158 Modern Islam in India
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of them. What is, however, significant about Iqbal's
borrowing of thoughts from the Westi is that it buttressed
his idealism. He derived thoughts from thoughts, rather
than directly from objective conditions ; he had the right
ideas, but did not realize what were rhe concrete facts that
made them right. Iqbai's thinking was dynamic because he
knew modern philosophy, not because he knew modern
science (like Bergson), or modern society (like Marx).
He repeatedly affirmed that it did not matter so much
what a man said, as what he did ; that people are good or
bad in practice, not in creed. Yet he himself judged men
and movements not by their actions but by their professions.
For example, he attacked the U. S. S. R. and the" Com-
munist Party because they are ' atheist * and, he inferred,
lack entirely the warmth and the spiritual values of religion.
By this criticism he did not mean that in their actions the
communists deny God—that is, deny love, deny brotherhood
and justice, deny life and the human self and its develop-
ment and creativity and joy and beauty. His point was
that they theoretically deny God; and he never took the
trouble to see whether or not they really do so. No Muslim
and no socialist has arisen yet to point out in so many
words that whatever the capitalist Muslims may say about
it and whatever the atheistic socialists may say about it, the
socialist movement is in fact the only force in the world .
to-day which will conserve and realize the values that Islam
cherishes. Iqbsl, the most progressive of the Muslims, was
misled from recognizing this fact by what the socialists say.
(The socialists are in general misled from recognizing or
stating it, by what religious people, including Iqbal, do.)
Again, Iqbal identified the Congress with the native
princes of India, on the grounds that both are predomi-
nantly HindQ in theoretic religion5. Instead of examining the
activities of the princes and the activities of workers,
peasants, industrialists, petty bourgeois, etc., and grouping
people according to what they do, he interpreted Indian
politics in terms of what people believe (or say that they
believe).