Patriotism

See also Chapter 41, 'Sir Syed Ahmad Khan' in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality

In his poem ‘The Child’s Prayer’ (written in the early 20th century and anthologized in The Call of the Marching Bell in 1924), Iqbal compares the homeland with a garden.

Another serene example of this metaphor is ‘The Indian Anthem’ (not to be confused with the official anthem of India written by Rabindranath Tagore), written in 1904 (see Chapter 41 in A Novel of Reality). Here, Iqbal describes India as a garden and himself as one of its nightingales (it is interesting to note that he doesn’t compare himself or other citizens with plants and trees, which are earth-rooted, but with birds, which make nests in the garden but remain free to soar into the expanse of the boundless sky).

Hence the analogy between country and Paradise – and the union of matter and spirit – persists throughout the anthem: the highest mountain of the world guards the country and is a “neighbour” of the sky, and rivers flowing out of the heavenly mountain make the country an “envy of Paradise”. The earliest settlers chose this land not just because they were looking for greener pastures but because they could see the heavenly connections, later corroborated by history: the ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt and Rome have vanished because they worshipped false gods, but their contemporary civilization of India has outlived them against all odds.

The analogy between the garden and the homeland persists even in the later poems. For instance, in ‘The Dawn of Islam’ (written in 1923), a voice addresses Iqbal as a nightingale and asks him to inspire the inmates of the garden (see Chapter 48 in A Novel of Reality).

On those occasions where he compares the inhabitants of his country with flowers, he usually emphasizes what he describes elsewhere as “the inner synthesis of life”. For instance, in ‘The Child’s Prayer’, the emphasis is on the fragrance of the flower, which reaches beyond the confines of the garden.