Two books are under review. Kashmiri translation of Plato’s Republic by Dr Iqbal Nazki and Iqbal Aur Kashmir compiled in Urdu by Dr Farida Majid Kak.
The literary world today is greatly indebted.

to the rich legacy of ancient Greece which gave us matchless treasures of philosophy, drama, tragedy, poetry, epic and other species of world class literature during the Hellenistic period. The immortals among towering Greek intellectuals, historians, poets and philosophers  included Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Homer, Sappho, Archilocus, Anacreon, and Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, comedy playwright Aristophanes, chroniclers Herodotus and Thucydides, mathematicians Pythagoras and Euclid, Alexander the great and Hippocrates and Galen, the great men of medicine.

Plato's Republic is a piece of philosophic literature written around 380 BC in Ancient Greece by this Athens-born philosopher who was the teacher and mentor of Aristotle. The story is written in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Socrates and the other characters in the story, Glaucon, Adeimantus, Thrasymacus, and Polemarchus. This book is about what justice is, what makes a virtuous individual, why justice is important and what is the ideal state. Plato says that the best form of government is a type of aristocracy where the philosopher-kings rule.

 After the death of Socrates, a number of his associates tried to re-create in a literary medium the philosophical conversations which he had engaged in with his followers. Their purpose was to give a more accurate picture of Socrates than that presented by his detractors and also, as in the case of Plato, to use these re-created conversations as a vehicle for philosophic investigation. Xenophon wrote a work called Recollections (of Socrates), which contains Socratic conversations interspersed with narrative by the author. In addition, Xenophon wrote a Symposium Dinner Party, which shares the same title and theme, love, with a Platonic dialogue, but the dramatic setting and the characters, except for Socrates, are different. A follower of Socrates named Aeschines also wrote Socratic dialogues, of which only fragments remain. Of course, the best known works in this genre are the twenty-three dialogues written by Plato, of which the Republic is an important example.

 The theme of the Republic is very complicated in some ways, yet it comes together perfectly to formulate Plato’s attitudes about society and government. The title of the discourse The Republic, is ironic itself, since Plato is adamantly opposed to democracy at any level. Indeed he doesn’t trust man’s animal instincts because he thinks they ruin society and lead to anarchy. Only philosophers can serve as just kings because only this select group of people has knowledge of the forms, a vague, otherworldly kind of absolute truth.

 One of the main things discussed in The Republic is defining what justice is and why it is important. Early on in the book Thrasymacus says that justice is what is advantageous for the stronger. In response to this, Socrates starts a dialogue in which he picks apart Thrasymacus' definition of justice. Socrates is then asked by Glaucon and Adeimantus to defend why a man would be better off if he were just but were seen and treated badly as if he were unjust while another man was treated well because everyone thought he was just even though he was in fact unjust. In other words, they ask Socrates to give reasons why being a just person is worthwhile in and of itself and not simply for its good consequences. Plato then defines justice by first describing the just city, Kallipolis. In Kallipolis, philosopher-kings rule because they are the only ones with knowledge of the true form of The Good. They see things clearly and can understand things as they really are and this helps them make decisions about what is best for their city. Everyone in the just city has his own function which is to do what he does well; Producers must follow their passion for wealth and produce for the others, Guardians must follow their passion for honour and protect the others, and the philosophers must follow their passion for knowledge and understanding what the good is. This, according to Plato, is what justice is; where all of the parts of the city work together for the greater good of the city. And by analogy, justice in the individual is when all of the parts of the individual work together in harmony, the appetitive, the spirited, and the intellectual parts. Justice is good in and of itself because only the just person can be truly happy. The unjust person always wants more and his greed will always make him miserable.

 The translation of The Republic done in Kashmiri by Dr Iqbal Nazki is indeed a  valuable addition to the prose of this language which  is not written in abundance as against insipid  poetry which has been disturbing  minds of educated readers over the years without its having any substantial prerequisites of  good poetry.

 With regard to rendering of works of classical Greek literature into Kashmiri language, this writer has already translated into this language, Poetics by Aristotle and Medea by Euripides, besides writing a comprehensive researched article on Homer which made a portion of my Sahitya Akademi award wining book Gaashiry Munaar in 1975.

 Dr Nazki deserves all kudos for this commendable work which has been nicely brought out by the Kashmiri department of the Kashmir University. Allama Iqbal’s relationship with Kashmir has been that of flesh and blood. It was till the last breath of his 61-year long life that he constantly felt about the plight of an enslaved Kashmiri nation which had been ruthlessly subjugated by the Dogra rulers of Jammu for about one century.

 Iqbal was not a political activist but his powerful pen inspired him to portray the pathetic conditions of the people of Kashmir, also his ancestral birthplace and his immense love for Kashmir, its abounding beauties and its suppressed people always kept him restive and sad all along.

 In the Urdu world three small books have been written with regard to Iqbal’s attachment with Kashmir which included Iqbal aur Kashmir by Jagan Nath Azad, Iqbal aur Kashmir  by Sabir Afaqi and Iqbal aur Kashmir by Salim Khan Gummi, interestingly all  these three books were published in 1977.

 In 1999, I brought out my book Iqbal aur Tahreek-e-Azadi Kashmir, essentially to negate what Jagan Nath Azad had stated about Iqbal’s paying tribute to Sheikh Abdullah and also that Iqbal advised Abdullah to make his Muslim Conference into secular one by way of including Kashmiri Pandit members into its rank and file. I have proved, with testified documentation that Azad’s assertion on both these political issues was nothing but a misleading assumption and what may be called the rubbish of research.

 Dr Farida has neither consulted Gummi’s book not has she gone through this writer’s publication the second edition of which was published by Iqbal Academy, Lahore in 2001. This would have indeed helped her to ascertain some historical truth about Iqbal’s name being exploited by some writers. She should have also gone through voluminous Kulliyaat-e-Makaateeb-e-Iqbal compiled in four bulky volumes by Syed Muzaffar Hussain Burni comprising 4,906 pages. This could have provided her with most authentic source material in the form of Iqbal’s own letters he wrote to friends and others between 1918 and 1938.

 However, the unending, limitless and quite an intriguing subject of research is never conclusive, still,  Dr Farida deserves congratulations for collecting lot of useful material on Allama Iqbal with particular reference to his emotional and political relationship with Kashmir.This 456-page book has been brought out with great aesthetic sense and attractive get up.

 The material collected and compiled by the author out of her tiresome efforts can prove quite useful for the researchers working on different subjects of the life and works of the Poet of the East

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Lastupdate on : Sat, 26 Jun 2010 21:30:00 Mecca time
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