Saare Jahan Se Achcha - Iqbal's Transformation and Tarana-e-Milli

Iqbal's Transformation and Tarana-e-Milli

In 1910, Iqbal wrote another song for children, Tarana-e-Milli (Anthem of the Religious Community), which was composed in the same metre and rhyme scheme as Saare Jahan Se Achcha, but which renounced much of the sentiment of the earlier song. For example, the sixth stanza of Saare Jahan Se Achcha (1904) is often quoted as proof of Iqbal's secular outlook:

mażhab nahīñ sikhātā āpas meñ bair rakhnā
hindī haiñ ham, vat̤an hai hindostāñ hamārā

or,

Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among ourselves
We are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan.

In contrast, the first stanza of Tarana-e-Milli (1910) reads:

chīn-o-arab hamārā, hindostān hamārā
muslim hain ham, vatan hai sārā jahān hamārā

or,

Central Asia and Arabia are ours, Hindustan is ours
We are Muslims, the whole world is our homeland.

Iqbal's world view had now changed; it had become both global of singing of India, "our homeland," the new song proclaimed that "our homeland is the whole world." Two decades later, in his presidential address to the Muslim League annual conference in Allahabad in 1930, he was to propose a separate nation-state in the Muslim majority areas of the sub-continent, an idea that inspired the creation of Pakistan. Due to this he later became known as Muffakir-e-Pakistan ("The Thinker of Pakistan"). He is officially recognized as the national poet of Pakistan.