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COMMENT:Eqbal Ahmad: a voice of conscience —Abbas Rashid

“For someone facing a serious trial in America, it is not easy to confront one’s own government. Yet it is not possible for me to oppose American crimes in Southeast Asia or Indian occupation of Kashmir while accepting the crimes my government is committing against the people of East Pakistan.”

For content, style and lucidity the late Eqbal Ahmad’s essays and articles on a wide range of issues are difficult to match. For someone who wrote with such erudition and verve it is curious indeed that he did not author in his lifetime a single book. Outside his country, particularly in the United States where he had initially gone for higher studies, Eqbal was well known for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He achieved a different kind of fame or notoriety, depending on which side of the fence you were, when he was arrested along with the Berrigan brothers in 1971 on the charge of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger. He was released soon, thereafter, when the court found the charge to be without substance.

In Pakistan, however, he remained a not particularly well-known figure till he started contributing a weekly column to the Dawn newspaper. And what he wrote was seldom of transitory interest or relevance. We should be grateful, therefore, to Dohra Ahmad, Iftikhar Ahmad and Zia Mian for compiling many of his columns and essays in a book published by OUP: Between Past and Future: Selected essays on South Asia. A foreword by Pervez Hoodbhoy is a sensitive look at Eqbal Ahmad and the issues that he engaged with, underlining the quality and astuteness of his analysis. It is well complemented by the editors’ introduction to the contents of the book which are for the most part focused on the dynamics of Pakistan’s internal crises and the nature and implications of its external engagements, particularly with its neighbours — India, Afghanistan and Iran — on one hand and the US on the other.

In a closely argued piece on the multiple crises confronting the Third world Eqbal posits the rise of relativism, optimism and rationalism against the crises of legitimacy, de-colonisation, democracy, development, distribution and integration. And the need for a political elite to respond to these in ways that are meaningful and creative. As his subsequent articles make clear this obviously is a tall order for the Pakistani elite, with the military, bureaucracy and political leadership having failed to grasp the nature of the crises let alone respond to these meaningfully. It is apt that the very first piece on Pakistan has Eqbal commenting on a directive by the University Grants Commission that per usual practice lays down strict and narrow guidelines for prospective writers: “I do not know of any country’s educational system that so explicitly subordinates knowledge to politics. Teaching and writing of history, always in jeopardy in Pakistan, has now passed from historians to hacks. They have invented a history that historians, of whom only a handful are left in Pakistan, shall not recognise. The Quaid-i-Azam is among their first victims: he underwent a metamorphosis becoming a man of orthodox religious views who sought the creation of a theocratic state and the Ulema, who with rare exceptions had opposed Jinnah and the Pakistan movement, emerged as heroes and founding fathers of Pakistan.”

Eqbal was not unmindful of what was happening across the border, either. On a visit to India in 1990, he writes of being “overwhelmed by the sheer volume of invented, poisonous history”. But he is all praise for those eminent Indian historians who have consistently debunked the revivalist version of history. When he alluded to them while talking to a BJP ideologue the response was “Inn historians ke liye Hindustan mein koi asthan naheen hai” (These historians have no place in Hindustan). Doubtless, Eqbal would have been pleased at the exit of the BJP in the recent elections.

In another piece he looks at the related issue of ‘Islamisation’ under Zia-ul-Haq and points out that when a state claims a theocratic mission, it is bound to provoke conflicts over whose model shall prevail. And in the context of the current debate over curriculum we may want to consider what Eqbal had to say on the issue: “The curriculum of Islamiyat, a compulsory subject in our schools and colleges, is almost entirely devoid of a sense of piety (taqwa), spiritualism (roohaniyat), or mysticism (tasawuf). At best, it is cast in terms of ritualistic formalism. At worst, it reduces Islam to a penal code, and its history to a series of violent episodes.”

In his article “Letter to a Pakistani Diplomat” that first appeared in the New York Review of Books, Eqbal responded to protests by officials against his highly critical statement to the New York Times that followed the army action in East Pakistan on March 25, 1971. First, he wrote, he had no natural sympathy either for the Bangladesh movement or Shiekh Mujibur Rahman who impressed him as being a limited man. Second, he pointed out that he himself was originally from Bihar and most of his people had migrated to East Pakistan and many were killed in the period preceding the military’s intervention. But, he said, the only viable course for West Pakistanis was to insist on the immediate termination of martial law, convening of the duly elected National Assembly and a commitment that the majority decision of that assembly shall be binding on all. Eqbal spelt out the principles underlying his position in these words: “I know that I shall be condemned for my position. For someone who is facing a serious trial in America, it is not easy to confront one’s own government. Yet it is not possible for me to oppose American crimes in Southeast Asia or Indian occupation of Kashmir while accepting the crimes my government is committing against the people of East Pakistan. Although I mourn the death of Biharis by Bengali vigilantes, and condemn the irresponsibilities of the Awami League, I am not willing to equate their actions with that of the government and the criminal acts of an organised professional army.” It would be useful to keep in mind that many similarly refuse to accept such an equation when it comes to the Israeli army and the Palestinians or the Kashmiris’ struggle against the Indian army. But few amongst us paid heed to what Eqbal wrote in those fateful days about what was happening in East Pakistan, soon to become Bangladesh.

Among other outstanding analytical pieces in the book that remain highly relevant in our current circumstances there are those that relate to the roots and nature of violence in Pakistan, the Kashmir issue, India and Pakistan’s decision to go nuclear, and of course the tracing of the contours of political Islam as a backdrop to the instrumentalist use of religion in the context of state as well as society.

Abbas Rashid is a freelance journalist and political analyst whose career has included editorial positions in various Pakistani newspapers

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