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Book review: The legacy of an intellectual —by Dr Tariq Rahman

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: SELECTED ESSAYS ON SOUTH ASIA
Eqbal Ahmed
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 450/-

Eqbal Ahmad was an intellectual with a conscience — a fairly rare breed. Most of his work — writings, lectures, speeches, social activism, organising events to raise consciousness — had a single objective: leaving the world a better place than he found it. But the world moved so fast towards conflict, hatred and poverty that he remained a harried man living at a fast pace squeezing in university lecturing, writing columns in newspapers and articles in scholarly journals in a life of 67 years. The writings remained scattered around till Dohra Ahmad, Iftikhar Ahmad and Zia Mian brought them together and edited them for this volume. The foreword was written by Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, himself a celebrated peace activist, for whom Eqbal Ahmad was a role model.

Eqbal Ahmad was born in Bihar. His father, a landowner, was murdered. All his life he remained associated with the oppressed, siding with people aspiring for liberty — be they Kashmiris or Palestinians. He supported both movements but became alienated during the 1990s from the low-intensity warfare called the jihad. He also supported the Algerian war of independence from France becoming a member of the Algerian Revolutionary Council. He also opposed the American war in Vietnam and was implicated in a trial for conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger. The charge was never proved but Eqbal Ahmad became very well known in the process as one of the people who sided with the oppressed all over the world.

He spent his last years in Pakistan trying to establish a private university — Khaldunia. It never got a charter. Considering the proliferation of sub-standard, one-subject degree awarding ‘universities’, one is struck by the irony of someone of Eqbal Ahmad’s academic stature not being allowed to create a university.

He died on May 11, 1999, a year after the nuclear explosions by Pakistan which he opposed. His death was mourned in intellectual circles in many countries. In Pakistan, the mourners were a few liberal intellectuals who shared his ideals. Later, some of them set up the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation that has brought out this book.

Eqbal Ahmad was concerned deeply with the crisis of the Third World and, by extension, that of Pakistan. In an article, From Potato Sack to Potato Mash, he identified six major crises: legitimacy, decolonisation, democracy, development, distribution and integration. He argued that most people in the Third World lived in structurally archaic societies organically linked to a modern and modernist industrial world. Living ‘on the frontiers of two worlds’ they experienced old conditions while being aware of new, and attractive, alternatives. This created an anger that earlier societies had not experienced. As development does not always lead to a just distribution of wealth, the societies got farther polarised and conflicts (ethnic, religious or class-based) increased. This, in a nutshell, is also true of Pakistan.

Most of the essays deal with Pakistan. They go back to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Eqbal Ahmed had been in the United States at that time. Pointing out that he had no natural sympathy with Sheikh Mujeebur Rahman, he spoke out against the military action. In those days it was a rare position. His essays on Bhutto government are a fascinating study in political prognosis. He was one of the few left-leaning intellectuals who could see that ZA Bhutto’s personal inclination towards authoritarianism was destroying the credibility of the ideas — including democracy — that he held so dear. He says of Bhutto: “He is dedicated to himself and regards power the best expression of self. He will use his considerable stamina to keep in saddle while having fewer scruples over changing horses” (p. 61).

Because of his love of power, argued Eqbal Ahmad, he was moving towards fascism. Then Ziaul Haq achieved a military ‘fascism’ which Eqbal Ahmad loathed and criticised in many articles. In an interview with Nubar Housepian published in 1980 Eqbal Ahmad gave a detailed analysis of the six major crises of governance in Pakistan (the same as the Third World as a whole).

Eqbal was much concerned in the 1990s with the violence in Karachi. For him it was the death of a city and, indeed, of a way of life — for Karachi presented a metropolitan, urban way of life like no other city in Pakistan. In 1998, the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan upset him. He passed the whole year — a year in which his health deteriorated quickly — in agony. He attended many meeting cautioning hawkish Pakistanis against regarding nuclear bombs as a panacea for all ills. He wrote a number of articles arguing that nuclear weapons created insecurity and could cause accidental wars. He also attended seminars at one of which the pro-nuke activists attacked the anti-nuke speakers. He reported the incident in Dawn (June 11, 1998) concluding: “With an illiterate population of nearly 100 million people, Pakistan has entered the nuclear age. An awesome responsibility now falls on its highly privileged educated class to keep this environment free of hatred and violence” (p. 111).

Eqbal Ahmad was deeply critical of Islamabad’s policy of interfering in Afghanistan in order to create a ‘strategic depth’. He believed that it was not ethical to support the religious extremists, most of all the Taliban, on account of their violations of human rights. He feared that they would export their intolerance to Pakistan. He also felt that the jihadis being used to fight in Kashmir would spread sectarian violence in Pakistan and set the country on a collision course with India. He died before 9/11 after which these policies were reversed. Even if official circles still do not admit this, these policies did result in increasing violence and have made us more insecure than before.

It is fortunate that Eqbal Ahmad had some dedicated admirers because in the absence of state patronage, radical intellectuals can simply disappear — leaving a void but no trace. It is only the conformist intellectuals — those who support those in power or are appropriated by them — who make it to the official history books. Now that alternative histories are possible, this book is an attempt at presenting a role model. It is recommended to all those who want to understand the alternative history of Pakistan.

Dr Tariq Rahman is a teacher at Quaid-i-Azam Univerity, Islamabad

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