Author: Muhammad Iqbal
Translator: Khushwant Singh

Publisher: Oxford University Press - OUP

ISBN : 9780195625608

Language : English

-Binding: Paperback

- Pages: 96

- Description:

- This is a rendition of Allamah Muhammad Iqbal’s two long poems Shikwa (Complaint) and Jawab-i-Shikwa (Answer to the Complaint).

- In the the first poem the poet complains to Allah about the downfall of world Muslims and their continuing and humiliating defeats at the hands of the forces of infidels. The second poem is an imagined reply of Allah to the “complaint” of the poet. Shikwa was written in 1909 and Jawab-i-Shikwa in 1913.

- For orthodox Muslims the Shikwa was seen impertinent and bordering on blasphemy in the way Iqbal addresses Allah and in the use of certain terms and phrases (like calling Allah harjai – unfaithful). Some mullahs even declared Iqbal kaffir for daring to write Shikwa. He was obviously perturbed and wrote the ‘Answer to the Complaint’ four years later.

- In the first poem, Iqbal comes out as a spokesman for the beleaguered and battered Muslim community which has lost power and prestige in its own lands. The complainant blames Allah for forsaking the upholders of His message and for their continuing defeats and humiliation at the hands of the foreigners. It was the time when most Muslim political power was lost and nearly all Muslim lands were under the direct grip of European colonialism.

- Briefly, the complainant reminds Allah that it was “them” (the Muslims) who believed in Him when no one in the world did and it was “them” who took His message to the whole world. Allah has forsaken the Muslims despite the sacrifices “they” made over the centuries and given prestige and power to their enemies.

- The “Answer” is an attack on the complainant’s lack of insight. Allah says that the old Muslims won honour and renown in the world because they worked hard, obeyed Allah, acted on His message and were therefore rewarded. Contemporary Muslims, in contrast, are not more than a shadow of their ancestors’ piety and character and hence are themselves to blame for their downfall.

- Allah chastises Muslims for their laziness and ignorance which caused them to lag behind the unbelievers, and says it is not Him who has abandoned them but the other way round. In the end there are some stanzas, in the language of Allah, exhorting Muslims to mend their ways and return to the pious ways of their ancestors, if they want to their rightful place in the comity of nations. If they keep on their ways devious ways, they will always live under the humiliation of slavery, Allah warns.

- The literary merits of the original Urdu poems are apparent to one and all. These are fine examples of the craft of Iqbal. Rhythmic, melodious, strong and beautifully balanced on the established poetic metres. In its message, the poems carry a strong emotion that harks back to the Golden Times in search of hope and inspiration to find solutions to the state of defeated and enslaved Muslim nation.

- A note on the translation:

- Khushwant Singh is recognised as a skilled translator of Urdu and Punjabi (Gormukhi) verse, especially the religious verse. He has done a wonderful job at translating these two difficult Urdu poems. What is refreshing is that he has shunned the use of old and obsolete English terms which some translators into English still adhere to. There is no place for thous, thys, thines, xest, xth, in Khushwan’t translation.

- However, the translator’s attempts to rhyme each stanza to give it a semblance of metered English poem sometimes carry an air of artificiality. Some rhymes are almost forced into the lines at the cost of meaning and loss of eloquence found in the original Udu verse.