“Revolution” in the philosophy and poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (an attempt of cognitive-discursive analysis)

Abstract

Many works by Muhammad Iqbal are in fact his appeal for social and spiritual changes within a society, which in his case was the Muslim community of British India. The word inqilᾱb (revolution) used in Iqbal’s poems became therefore one of the most visible markers to describe this kind of changes. At the beginning of the last century, the ideas regarding the revolutionary changes did find many sympathizers among the intellectual elite of the Indian Muslims. The Iqbal’s poetry offers sufficient evidence that the word inqilab as used in his writings covers three aspects, viz. temporal, social and religious. The semantics of the inqilᾱb fluctuates in accordance with the context in every given instance. The obvious change of meaning reflects the change of the poet's views in various stages of his literary production. The three dominant meanings of the concept inqilab can be identified as “changes”, “social revolution” (or lately the “national liberation movement”), and “the spiritual revolution of mind”. The article offers a discourse-cognitive analysis of the inqilᾱb concept in Iqbal’s poetry. In different periods of his work, this concept did correspond to different cognitive models, which were marked by the specific structure of presentation. The study includes textual, contextual and cognitive analysis of Iqbal’s poetic texts. The results of the study are presented in the form of frames.