Poverty, Feudalism, and Land Reform—The Continued Relevance of Iqbal

Pervez Tahir
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Pervez Tahir: Planning Commission, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad.

The Pakistan Development Review, 2002, vol. 41, issue 4, 967-972

Abstract: After half a century of development experience, one-third of the population of Pakistan today is condemned to struggle below the poverty line, howsoever defined. In absolute terms, this size of the population of the poor is larger than the total population of [West] Pakistan at the time of independence in 1947. The incidence of rural poverty is greater than in urban areas. Iqbal died nine years before the state of Pakistan was established in 1947 and 2 years before the adoption of the Lahore Resolution in 1940. Territorially, the present-day Pakistan is closer to Iqbal’s idea of the Muslim State presented in his famous presidential address at the annual session of the Muslim League held at Allahabad in 1930: “I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated into a single State” [Brelvi (1977), p. 63]. The same, however, would be hard to say in regard to his vision of economy and society. Poverty as a problem, feudalism as the cause and land reform as a solution formed the most important part of this vision. Why did the Muslims of India require a state of their own? Iqbal elaborated this point later in a letter written to the Quaid-i-Azam in May 1937. He wrote: “The problem of bread is becoming more and more acute. The Muslim has begun to feel that he has been going down and down during the last 200 years. Ordinarily he believes that his poverty is due to Hindu money-lending or capitalism. The perception that it is equally due to foreign rule has not yet fully come to him. But it is bound to come. The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is: how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question. If the League can give no such promises I am sure that Muslim masses will remain indifferent to it as before. Happily there is a solution in the enforcement of the Law of Islam and its further development in the light of modern ideas.

Date: 2002
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