Rejection of Concept of Whiteman's Burden in the Poetry of Iqbal

Abstract

Allama Iqbal addressed in his poetry major postcolonial issues like identity, culture, stigma of slavery, exploitative European colonialism, unjustified British dominance and imperialistic rule. He repudiates the European claim of superiority pertaining to their values, culture, civilization, race and religion by emphasizing on the superiority and universality of Islamic social and cultural values. His poetry fights against the superiority complex of white men resulting into the inferiority complex of colonized people by narrating the history making exploits and victories of Muslims on both individual and collective level. Iqbal’s poetry traces the shallowness and fast-eroding effect of Western values, culture and civilization. He establishes and nourishes the faith in the strength of Islamic culture and values among the people of his nation. He motivates his Muslim nation to unite against colonial dominance and to develop their code of conduct on these Islamic values. To establish this message of hope and unity, Iqbal has drawn comparisons between Western values and Islamic values, Western civilization and Eastern civilization and present and past conditions of Muslim nation. Since anticolonialism is fighting against the colonizers with their tools, Iqbal has employed the technique of the replacement of White man’s burden with Muslim burden. He says that since Muslims are the trustees of God’s message, it is their duty to spread this enlightenment to the other parts of the world and that’s how they would be able to render the most important religious obligation. It would benefit them as well as the whole humanity. Iqbal is sure that Muslims, performing their religious duty of spreading enlightenment, will contribute peace and prosperity to the world. Iqbal projects him as the only hope for this noble goal of creating harmony and bringing equality to the whole humanity.