— from the ghazal beginning “khirad-mandon se kya poochhoon ke meri ibtida kya hai”, Allama Iqbal (1877–1938)
About this quote
देवनागरी
ख़ुदी को कर बुलंद इतना कि हर तक़दीर से पहले
ख़ुदा बंदे से ख़ुद पूछे बता तेरी रज़ा क्या है
اردو
خودی کو کر بلند اتنا کہ ہر تقدیر سے پہلے
خدا بندے سے خود پُوچھے، بتا تیری رضا کیا ہے
English
Raise your selfhood so high that before writing each decree of fate, God Himself asks you: tell me, what is your wish?
What it means
The single most quoted line in Iqbal, and the most flattened. Khudi is not self-confidence or ambition; it is Iqbal’s technical term for the realised, disciplined self, and he spent two Persian books developing it. The couplet is not saying you can bend fate. It is saying that a self built to that standard is one God consults.
What it teaches you
Notice that the line is a conditional, not a promise: everything depends on the word itna — that high. Before you use it as a caption for something you want, ask the question it actually puts to you: what daily discipline is raising the self to that standard? Iqbal gives no method in two lines because he spent whole books on it, so the honest use of the couplet is as a test you have not yet passed, not as encouragement you have already earned. If you find yourself quoting it to justify wanting a particular outcome, you have the couplet backwards — it is about the quality of the one who wishes, not the power of the wish.
अर्थ और सीख
ख़ुदी को इतना बुलंद करो कि तक़दीर लिखने से पहले ख़ुदा ख़ुद पूछे — तेरी रज़ा क्या है। यहाँ ‘ख़ुदी’ का मतलब घमंड नहीं, इक़बाल की इस्तिलाह में तामीर-शुदा, मुकम्मल शख़्सियत है।
इस शेर की शर्त ‘इतना’ शब्द में है — यह वादा नहीं, कसौटी है। इसे अपनी इच्छा का समर्थन बनाने से पहले खुद से पूछिए कि ख़ुदी को उस ऊँचाई तक ले जाने के लिए आप रोज़ क्या मेहनत कर रहे हैं।
Where it comes from
Verified against the collected work of Allama Iqbal (1877–1938) on Urdu Wikisource, in the poem beginning خودی کو کر بلند اتنا کہ ہر تقدیر سے پہلے (source). Devanagari transliteration and English rendering are our own.
