Hain talkh bahut banda-e-mazdoor ke auqaat
“You are all-powerful and just, yet in this world of yours the hours of the labouring worker are very bitter.”
हैं तल्ख़ बहुत बंदा-ए-मज़दूर के औक़ात
The couplet in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
Iqbal voices a frank protest about the lot of the working poor. He grants the premise of a just and powerful order, then sets against it the plain fact of a labourer's hard, bitter days. The couplet refuses to let injustice hide behind grand ideals; it insists that the suffering of ordinary working people is a question the world must answer for.
Do not let fine principles excuse a system that grinds down the people who keep it running. Measure any order by the life of its lowest-paid worker; if their hours are bitter, the order is not yet just.
Us khet ke har khosha-e-gandum ko jala do
Kakh-e-umara ke dar-o-deewar hila do
Bandon ko gina karte hain, tola nahin karte