A Critical Discourse Analysis of National Identity and Muslim Consciousness in Allama Iqbal's Poetry
Abstract
Though Allama Muhammad Iqbal's poetic oratory is recognized as a seedbed for the creation of Pakistan, its intricate linguistic structure that produces a host of discursive strategies for a single Muslim consciousness has not been explored in detail. This paper is an attempt to make a Critical Discourse Analysis in Fairclough's tri dimensional approach i.e. a Corpus which is a purposely selected seminal poetry of Iqbal from Bang-e-Dara and Bal-e-Jibril along with Zarb-e-Kalim. The analysis of the poems is at lexical level, discursive level such as intertextuality with text of Islam and historical text, and at social level such as colonial hegemony and communal politics. The findings suggest that there is a generation of an ideational cartography of "the homeland of the spirit" "Millat" as regards the discursive mapping of the territorial nationalism for denaturalization during which a systematic discursive strategy has been used. In Iqbal's speech, this discursive language of metaphors of Caravan, the Perfect Man (Mard-e-Momin) and the Shaheen frame the language to re-semiotise Islamic history from a static past towards future oriented project of self-realisation (*Khudi*). In the present article, the poets' performances in the conditions of modernity emerge as performative political acts that perform the pan-Islamic, the deterritorialized yet the culturally specific national self that is present in front of the mythopoeic constitution. The research lays down the conclusion that theAlternative paradigm of Anti-Colonial nation-building, manifested in poetic discourse of Iqbal, is not territorial but discursive in nature which explores poetics of consciousness of self-reliance as the ontological approach towards the establishment of a nation-state which is yet to be realised and its message has implications of a deep understanding in poetics of Anti-Colonial political imagination.
References
Althusser, L. (1970). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Monthly Review Press.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised ed.). Verso.
Asghar, J. (2015). The power of poetry: Translation and the discursive construction of Iqbal in the English-speaking world. Pakistan Journal of Languages and Translation Studies, *3*(1), 25–48.
Bhabha, H. K. (Ed.). (1990). Nation and narration. Routledge.
Devji, F. (2013). Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a political idea. Harvard University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Fairclough, N., & Wodak, R. (1997). Critical discourse analysis. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as social interaction (pp. 258–284). SAGE Publications.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Grove Press.
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds. & Trans.). International Publishers.
Hashmi, R. (1983). Tasawwur-e-Khudi: Iqbal ki nazar mein [The concept of Khudi: In Iqbal's view]. Iqbal Academy Pakistan.
Iqbal, J. (1998). Zinda Rood: Allama Iqbal ki mukammal sawaneh hayati [Living stream: A complete biography of Allama Iqbal]. Sheikh Ghulam Ali and Sons.
Jeffries, L., & McIntyre, D. (2011). Stylistics and the teaching of literature. Routledge.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
Mir, M. (2006). Iqbal: Makers of Islamic civilization. I.B. Tauris.
Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, *26*, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520
Said, E. W. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Alfred A. Knopf.
Schimmel, A. (1963). Gabriel's wing: A study into the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal. Brill.
Sevea, I. S. (2012). The political philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and nationalism in late colonial India. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, A. D. (1986). The ethnic origins of nations. Blackwell.
Smith, M. J. (2000). Culture: Reinventing the social sciences. Open University Press.
Taj, F. (2011). The Shaheen symbol in Iqbal's poetry: A discourse of empowerment. South Asian Studies, *26*(2), 315–328.
van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352–371). Blackwell Publishers.
Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis (pp. 63–94). SAGE Publications.
Zakaria, R. (1993). Iqbal: The poet and the politician. Viking Penguin.
