Sare Jahan se Accha

The song, an ode to Hindustan—the land comprising present-day Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, was later published in 1924 in the Urdu book Bang-i-Dara.

In 1930, in his presidential address to the Muslim League annual conference in Allahabad, he supported a separate nation-state in the Muslim-majority areas of the subcontinent, an idea that inspired the creation of Pakistan.

وہ دن ہیں یاد تجھ کو؟ اترا ترے کنارے جب کارواں ہمارا مذہب نہیں سکھاتا آپس میں بیر رکھنا ہندی ہیں ہم، وطن ہے ہندوستاں ہمارا یونان و مصر و روما سب مٹ گئے جہاں سے اب تک مگر ہے باقی نام و نشاں ہمارا کچھ بات ہے کہ ہستی مٹتی نہیں ہماری صدیوں رہا ہے دشمن دورِ زماں ہمارا اقبال!

That tallest mountain, that shade-sharer of the sky, It (is) our sentry, it (is) our watchman In its lap where frolic thousands of rivers, Whose vitality makes our garden the envy of Paradise.

Iqbal was a lecturer at the Government College, Lahore at that time, and was invited by a student Lala Har Dayal to preside over a function.

The song, in addition to embodying yearning and attachment to the land of Hindustan, expressed "cultural memory" and had an elegiac quality.

[6] The sixth stanza of "Saare Jahan Se Achcha" (1904), which is often quoted as proof of Iqbal's secular outlook:

Maẕhab nahīṉ sikhātā āpas meṉ bair rakhnā Hindī haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai Hindūstāṉ hamārā Religion does not teach us to bear ill-will among ourselves We are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan.