal, among whom I count myself,
deserve to be presented with a fuller picture of their idol. We have
biographies of Rabindranath Tagore revealing all his love affairs but none of
the Allama telling us of the kind of man he was.
Good !
ReplyDeleteDear sir,it is failed attempt to misguide common people on personality of iqbal.he was known world widely as scholar and has conyact with people all over the world through letters and telegram.atiya and emma were taking help from him as students of spirituality and consider him as teacher and relationship of guru disciple is very sacred even in hinduism.yes he belong to brahman family of kashmir but in islam there os concept of brotherhood.secondly even half blind can say that there is no iqbal in given picture
ReplyDeleteIn Pakistan there is no one scholarly study of any subject. Whims and wills of the influentials ( intellectually, financially and politically)passes for fact. We like our heroes flawless, larger than life, immaculate and on a pedestal.Hence his status in our history. He was a great poet, but his titles of Hakeem ul Ummet, Shair e Mashraq etc. are exaggerations. His was a rasikh ul aqeeda (devout) muslim but no philosopher. Most who claim him to be a great philosopher can't even name title of his doctoral dissertation or contribution to philosophy.
ReplyDeleteAllama Iqbal had DNA of Kashmiri Brahimin This no body can deny. That is one of great reason for bringing spirituality in his writings. In the times when Iqbal lived, almost all Kashmiri pandits had excelled in Persian and Urdu.
ReplyDelete