DESPITE some controversies, Saleem Ahmed (1927-1983) is ranked among prominent and influential critics of Urdu. When his book Iqbal Aik Shaaer, or Iqbal a poet, first appeared in 1978, it sent tremors across the country. The book was heatedly debated and mostly condemned. The author came under intense fire.

Interestingly, both leftists and rightists discussed the book and both severely criticised it, even passed contemptuous remarks, save for a few. The accusations levelled against the author varied. Some alleged, covertly referring to Punjab, Saleem Ahmed was harbouring a racial and provincial prejudice. Some leftists thought Saleem Ahmed was trying to dwarf Iqbal to carve out a better image of Maulana Moudoodi. Lovers of Iqbal’s poetry were furious over Saleem Ahmed’s basic argument of the book: Iqbal’s core issue is death and his poetry is generated from a fear of death, whether death of an individual or that of a nation. Secondly, says Saleem Ahmed, Iqbal emphasised action, but he himself was a “lazy” person and his lethargy caused his “failure in practical life”.

This disagreement with established view on Iqbal was unsettling for many, though, as later on Saleem Ahmed wrote in his intro to the second edition (1987), Iqbal himself had disagreed with many thinkers and scholars that included western scholars, such as, Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Nietzche, Descartes, Bergson, as well as eastern scholars, such as, Ibn-i-Arabi and Fakhruddin Razi. But doing something that Iqbal himself had done — disagreeing — was simply unacceptable for the lovers of Iqbal. But even more strange was the attitude of Safdar Mir, a person of great knowledge and a great supporter of freedom of expression, who wrote, says Saleem Ahmed, that freedom of expression in Pakistan had reached such a height that people like Saleem Ahmed were disparaging Iqbal. Period. What lovers of Iqbal conveniently ignored was that different views on Iqbal were not something new and many scholars had disagreed with Iqbal and even criticised Iqbal’s certain notions as expressed in his The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Those who had taken exception to Iqbal’s certain concepts included scholars like Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Abdul Majid Daryabadi and Maulana Moudoodi.

But Saleem Ahmed’s book intended to stress Iqbal’s status as a poet and he wanted to say that Iqbal the poet was more important than Iqbal the thinker, as the title of the book suggested, and that Iqbal’s philosophy was not infallible. But the book was considered controversial from the very beginning and, as Saleem Ahmed has mentioned, the manuscript of the book was first sent to Iqbal Academy, but it excused itself from publishing the book due to concerns about its contents as it thought the book was ‘anti-Iqbal’.

Now Dr Khalid Nadeem has done a great favour to the readers: he has not only compiled the book with Saleem Ahmed’s intro to the second edition but has also included Saleem Ahmed’s clarifications as given in the second edition. In addition, some annotations, quotations from Iqbal’s letters and excerpts from books by other writers, along with citations, have been made parts of the book. A few of these excerpts explain certain issues, for instance, Iqbal’s notions about death.

In reply to an article published in Shabkhoon, a magazine published from India, Saleem Ahmed had penned some explanatory notes. Khalid Nadeem has incorporated those notes, too. He has also appended in a separate portion three articles by Saleem Ahmed that were not part of the original text and were published elsewhere but are a great help in understanding Saleem’s views on Iqbal and his art. Putting together what Saleem Ahmed wrote on Iqbal is definitely made it easier for the readers to see the complete picture. Readers may realise that Saleem Ahmed was not only a stern critic of Iqbal, but also an admirer who at times praises him wholeheartedly. An index at the back of the book has added value to the work. Published by Lahore’s Collage, it is in fact the third, annotated and updated edition of Saleem Ahmed’s book with the subtitle Aur Deegar Iqbaliyati Tehreeren.

What Khalid Nadeem has tried to do through this work is to establish the idea that Saleem Ahmed’s opinion about Iqbal was multi-faceted. On one hand, Saleem Ahmed seems to criticise Iqbal for certain things but on the other he pays rich tributes to Iqbal.

Dr Khalid Nadeem is a senior scholar and has taught at Sargodha University’s Urdu department. He has some scholarly works to his credit.

Published in Dawn, May 11th, 2026