Click Here to See My Powers of Iqbal Video

Using a pseudo-“Powers of 10” effect, the video attempts to reveal the multiple layers of meaning of Iqbal’s Shikwa and Jawab e Shikwa pair of poems. Starting with a Ken Burns effect to slowly reveal a photograph of Iqbal deep in contemplation, the camera pans out to reveal Iqbal centered in Pakistan, but more generally the Indian subcontinent as a whole, all the while being accompanied by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan vocalizing the first lines of Shikwa in Urdu. This sequence serves to represent Iqbal’s deep contemplation before creating Shikwa, and his subsequent address to all Muslims in India, both literal and figurative, where he commiserates with their frustration at being currently out of favor with God relative to other civilizations despite their intense prostration to God and their perceived religious successes in expanding Islam through conquest in the name of God, rather than for their own personal gain. In doing so, Iqbal draws in his audience and gains their trust by exhibiting a pinpoint understanding of their anxieties.

Then, another Ken Burns effect is applied, this time zooming out to a larger sketch of Iqbal, wearing the outline of India as a badge, and then the camera pans out even further to reveal the union jack of the British commonwealth encompassing Iqbal, whilst the audio switches to a rendition of Jawab e Shikwa again by Ali Khan. There are multiple conflicting forces at play during this sequence, with the imagery of the badge representing Iqbal’s pan-Islamist-India perspective, typified by his remark, “Our India is the best in the entire world,” whilst at the same time having the larger Iqbal take on the voice of God in Jawab e Shikwa and criticize the same Indian Muslims whose trust he’d gained from his Shikwa, claiming that they are attempting to take credit for the plaudits of “[their] fathers”. And the final domination of the union jack serves two purposes, one to illustrate the line “Infidels who live like Muslims surely merit Faith’s reward,” as Iqbal communicates that the British and Europeans are perhaps better “Muslims” than the Muslims of India and deserve their socio-techonological domination, a powerful blow to his compatriots, but at the same time it serves as motivation and an exhortation to them to “seize the world beneath thy sway” through self-actualization (khudi) so as to reach and exceed the level of the British, ultimately displacing them as India’s destiny-makers.