Islam, Yoga, and Sāmyavāda: Allama Iqbal and Kazi Nazrul Islam on Nationalism, Metaphysics, and Existence

This chapter draws upon two representative case studies that illustrate how religion, mysticism, metaphysics, and other kindred, and not least contesting, concepts within the rubric of Islam came to be critically reread and reframed as part of wider transcultural interactions in the first half of the twentieth century. Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) endeavour to retrieve Islam as an empowering religion has to be seen as part of his larger critique of both a Eurocentric paradigm and the idea of mysticism, especially in his contemporaneous iteration, that he associated with passivity. In the chapter we focus especially on his critical engagement with metaphysics and religion vis-à-vis other cognates as well as contending categories. Our other protagonist, Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899–1976)—poet, revolutionary, and the national poet of Bangladesh—was known as much for his socialist-Marxist leanings as his religious ‘syncretism’. An exploration of his religio-intellectual life shows that his religious thought was not a product of mere tactically eclectic choice of religious imageries but his own deeper immersion in a specific school of yoga and śākta (pertaining to/devotee of śakti, i.e., mother goddess) traditions. In his oscillation between an inward spiritual turn and an outward engagement with the contemporary socio-political and religious developments, he provides a fascinating comparative—and contrastive in some ways—case.