Inquilab
Revolution, upheaval, radical change. A charged word in Iqbal and in the politics around him; he summoned the worker and the believer alike to overturn an unjust, decaying order.
Literally: revolution; a turning over
Inquilab is revolution, literally a turning-over of an established order. Iqbal welcomes upheaval that overturns injustice and the rule of false kings and exploiters, seeing it as the natural answer of life to stagnation. Yet for him no political revolution is complete without an inner revolution of the self, the rebuilding of khudi, or it merely swaps one bondage for another.
Ishtirakiyat
Socialism / communism; collective ownership. Iqbal sympathised with its revolt against capitalist greed and its concern for the worker, but rejected its atheism and pure economic materialism.
Sarmayadari
Capitalism; rule of capital. Iqbal denounced it as a system in which a few hoard wealth wrung from the labour and blood of the many, and called the worker to rise against it.
Lenin
Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), leader of the Russian Revolution; Iqbal's poem 'Lenin (Khuda ke Huzoor mein)' has Lenin address God, indicting capitalist Europe's exploitation while exposing the spiritual void of the godless order.
Baghaawat
Revolt, rebellion, insurrection against authority.
Khudi
Selfhood; the self, the ego — in the philosophical, not the vain, sense.