Muhammad Iqbal: Combative Constitutionalism

Abstract

This chapter unpacks how Iqbal’s thought helped to shape a distinctly Indian Muslim subjectivity that was separate from the colonial state, the Congress, and Muslims elsewhere in the world. It shows how Iqbal’s constitutional exclusion of Ahmadis, a small Muslim reformist movement, was fuelled by his theological, legal, and political thinking. Iqbal’s refusal to integrate non-Muslims into his proposed republican framework, as is evident from his engagements with political authority and the legislative process of ijtehad and ijma, suggest that it was indeed a separatist message that lay at the heart of his political vision. This chapter further finds that Iqbal was aware that antagonisms within societies and religious communities, terms that for Iqbal largely overlapped in India, could not easily be absorbed through liberal political practices. If such antagonism went unchecked, however, Iqbal feared it would lead to the dissolution of solidarity among Indian Muslims. For the survival of religious communities, the legal order had to recognize theological differences. More than the spiritual father, Iqbal is better understood as Pakistan’s primary constitutional architect.