Eqbal Ahmad

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Eqbal Ahmad
Second Lieutenant

Eqbal Ahmad (1933 – 11 May 1999) was a Pakistani

First Kashmir War in 1948.[2] He participated in the Algerian Revolution,[3] then studied the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism, becoming an early opponent of the war upon his return to the U.S. in the mid-1960s.[4]

While highly regarded in radical circles of South Asia and left-wing circles more generally, Ahmad was a controversial figure. According to Pervez Hoodbhoy, warrants of arrest and death sentences were put on him during successive martial law governments in Pakistan. Although he was indicted in 1971 on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger (who was then President Nixon's National Security Advisor), the case was eventually dismissed. Kabir Babar called Ahmad "one of the most outstanding thinkers ever to originate from the Subcontinent. His analyses of the major political events and trends of the 20th century were noted for their astuteness and predictive power." Edward Said listed Ahmad as one of the two most important influences on his intellectual development,[5] praising the latter's writings on South Asia especially as informative.

Early life and education

Ahmad spent a year studying American history at Occidental College.

Eqbal Ahmad was born in the village of Irki in the Gaya District (now

Bihar. When he was a young boy, his father was murdered over a land dispute in his presence by a hindu group. During the partition of India in 1947, he and his elder brother migrated to Pakistan on foot.[2][6][7]

Eqbal Ahmad graduated from

PhD in 1965.[1][2]

During his time at Princeton, Ahmad travelled to

University of Illinois and at Cornell University until 1968. During this time, Ahmad also became a prominent fellow of the anti-war Institute for Policy Studies.[1][8]

His vocal support of

In 1990, he began splitting his time between

nuclear arms and ideological rigidity, while a strong supporter of democracy and self-determination.[1][12] Even though a little-known figure within Pakistan, Ahmad bestowed a strong legacy within intellectual circles both in and outside the country.[13][14][15][16][17]

Career

From 1960 to 1963, Ahmad lived in North Africa, working primarily in Algeria, where he joined the National Liberation Front and worked with Frantz Fanon and some Algerian nationalists who were fighting a war of liberation against the French in Algeria.[2][18] He was offered an opportunity to join the first independent Algerian government, but refused in favour of life as an independent intellectual. Instead, he returned to the United States. Eqbal Ahmad was fluent in Urdu, English, Persian and Arabic.[1][2]

When he returned to the United States, Eqbal Ahmad taught at the

mistrial and Ahmad was acquitted of all charges in 1972.[2][6][8][19] During these years, he became known as one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policies in Vietnam and Cambodia.[2]

Eqbal Ahmad's friend, author Stuart Schaar suggested in a book on Eqbal Ahmad that he had warned the US against attacking Iraq in 1990. He had correctly predicted that Saddam's fall would bring in sectarian violence and chaos in the region.[2] Eqbal Ahmad had also interviewed Osama bin Laden in Peshawar in 1986. In the early 1990s, he had predicted that considering the ideology of Osama Bin Laden, he would eventually turn against his then allies US and Pakistan.[2]

From 1972 to 1982, Ahmad was Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. From 1973 to 1975, he served as the first director of its overseas affiliate, the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 1982, Ahmad joined the faculty at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, a progressive school which was the first college in the nation to divest from South Africa. There, he taught world politics and political science. In the early 1990s, Ahmad was granted a parcel of land in Pakistan by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government, to build an independent, alternative university, named Khaldunia University.[8]

Upon his retirement from Hampshire in 1997, he settled permanently in Pakistan, where he continued to write a weekly column, for Dawn, Pakistan's oldest English-language newspaper.[2][8] He continued to promote social democracy for Muslim countries like in the Scandinavian countries to prevent extremism, poverty and injustice in those countries.[2]

Eqbal Ahmad was the founding chancellor of the then newly established Textile Institute of Pakistan, a textile-oriented science, design and business-degree-awarding institute. The institute professes to be driven by the values Eqbal Ahmad stood for and awards its most prestigious honour, the Dr. Eqbal Ahmed Achievement Award, to one graduate unanimously deemed by the faculty as reflective of Eqbal Ahmad's values at its annual convocation.

Death and legacy

Eqbal Ahmad died of heart failure on 11 May 1999 at an

colon cancer.[1] He had married Julie Diamond in 1969, a teacher and a writer from New York and they had one daughter, Dohra.[1]

Since his death, a memorial lecture series has been established at

Richard Falk, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Cockburn, Said and Roy. Ahmad is credited for his insight into Islamic terrorism; he publicly criticised global support for the Islamic fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan.[1]

Sufi tradition that he remembers from his childhood in a village in Bihar, where Islamic Sufi admiration among the public united Hindus and Muslims. Simple and unpretentious, 'they preached by example', living 'by service and by setting an example of treating people equally without discrimination'. The Sufis appealed to the most oppressed, offering 'social mobility, as well as dignity and equality to the poor'. Sufis regarded the idea of nationalism as an anti-Islamic ideology that 'proceeds to create boundaries where Islam is a faith without national boundaries. Eqbal Ahmad describes himself as a 'harshly secular' person and an 'internationalist' but he was quick to praise elements of religious thought and practice that he found admirable among the Islamic Sufis.[18]

Eqbal Ahmad saw Islam as concerned, above all, with the welfare of common people. Eqbal's leftism was his humanity and this only reinforced the pride he took in being a Pakistani in a challenging time.[20][1]

[Ahmad was] perhaps the shrewdest and most original anti-imperialist analyst of the post-war world, especially in the dynamics between the West and the post-colonial states of Asia and Africa.

In a review of The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, Keally McBride praises "his uncanny sense of human nature, and his encyclopedic knowledge of world history".[3] Kabir Babar wrote that "to study him is to be exposed to the rare phenomenon of academic rigour coupled to a will to act." Shahid Alam of Monthly Review wrote that "Ahmad provided the most articulate, analytical, and passionate voice from the third world since Frantz Fanon. Almost certainly, he is also the most astute political thinker the Islamic world produced in the twentieth century."[21]

He was a left-wing secularist, known for his lifelong denunciation and critiques of Western imperialism. Amitava Kumar argued, "As much as Said, he was a mentor to a generation of thinkers, mostly South Asian [...] notable for "not only the power but also the wide range of his sympathies [...] He was a committed engineer of emancipation, building imaginative roads, linking issues across continents." He found some aspects of Ahmad's analysis less relevant in the 21st century but still praised "his commitment to resolving political problems through diplomacy, not war. His writing on the Muslim world in particular was notable for its critical vigilance and integrity, its resistance to received wisdom."[22] Irfan Husain wrote in Dawn that Ahmad was too biased in favor of the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also stated, "Perhaps his most precious gift was his ability to listen to others in a way most of us don't: he would pay young students the same courtesy of carefully following their argument that he would extend to the rich and powerful."[23] Muhammad Idrees Ahmad wrote in 2016, "He accurately predicted the consequences of western recklessness in Afghanistan, and his warnings on US intervention in Iraq would prove prophetic."[24]

See also

Further reading

  • Confronting Empire (with David Barsamian), 2000, South End Press, .
  • Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (with David Barsamian), 2001, Seven Stories Press,
  • Stuart Schaar, Eqbal Ahmad: Critical Outsider in a Turbulent Age, 2015, Columbia University Press,

References

  1. ^ . Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Paracha, Nadeem F. (3 May 2015). "Smokers' Corner: Eqbal Ahmed: the astute alarmist". Dawn. Pakistan. Retrieved 27 July 2019.
  3. ^
    S2CID 145533035
    .
  4. .
  5. .
  6. ^ a b Profile of Eqbal Ahmad on The Economist (magazine), UK Published 27 May 1999. Retrieved 27 July 2019
  7. ^ Arshad, Sameer (4 November 2012). "Will Nitish Kumar's visit give a boost to Biharis in Pakistan?". The Economic Times. Retrieved 9 March 2019.
  8. ^ a b c d e "Biography of Eqbal Ahmad". Hampshire College website. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  9. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  10. ^ "Collection Summary: Transnational Institute Archives". search.socialhistory.org. International Institute of Social History.
  11. S2CID 161134247
    .
  12. ^ a b "Ahmad, Eqbal. – Oxford Islamic Studies Online". law.harvard.edu. Retrieved 1 October 2016.
  13. ^ Kabir Babar (22 May 2015). "The intellectual's intellectual". The Friday Times (newspaper) website. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  14. .
  15. ^ "Remembering Dr Eqbal Ahmad". Dawn. Pakistan. 10 May 2011. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  16. ^ "Profile of Eqbal Ahmad". 27 January 2014. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  17. ^ Ahmed, Vaqar (14 May 2015). "Eqbal Ahmad: A memoir of Munno Chacha". Dawn. Pakistan. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
  18. ^ a b Noam Chomsky pays tributes to Eqbal Ahmad in 2000 after his death in 1999 Retrieved 27 July 2019
  19. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 25 May 2023.
  20. ^ Obituary of Eqbal Ahmad on Dawn (newspaper) Published 12 May 1999. Retrieved 28 July 2019
  21. ^ Alam, Shahid (1 February 2007). "U.S. Imperialism and the Third World". Monthly Review. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  22. ISSN 0027-8378
    . Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  23. ^ Husain, Irfan (16 August 2015). "REVIEW: Friend of the downtrodden: Eqbal Ahmad by Stuart Schaar". DAWN.COM. Retrieved 31 January 2021.
  24. ^ Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees (10 March 2016). "Book review: Eqbal Ahmad: Critical Outsider in a Turbulent Age – a compelling portrait of a Pakistani activist". The National. Retrieved 31 January 2021.

External links