While browsing Facebook on December 14, 2025, I came across the following words in Urdu, attributed to Jaun Elia, which I instantly attempted to render into English:
“According to the current of my own conviction, I hold human beings exceedingly dear. I possess an immeasurable love for oppressed and deprived people, and to me this love is the greatest form of worship—indeed, the highest virtue of my self. And it is my belief that the majority of my respected readers also love human beings deeply, and that they do not divide them on the basis of race, language, creed, or region.”
Jaun Elia’s brief yet profoundly charged statement is not merely a declaration of personal sentiment; it is a carefully articulated moral position that challenges conventional religious, social, and ideological hierarchies. In these lines, Jaun Elia foregrounds insān (the human being) as the central object of ethical concern, elevating compassion for the oppressed above ritualistic or sectarian forms of devotion.
When he begins by saying, “میں اپنے گمان کی رُو سے” (“according to the current of my own conviction”), Jaun Elia asserts intellectual independence. The word گمان (guman) here does not imply doubt in the ordinary sense; rather, it reflects a deeply personal, reflective worldview shaped by reason, empathy, and lived experience. Jaun Elia is not borrowing morality from inherited dogma—he is owning it as a product of conscious moral choice.
Love for the Oppressed as the Highest Form of Worship
Perhaps the most radical assertion in this passage is Jaun Elia’s claim that love for the oppressed and the deprived constitutes the greatest form of worship. By doing so, he subtly but decisively redefines the very meaning of ibadat (worship). Instead of locating spirituality in rituals, symbols, or institutions, he locates it in ethical action and emotional solidarity with those who suffer.
This stance resonates with a long humanistic tradition—seen in thinkers such as Tolstoy, Bertrand Russell, and even certain strands of Sufi thought—where love for humanity is treated as the ultimate moral criterion. However, Jaun Elia’s formulation is strikingly modern and unambiguous: compassion is not merely a virtue; it is the highest virtue of the self (نفس کی سب سے بڑی فضیلت). In an age where the nafs is often portrayed as something to be subdued or negated, Jaun Elia rehabilitates it as capable of moral excellence.
A Rejection of Artificial Divisions
In the concluding part of the passage, Jaun Elia turns outward—to his readers—and expresses a hopeful belief that they, too, love humanity without fragmenting it along lines of race, language, sect, or geography. This is not a casual remark. It is a quiet but firm rejection of the structures that historically legitimize hatred, exclusion, and violence.
By listing these divisions—نسل، زبان، مسلک، علاقے—Jaun Elia identifies the precise fault lines along which societies fracture. His refusal to accept these categories as morally valid markers of difference reflects a universalist ethic: human worth precedes and transcends all constructed identities.
Importantly, Jaun Elia does not issue a sermon or a command. He expresses a guman—a hope, a moral expectation—that his readers already share this love. In doing so, he invites self-reflection rather than obedience. The reader is gently compelled to ask: Do I truly love human beings without conditions?
Relevance in Contemporary Contexts
In societies marked by polarization, sectarianism, ethnic conflict, and ideological rigidity, Jaun Elia’s words acquire renewed urgency. They challenge readers to reconsider the moral foundations of their beliefs and affiliations. His humanism does not deny cultural or religious identities, but it refuses to allow them to override empathy for suffering human beings.
Jaun Elia thus emerges not only as a poet of existential anguish but as a moral thinker who places human dignity at the center of all value systems. His message is deceptively simple yet ethically demanding: if love for the oppressed is absent, no claim to moral or spiritual superiority can stand.
Conclusion
Jaun Elia’s statement is, in essence, a manifesto of ethical humanism. It affirms that the truest measure of one’s moral worth lies not in labels, loyalties, or rituals, but in an unconditional love for humanity—especially for those who suffer. In declaring such love to be the highest form of worship, Jaun Elia offers a timeless reminder: where compassion ends, all claims to virtue collapse.
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