aur qayaamat ka bhi dete hain hawaala ham ko
“People will push us into the sins themselves — and then hold the Day of Judgment over us as a warning.”
और क़यामत का भी देते हैं हवाला हम को
The verse in Devanagari — it carries the authenticity of the original, and every Hindi reader can read it.
The couplet catches a specific hypocrisy: the very people who arrange the conditions for a fall are the first to invoke divine punishment once it comes. They build the trap and then preach about the fire. It is a quiet indictment of a moralising world that engineers the sin and blames only the one who steps into it.
Be wary of those who push you toward the wrong thing and then appoint themselves the judges of it. The hand that sets the trap has no standing to sermonise about the fall.
The heart of this site stays with Iqbal: explore his couplets → Or browse the whole Other Voices shelf →