Critical Appreciation of the Works of Iqbal
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'The Devil's Parliament'

See also Chapter 97, 'The Devil's Parliament' in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality

‘The Devil’s Parliament, 1936’, included in the posthumously published last volume of Iqbal’s poetry, The Gift of Hejaz (1938), was the last of the longer Urdu poems of Iqbal.

An interesting feature of the poem is that although it consists entirely of a terse dialogue between the Devil and his counselors, focused on an issue at hand, the dialogue still allows us to infer the distinct traits of each counselor – and possibly also the sphere of human activity assigned to him for subverting:

  1. THE FIRST COUNSELOR is confident about the work done by the Devil’s Parliament. Aspirations don’t soar high and exploitation is rife. To the Second Counselor, who is concerned about the rise of democracy, he reminds that Western democracy is a cover they themselves provided to imperialism when the humanity was about to wake up.
  2. THE SECOND COUNSELOR is worried by the rise of democracy.
  3. THE THIRD COUNSELOR is worried by the rise of Bolshevism, since it is destroying the diabolical order. He doesn’t think that fascism could help.
  4. THE FOURTH COUNSELOR is proud of his team for having introduced fascism to compete with Bolshevism in the market of ideas. Already, the news from Italy is favorable.
  5. THE FIFTH COUNSELOR shares the concerns of the Third Counselor. He adds that the politicians of the West, who were tutored by the Devil himself, are losing ground before the Bolsheviks. He addresses the Devil directly but with due respect: “Even He who is generally known among the naïve as the Almighty is not better acquainted with the human nature than you are!”

Critical Appreciation