The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 17
17 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN Khan : It certainly has had considerable effect, but I believe I am right in thinking that it has had more effect in Islamic circles outside of Pakistan - and even amongst Western thinkers - than inside Pakistan. At the time when Iqbal delivered and later published those lectures, he was too much ahead of his time, so far as, what subsequently became, Pakistan was concerned. They made little impress contemporaneously and even later, the younger generation found it easier to get to the inner reality of his thought through his poetry. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam was printed in English and was a purely philosophical dissertation; it did not catch their imagination so easily; it did not fire them to the same degree. I believe Sir Muhammad Iqbal's own endeavour also, certainly later, was to illuminate and fire the thought and imagination rather than to supply philosophical explanations of Islamic cultural, religious and other values. He would fix upon one central theme or idea and express it in a turn of phrase, which can be done much more easily in poetry than in prose, and that would illumine like a flash something for which people had been groping, and when they came upon it they were greatly enthused by it. That is one reason why his poetry has left a much deeper impress upon people's minds than his philosophical dissertations, like The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islamic. Question : I wonder then if you would comment on whether or not he falls within a tradition in the history of Islam in India. May he be considered a typical or a modern culmination of a particular school of thought, or is he the artist who seizes upon a predicament of people in a particular age quite apart from Shah Wali Ullah, for example, or any of the other forerunners of Muslim philosophical thought ? Khan : He no doubt learned a lot and gathered a lot from divines and thinkers like the much revered Shah Wali Ullah and the great Jalaluddin Rumi and he held his own immediate teacher, the late Shamsul Ulema Maulvi Mir Hasan, in great reverence. But so far as his thought is concerned, it had a quality of its own. For example, his thinking exhibited a great deal of German influence; it was not derived altogether from Muslim sources, but wherever it was derived from, he gave it a Muslim colour and clothed it in Muslim values. He was influenced by German thinkers, but not perhaps always in the direction of their own philosophy. He often warned against their tendencies and his appreciation was also outspoken. He seemed to admire Nietzsche's