Friday, October 29, 2010

Hinduism and India

In Javidnama, the first station on Moon is the cave of the sage from ancient India, Vishvamitra. He is immersed in meditation when Rumi and Iqbal arrive there and a light "which could even illuminate shadows" is filling up the cave.

Opening his eyes, Vishvamitra holds a conversation with Rumi and Iqbal, asks nine brief questions to Iqbal and then offers nine "sayings".

It is obvious that Vishvamitra is intended to be the icon of rational-intuitive intelligence, and by implication associating the highest manifestation of this kind of intelligence with the Indian genius.

Also, this placement seems to be correcting the error which some Western scholars had introduced by placing Hinduism under the umbrella category of "religion." Hindus scholars have often argued that Hinduism is different from other world religions and predates them. It is remarkable that the Indian sage is the first apparition on the Sphere of Moon: unmistakably, the cave of Vishvamitra is a sort of "initiation" rite for Iqbal in his journey towards the Ultimate Reality, and comes much before the tablets of prophets.

In his conversation with Iqbal, Vishvamitra mentions an angel whom he saw looking towards the planet earth from a dune on the Moon. The angel foretold the impending independence of the East and said, "It is the moment of rejoicing for the angels of the Divine Throne when a nation opens its eyes from slumber."

Interestingly, this speech by an angel in Javidnama foreshadows the famous "freedom at midnight" speech delivered by Nehru on the precise moment when India finally won independence several years later. Even more interestingly, Nehru is mentioned in Javidnama itself (although not in this chapter but in Chapter 7 in a conversation held in Paradise). Since Nehru is generally supposed to have been familiar with Javidnama, an interesting question comes to mind: did the influence of the angel's speech creep into his freedom speech even unconsciously? The possibility does not appear outlandish if we remember that in the same inaugural session of the Indian parliament, Iqbal's famous poem "Saray jahan say achha" was also sung as a national song.

Freedom, then is seems to be one of the two important forces which seem to have been working in Iqbal's India according to Javidnama. The other force was the ideal of territorial nationalism borrowed from Western imperialism (as we shall see in 6. Christianity and the West).

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