Eqbal Ahmad
Encyclopedia
Eqbal Ahmad was a Pakistan
i writer, journalist
, and anti-war activist. He was strongly critical of the Middle East
strategy of the United States
as well as what he saw as the "twin curse" of nationalism
and religious fanaticism
in such countries as Pakistan.
in 1947, he and his older brothers migrated to Pakistan
.
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. From 1958 to 1960, he studied political science
and Middle Eastern history at Princeton University
, later earning his Ph.D.
From 1960 to 1963, Ahmad lived in North Africa, working primarily in Algeria
, where he joined the National Liberation Front
. He was offered an opportunity to join the first independent Algerian government and refused in favor of life as an independent intellectual.
When he returned to the United States, Ahmad taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago
(1964–65) and Cornell University
in the school of Labour Relations (1965–68). During these years, he became known as one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policies in Vietnam
and Cambodia
. From 1968 to 1972, he was a fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute in Chicago.
In 1971, Ahmad was indicted with the anti-war Catholic
priests Philip Berrigan
and his brother Daniel
, along with four other Catholic pacifists
, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger
. After fifty-nine hours of deliberations, the jury declared a mistrial, in 1972.
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
, a very progressive school, which was the first college in the nation to divest from South Africa, in Amherst, Massachusetts
, where he taught world politics and political science.
In the early 1990s, Ahmad was granted a parcel of land in Pakistan by Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto
's government to build an independent, alternative university, named Khaldunia.
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. Eqbal died in Islamabad
in 1999 of heart failure following an operation for colon cancer.
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 actively claims to be driven by the very values Ahmad stood for and awards its most prestigious honor, the Dr. Eqbal Ahmed Achievement Award to one graduate unanimously deemed by the faculty as reflective of Ahmad's values at its annual convocation.
Since his death, a memorial lecture series has been established at Hampshire in his honor. Speakers have included in Kofi Annan
, Edward Said
, Noam Chomsky
, and Arundhati Roy
.
Ahmad was admired as "an intellectual unintimidated by power or authority", and collaborated with such left-wing journalists and activists as Noam Chomsky
, Edward Said
, Howard Zinn
, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
, Richard Falk, Fredric Jameson
, Alexander Cockburn
and Daniel Berrigan
.
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i writer, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and anti-war activist. He was strongly critical of the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
strategy of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as well as what he saw as the "twin curse" of nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism
Religious fanaticism is fanaticism related to a person's, or a group's, devotion to a religion. However, religious fanaticism is a subjective evaluation defined by the culture context that is performing the evaluation. What constitutes fanaticism in another's behavior or belief is determined by the...
in such countries as Pakistan.
Life
Ahmad was born in the village of Irki in the Indian state of Bihar. When he was a young boy, his father was murdered over a land dispute in his presence. During the partition of IndiaPartition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...
in 1947, he and his older brothers migrated to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
.
Ahmad graduated from Forman Christian College
Forman Christian College
Forman Christian College University, or FCCU, is a chartered university in Lahore, Pakistan, named after its American-born founder, Dr. Charles William Forman.- History :...
in Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
, Pakistan, in 1951 with a degree in economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
. After serving briefly as an army officer, he enrolled at Occidental College
Occidental College
Occidental College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887, Occidental College, or "Oxy" as it is called by students and alumni, is one of the oldest liberal arts colleges on the West Coast...
in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1957. From 1958 to 1960, he studied political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and Middle Eastern history at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, later earning his Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
From 1960 to 1963, Ahmad lived in North Africa, working primarily in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
, where he joined the National Liberation Front
National Liberation Front (Algeria)
The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was set up on November 1, 1954 as a merger of other smaller groups, to obtain independence for Algeria from France.- Anticolonial struggle :...
. He was offered an opportunity to join the first independent Algerian government and refused in favor of life as an independent intellectual.
When he returned to the United States, Ahmad taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
(1964–65) and Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
in the school of Labour Relations (1965–68). During these years, he became known as one of the earliest and most vocal opponents of American policies in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
and Cambodia
Cambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
. From 1968 to 1972, he was a fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute in Chicago.
In 1971, Ahmad was indicted with the anti-war Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
priests Philip Berrigan
Philip Berrigan
Philip Francis Berrigan was an internationally renowned American peace activist, Christian anarchist and former Roman Catholic priest...
and his brother Daniel
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....
, along with four other Catholic pacifists
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. After fifty-nine hours of deliberations, the jury declared a mistrial, in 1972.
From 1972 to 1982, Ahmad was Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Policy Studies is a left-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C..It has been directed by John Cavanagh since 1998- History :...
. From 1973 to 1975, he served as the first director of its overseas affiliate, the Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute
Transnational Institute is an international think tank for progressive politics. It was established in 1973 in Amsterdam and serves as a network for scholars and activists...
in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
.
In 1982, Ahmad joined the faculty at Hampshire College
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...
, a very progressive school, which was the first college in the nation to divest from South Africa, in Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...
, where he taught world politics and political science.
In the early 1990s, Ahmad was granted a parcel of land in Pakistan by Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Pakistan
The Prime Minister of Pakistan , is the Head of Government of Pakistan who is designated to exercise as the country's Chief Executive. By the Constitution of Pakistan, Pakistan has the parliamentary democratic system of government...
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
's government to build an independent, alternative university, named Khaldunia.
Upon his retirement from Hampshire in 1997, he settled permanently in Pakistan, where he continued to write a weekly column, for Dawn
Dawn (newspaper)
Dawn is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper. One of the country's two largest English-language dailies, it is the flagship of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, published by Pakistan Herald Publications, which also owns the Herald, a magazine, the evening paper The Star and...
, Pakistan's oldest English-language newspaper. Eqbal died in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
in 1999 of heart failure following an operation for colon cancer.
Ahmad was the founding chancellor of the then newly established Textile Institute of Pakistan
Textile Institute of Pakistan
Textile Institute of Pakistan is a not-for-profit degree-awarding institution in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. The college was established by the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association in 1994 as a means to create professionals to support Pakistan's textile industry...
, a textile oriented science, design and business degree awarding institute. The institute actively claims to be driven by the very values Ahmad stood for and awards its most prestigious honor, the Dr. Eqbal Ahmed Achievement Award to one graduate unanimously deemed by the faculty as reflective of Ahmad's values at its annual convocation.
Since his death, a memorial lecture series has been established at Hampshire in his honor. Speakers have included in Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, and Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays...
.
Ahmad was admired as "an intellectual unintimidated by power or authority", and collaborated with such left-wing journalists and activists as Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was a Palestinian academic, characterised by Edward Said as "Palestine's foremost academic and intellectual" and by Rashid Khalidi as one of the first Arab-American scholars to have a really serious effect on the way the Middle East is portrayed in political science and in...
, Richard Falk, Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Cockburn
Alexander Claud Cockburn is an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch...
and Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....
.
Quote
- [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. — Edward SaidEdward SaidEdward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
External links
- Website dedicated to Eqbal Ahmad
- Eqbal Ahmad Archive
- Profile on the Transnational InstituteTransnational InstituteTransnational Institute is an international think tank for progressive politics. It was established in 1973 in Amsterdam and serves as a network for scholars and activists...
- Eqbal Ahmad, by Edward W. Said, in The Guardian, May 14, 1999
- Noam Chomsky delivers the 2005 Eqbal Ahmad Lecture at Hampshire College
- The Eqbal Ahmad page
- Dawn article by Eqbal Ahmad - 'In a Land Without Music'
- Terrorism: Ours and theirs by Eqbal Ahmad, LiP MagazineLiP magazineLiP: Informed Revolt was an award-winning alternative magazine that took on various incarnations after its founding in 1996 by former Britannica.com Books editor Brian Awehali...
: 2001. - Ahmad, Eqbal. "A jihad against time." Al-Ahram Weekly On-line. 4 February 1999. Al-Ahram. 6 June 2006.
- Obituary. "Eqbal Ahmad, historian and rebel." The Economist. May 27, 1999. This is a link to a premium content article.