Eqbal Ahmad (1933 – 11 May 1999) was a Pakistani political scientist, writer and academic known for his anti-war activism, his support for resistance movements globally and academic contributions to the study of the Near East. Born in Bihar, British India, Ahmad migrated to Pakistan as a child and went on to study economics at the Forman Christian College. After graduating, he worked briefly as an army officer and was wounded in the First Kashmir War in 1948. He participated in the Algerian Revolution, 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.
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, praising the latter's writings on South Asia especially as informative.
Early life and education
Eqbal Ahmad was born in the village of Irki in the Gaya District (now Magadh Division) of the Indian state of 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.
Eqbal Ahmad graduated from Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1951 with a degree in economics. After serving briefly as an army officer, he enrolled at Occidental College in California in 1957, as a Rotary Fellow. In 1958, he went to Princeton University, where he studied political science and Middle Eastern history until earning his PhD in 1965.
During his time at Princeton, Ahmad travelled to Tunisia and Algeria as part of his doctoral dissertation. In Algiers, he supported the revolution, leading to his subsequent arrest in France. Ahmad went on to teach at the 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.
His vocal support of Palestinian rights during the 1967 war led to his isolation within the academic community, causing him to leave Cornell. From 1968 to 1972, he worked as a fellow at the University of Chicago. During this time, Ahmad became a strong activist against the Vietnam War, which lead to his being charged as part of the Harrisburg Seven in January 1971. After the trial Ahmad was acquitted of all charges in 1972. He moved to Amsterdam in 1973. In 1974, he founded and directed the Transnational Institute, until 1975. In 1982, he moved back to the United States and joined the Hampshire College as a tenured professor and taught there until becoming Professor Emeritus in 1997.
In 1990, he began splitting his time between Islamabad and Amherst and also began writing for Dawn, and worked unsuccessfully to establish a liberal arts college named after Ibn Khaldun in Islamabad. Ahmad was one of the most prominent left-wing academics in both Pakistan and the United States. His legacy is that of strong opposition to militarism, bureaucracy, nuclear arms and ideological rigidity, while a strong supporter of democracy and self-determination. Even though a little-known figure within Pakistan, Ahmad bestowed a strong legacy within intellectual circles both in and outside the country.
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. 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.