New Interpretations of Iqbal's Concept of Khudi in the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Study of Contemporary Iqbal Scholarship

اکیسویں صدی میں تصورِ خودی کی نئی تعبیرات: معاصر اقبالیاتی مطالعات کا تقابلی جائزہ

Abstract

This article examines how recent scholarship has reinterpreted Muhammad Iqbal's concept of khudi (selfhood). Rather than offering another exposition of the concept, it treats five studies published in 2025–2026 as the object of analysis and asks what each interpretive method reveals and what it conceals. The studies represent five distinct approaches: a theoretical reading through Adorno, Mukařovský and Kristeva; a global comparative reading that places khudi beside Nietzsche, Hume and Indic theories of self; a symbolic reading through the metaphor of Zinda Rud in Javid Nama; a theological-ethical reading of destiny in Asrar-i-Khudi and Rumuz-i-Bekhudi; and a postcolonial critique that judges Iqbal's synthesis to be internally unstable. The study finds that all five agree on rejecting egoism and fatalism but diverge sharply on the relation between khudi and God and between khudi and Sufism. Text-centred readings remain faithful but add little that is new, while theory-driven readings are original but often import frames that Iqbal's texts do not support. The article argues for a text-anchored critical reading that combines theoretical openness with fidelity to Iqbal's Persian and Urdu originals.