Reviews and Tributes
Tara Charan Rastogi, the noted Iqbal scholar, says:
"In the context of his writings on Iqbal and connected topics, Azad stands out as a critic with encyclopedic erudition; he is Iqbal Academy incarnate; and, he is the first man who ventured to rehabilitate Iqbal and Urdu Literature in post-partition India."
Azad's book "Iqbal: Mind and Art" received glowing reviews and was accorded an effusive welcome in the world of academia. Azad Gulati, himself a professor and an award-winning Urdu poet, echoed these sentiments when he reviewed the book in the April 1985 issue of the Iqbal Review published by the Iqbal Academy in Lahore, Pakistan. Two short extracts from his review epitomise the plaudits showered on Jagan Nath Azad whenever Allama Iqbal is discussed in academic or literary circles:
"Prof. Jagan Nath Azad, who has earned for himself an authoritative niche in Iqbaliat, encompasses in this book the quartet of poetry, politics, philosophy and religion that forms the matrix of Iqbal’s creative genius."
"The appendices include stray notes on Iqbal, Prof. Azad’s letters to newspapers and journals about controversial facets of Iqbal’s evaluation, his reviews of books about Iqbal and his preface to Anand Narain Mulla’s translation of Iqbal’s “Lala-i-Tur”. Prefaced by Dr. Mohammad Maruf’s balanced and perceptive analysis of Prof. Azad’s views and copiously studded with illustrative extracts from Iqbal’s works and their meticulous translations, this valuable compendium on Iqbaliat provides smooth, racy reading."
The writer and critic Ashfaque Naqvi summed up Azad's monumental contribution to the study of Iqbal in his article A word about Jagan Nath Azad which appeared in Pakistan's leading English language daily newspaper Dawn on June 27, 2004, four weeks before Azad died. Naqvi wrote:
" The books authored by Jagan Nath Azad include some on literary criticism while about eleven, both in English and Urdu, are on Iqbal. Soon after partition, Iqbal was almost banned in India. It was only through the efforts of Jagan Nath Azad that Iqbal is as highly respected there today as Amir Khusrow, Meeraji or Ghalib. Even in Pakistan, it was Jagan Nath Azad's whisper into the ears of Gen Zia ul Haq that led to the establishment of the Iqbal Chair in the Punjab University."
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