Number of words: 355

Though the mentality of the Moslem masses and the new growing middle class was shaped essentially by events, Sir Mohamad Iqbal played an important part in influencing the latter and especially the younger generation. The masses were hardly affected by him. Iqbal had begun by writing powerful nationalist poems in Urdu which had become popular. During the Balkan Wars he turned to Islamic subjects. He was influenced by the circumstances then prevailing and the mass feeling among the Moslems, and he himself influenced and added to the intensity of these sentiments. Yet he was very far from being a mass leader; he was a poet, an intellectual and a philosopher with affiliations to the old feudal order; he came from Kashmiri Brahmin stock. He supplied in fine poetry, which was written both in Persian and Urdu, a philosophic background to the Moslem intelligentsia and thus diverted its mind in a separatist direction. His popularity was no doubt due to the quality of his poetry, but even more so it was due to his having fulfilled a need when the Moslem mind was searching for some anchor to hold on to. The old pan-Islamic ideal had ceased to have any meaning; there was no Khilafat and every Islamic country, Turkey most of all, was intensely nationalist, caring little for other Islamic peoples. Nationalism was in fact the dominant force in Asia as elsewhere, and in India the nationalist movement had grown powerful and challenged British rule repeatedly. That nationalism had a strong appeal to the Moslem mind in India, and large numbers of Moslems had played a leading part in the struggle for freedom. Yet Indian nationalism was dominated by Hindus and had a Hinduised look. So a conflict arose in the Moslem mind; many accepted that nationalism, trying to influence it in the direction of their choice; many sympathised with it and yet remained aloof, uncertain; and yet many others began to drift in a separatist direction for which Iqbal’s poetic and philosophic approach had prepared them.

Excerpted from pages 384-385 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru