Pierre Bayard is a French author and professor of literature. Some years ago he published a book, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. In order to put into practise one thing he is said to have humorously argued, I am talking about Bayard here without having read him. In fact, what I am quoting from Bayard is something Umberto Eco, the renowned fiction writer and critic, mentions in one of his conversations. Bayard said that he never read Ulysses by James Joyce, but knows it well enough to teach to his students. He could tell them that it is a story set in Dublin, Ireland, based on an internal monologue, has a Jewish protagonist, and everything happens in a single day. And all this will be correct despite Bayard not having read Joyce.

Literary canon formation has its own compulsions and a dynamic that is specific to an age and culture. But as a result, many quotes from the work in question or about that work by others become popular in conferences and classrooms as well as cafés and living rooms. Besides, some simplified commentaries are made available through journalistic writings or fluffy debates to help us nod confidently when that work is mentioned in a social situation.

However, the first thing that unwittingly came to my mind while reading about Bayard was the derisive criticism of the poetry and person of Allama Muhammad Iqbal coming from some members of my own clan of liberal and progressive friends. Perhaps this submission needs a qualification. I am not speaking about those readers, writers, poets, and critics of Iqbal who regard or disregard his work on sheer poetic merit.

The ones I am speaking about are either familiar with a very small part of Iqbal’s exhaustive works in both poetry and prose or show their disdain for him without ever having read his work at all. In general, most such people are not particularly interested in literature. They are interested in politics and sociology. They may not express any opinion on Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Mir Anis or Nazir Akbarabadi. But they have a definite opinion on Iqbal. He is criticised for being communal instead of being secular and being more interested in a Muslim renaissance than the freedom of India as a whole. He is disparaged for the religious symbolism in his work and transporting the idea of Friedrich Nietzsche’s superman to his ideas of khudi [self-awareness] and mard-i-momin [the formidable man of faith]. Also, some claim that Iqbal’s interests and concerns are narrow as compared to the cosmopolitan and universal interests of other poets and writers such as Ghalib from his predecessors, and Rabindranath Tagore from his contemporaries.

Many of those who criticise Iqbal for being communal also place emphasis on Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah being secular. What this means is that a poet who is continuously eulogising India in his work, but is simultaneously concerned with the condition of his own community within India is termed communal, but a politician who agrees to the communal partition of British India — whatever conditions he may have been put through — can still be secular. Iqbal espoused multiple identities and therefore multiple sensibilities and hence multiple concerns. As far as borrowing from Nietzsche for a Muslim renaissance is concerned, the whole idea is more about an internal transformation of an individual than a collective ambition of a people. One may disagree with that, but calling it akin to harbouring fascism is misplaced.

Speaking of Iqbal’s narrow interests and his religious symbolism, if Dante Alighieri and John Milton are simply introduced as great poets rather than great Christian poets even after being such devout Christians in their work and person, why should Iqbal be called communal? Also, Iqbal’s contemporary, the greatest Bangla poet, writer, musician, and educationist Tagore, is far more critical of Islam and Muslims in his writings on many occasions than Iqbal ever was towards any other faith or people.

Iqbal’s work is at the crossroads where his own Indo-Persian and Vedic civilisations meet a modern post-enlightenment Europe. He is equally concerned with the universal human condition, India’s independence from colonialism, and the internal strife and external stresses faced by his community of South Asian Muslims. Reject him, if you wish, but read him first.

The columnist is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 12th, 2017