Pakistan, Nov. 6 -- Every year, 9 November comes and goes with very little notice. Whether or not it brings a day off, for most of us it is just another date on the calendar. A school may hold a function, a television channel may run a documentary, and social media fills with a portrait of the bespectacled poet beside a couplet, often misquoted.

We have mastered the habit of honouring our heroes on the right date and ignoring them on the other 364 days. Allama Muhammad Iqbal was born in Sialkot on this day in 1877, and as his 149th birth anniversary approaches, it is worth asking, honestly and without self-righteousness, what remains of him in our lives beyond the portrait. The uncomfortable truth is that we have turned a thinker into a ...