Iqbal Shinasi: Iqbal lives on

    A file photo of a literary session  

One organisation in Hyderabad has conducted literary sessions on poet Allama Iqbal for 20 years

Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir may boast of screening Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge for a record breaking 1000 weeks, almost 20 years. Hyderabad too can brag about something equally great. The historic city is witness to a poetic session that’s been going on uninterrupted for almost the same amount of time. While curtains have come down on the iconic movie in Mumbai, the lyrical sittings in the city of domes and minarets continue without a break.

Hyderabad has a strong connect with poetry. With the city’s founder, Muhammed Quli Qutb Shah, himself being a shayer of no mean repute, the denizen’s penchant for shayeri is understandable. The other day Hyderabad celebrated the 900th session of ‘Iqbal Shinasi’, the weekly programme conducted to understand and appreciate the philosophy and works of Urdu’s best known poet, Allama Iqbal. The programme on the philosopher-poet has been on since October 8, 1997.

Die-hard Iqbal aficionados wouldn’t like to miss the programme for the world. Come rain or hailstorm they drop in religiously every Wednesday evening at Masjid-e-Aliya conference hall at Gunfoundry to gain a fresh perspective about the poet of East. During the last two decades every aspect of Iqbal’s poetry, thoughts and philosophy have been analysed and discussed threadbare by professors, critics and scholars. Yet every week one can look forward to some new insights and intuition into the Shair-e-Mashriq.

“Nowhere in the world have so many programmes been organised on any poet,” claims Ghulam Yazdani, the man responsible for the sessions. For him Iqbal is a never-failing source of inspiration and shayer-e-insaniat.

He is instrumental in bringing scholars like Muztar Majaz, Yousuf Azmi, M M Taqi Khan, Moulana Khalid Saifulla Rahmani, Ziauddin Shakeeb to delve into the poetic genius and philosophical profundity of Iqbal.

Hyderabad is home to many poets, including Daagh Dehlvi, the outstanding poet known for his ghazals. But it is Iqbal alone that Hyderabadis remember week after week. Nearly 80 years after his demise, Iqbal lives on. People here are eager to know more about the poet who penned the enduring patriotic song Saare Jahan se achcha .....

Iqbal’s revolutionary poetry has always held the Urdu speaking world spellbound. But Hyderabad takes the credit for organising the first ‘Iqbal day’ on January 7, 1938, setting up the first Iqbal society, Bazm-e-Iqbal, and publishing a collection of his early poems. Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung, a prominent Muslim leader of pre-Independence era, is believed to have organised conferences on Iqbal in 1940s. But it is Yazdani, a senior advocate, who started organising weekly programmes on the poet in a systematic way.

“Even as a student I was impressed by his sublime poetry and wanted his message to be spread,” says Yazdani, the unsung hero of Iqbaliat. His feat of organising poetic sessions sure deserves an entry in the Guinness Book of World Record, scholars say.

Luckily these programmes are no longer confined to the mosque premises. Now one can watch the lectures on the website www.mahafil-e-aliya.com.


What about the future of the Iqbal Shinasi mehfils? Yazdani is sure they will continue even when he is not there. But he is concerned more about infusing new blood into the programme so that youth and students imbibe the poet's message - to wake up to the reality of the times and forge a destiny for themselves.

- J.S.Ifthekhar,

Hyderabad based journalist.

Article published in The Hindu

Dated July 25,2017.