Eqbal Ahmad

Public intellectuals are essential for understanding and analysing the issues that have a strong impact on people’s lives. They have the intriguing grit to stand for truth, insight to understand the factual reality of the matter, indomitable spirit of educating the masses and building a public movement. They are a rare breed of people whose existence is not welcomed by the ruling regimes, exploitative corporations and religious bigots. The Muslim world has its own share of public intellectuals who find it very difficult to play such a role in their own societies. The ruling regimes threaten them with jail and the ignorant mullahs with hell for their extraordinary beliefs and convictions. The book traces the trajectory of the life of one such public intellectual, Eqbal Ahmad. The book is written by his friend, Stuart Schaar, and can qualify as an academic biography. In his Introduction, Schaar writes about the predictions and analysis of Eqbal about Afghanistan, Iraq, the role of the United States in world politics, insurgencies, the Cold War and the Arab Spring. Eqbal was based in the First world but he was grounded in the Third world, ‘he reached maturity outside the frameworks of Pakistan’s social and political constraints, his place on the margins of different worlds freed him from the traps that surround those who work and live locally. He therefore approached the world with different assumptions than others. There lay his originality’ (p. 8). This originality made him take up unpopular causes, and being an anti-war activist in 1960–80s he was indicted in court cases too...