DR Javaid Iqbal’s autobiography Apna Gariban Chaak was published in 2003. Within a year or so he brought out a new volume, a collection of his miscellaneous writings, under the title Jehan-i-Javaid, which he insists should be treated as an added volume to his autobiography. Flipping through the volume it seems that his plea is, ‘what we think goes to make our inner life.’ His writings, being the record of his changing thoughts, should well be considered as part of his autobiography.
Dr Javaid Iqbal’s writings of his early years speak of his involvement in literature. In that period he’s more seriously involved in writing plays. He has also written a few short stories, at least two, which have been included in the volume under discussion.
Soon after partition of the subcontinent, Dr Javaid Iqbal is seen engaged in a fight against the progressives, whose interpretation of partition had triggered a heated controversial debate in Pakistan. Significantly, Dr Javaid, leaving aside progressive writings, chooses to target in particular Manto’s short story Khaul Dau as a specimen of Takhribi Adab. Here his hostile judgment appears more in tune with the thinking of Chaudhry Mohammad Husain and Shorish Kashmiri rather than with the consensus of opinion of the literary world. The two stalwarts of rightist thinking in those years were least concerned with literary criteria. They had a moralistic-cum-patriotic yardstick to judge literature by.
Dr Javaid Iqbal tells us that while engaged in a talk with Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, they had agreed on a plan to institute a writers’ censor board with the approval of the Progressive Writers Conference. This board, he explained, would have the authority to censor all literature in order to keep a check on Takhribi trends in literary writings. Thank God, the plan did not materialize, otherwise the writers themselves would have been held responsible for laying the foundation of examining literature in Pakistan.
But Dr Javaid Iqbal’s literary involvement did not last for long. In fact, his was a different kind of mind with an aptitude more for philosophical thoughts and concepts than for literary pursuits. Perhaps his foreign tours for acquiring higher education helped him to discover his real aptitude. His researcher Sasha Khan has dug out a letter that he had written to Manto telling him ‘his passion for drama writing has subsided, and now he would be engaged in Islamic philosophy and Fiqah’.
In fact, even when immersed in play writing, he had betrayed his aptitude for philosophical ideas and concepts. While writing plays he coined for himself a definition of drama: “The act of dialogue writing turns into drama only when some elements of mystery or supernatural makes their way into it.” He wrote a number of plays bearing in mind this particular concept. Ironically, he impresses us more with his plays, which are a departure from this idea. For instance, his Magarmuch ka Boot is purely a realistic drama with no element of mystery or supernatural. Still, it can be read with the same interest as a socially relevant play. And despite the fact that so many years have gone since the play was first written, its social relevance has not dimmed.
The concluding part of the volume consists of three articles written in recent years. Here we find Dr Javaid Iqbal as a mind thinking deeply on problems Pakistanis are faced with.
In one article he has discussed art and poetry from an Islamic viewpoint. He finds it easy to dismiss Maulana Maudoodi’s pronouncements on the subject. But he has to be attentive to what Iqbal says in this respect. However, after quoting him elaborately he wonders that Plato too has expressed the same kind of views on the subject. One may infer from this that Plato’s influence was very much at work when Iqbal was trying to explain the meaning of the arts from an Islamic standpoint.
Dr Javaid Iqbal, in the end, approves of the Sufis’ liberal interpretation of Islam, which helped poetry, music and dance to find a place in Muslim culture.
The article presented as a dialogue with history ends on a note of disillusionment. Here he poses a question: Has Pakistan been able to develop into an Islamic, democratic and welfare state organized on modern lines? And his answer seems to be: “History has a ready reply, ‘no’. Now what is there left for me to talk about?”
It is this kind of frustration which has prompted him to approve of the terrorist acts of extremist groups existing in the Islamic world. Terrorism for Islam’s sake — that is how he thinks now. And he is frustrated to see that God is not helpful enough to these devoted souls. This situation, he feels, asks for a new version of Iqbal’s Shikwa, for a new complaint to God for His indifference to Muslim terrorists
DR Javaid Iqbal’s autobiography Apna Gariban Chaak was published in 2003. Within a year or so he brought out a new volume, a collection of his miscellaneous writings, under the title Jehan-i-Javaid, which he insists should be treated as an added volume to his autobiography. Flipping through the volume it seems that his plea is, ‘what we think goes to make our inner life.’ His writings, being the record of his changing thoughts, should well be considered as part of his autobiography.
