Obituary: Eqbal Ahmad

Critics of Eqbal Ahmad called him a troublemaker. And, in a non-pejorative sense of the word, he was. An essay he wrote, In praise of resistance, argued in favour of breaking the "barriers of ideology and conformity" in the pursuit of "a just and moral order". It was a respectable text for troublemakers everywhere.

In the years following the second world war, the countries of the West believed that they were doing rather well in pursuing their own just and moral order. Fascism had been put down, communism was being held at bay. The empires of Britain and other European countries were being dismantled. At the age of 15 Eqbal Ahmad became a participant in these tumultuous times when in 1947 he was suddenly uprooted from his birthplace in the Indian state of Bihar and moved with his family to the new Islamic state of Pakistan. More than 1 million people are believed to have died in the rioting that followed the partitioning of the subcontinent when the British left. Someone had blundered.

The rioting apart, for young Eqbal Pakistan was a bad move from the comfort of Bihar, where his family had been landowners. He escaped from Pakistan in the mid-1950s by gaining a place in an American college, paid for by Rotary, a charity. He went ro read history at Princeton. But outside academe, history was being made. France, another colonial power, was blundering in Algeria. Mr. Ahmad joined the FLN, Muslim separatists who were fighting the French and were to gain independence for Algeria in 1962.

Back in America, Mr. Ahmad built up a career as a teacher of history and politics at Cornell and other universities, and decided that the biggest blunders of his time were being made by the Americans, especially over Vietnam. As a result of his deep opposition to the Vietnam was, he found himself on trial accused of, among other things, planning to kidnap Henry Kissinger.

The brandy plot

Mr. Ahmad was arrested in 1971, along with six Roman Catholics, among them a nun and three priests. They were accused of plotting to blow up tunnels under government buildings in Washington and to abduct Mr. Kissinger, then President Nixon's national security adviser. So America had its 'gunpowder plot'; and the nun was pretty (and was later to discard her wimple and marry one of the priests). The five weeks of the trial absorbed America.

The jury argued for several days without reaching a verdict. There was talk of a fresh trial, but the government happily dropped the case. Mr. Ahmad provided reporters with the most plausible explanation of the 'plot': it had been imagined over cognac at the end of a dinner party. Not only would Henry Kissinger be kidnapped, but Richard Nixon would be hauled before a 'people's grand jury' and accused of war crimes. In the light of day, it was thought to be impracticable.

Although the trial was in some ways absurd, it turned Mr. Ahmad into a national figure. What did he think about Israel, Bosnia, Russia, the moon? Whatever the subject, he had a view, usually offensive to one party or another. He knocked the rich, but knocked the poor too for their feebleness.

On the campuses his lectures were well attended, but he had a much bigger audience for his writing, much of it in newspapers in countries dismally consigned to what used to be called the third world. He had a read-me style. An essay on the Mexican economy, not the most immediately appealing subject to the general reader, starts with a vivid description of the invasion in 1519 by the Spanish general Cortes using 'deception, betrayal, warfare, and wanton violence'. Having hooked the reader, Mr. Ahmad moves on to the subject of present-day economic 'reconquest' by Americans and Europeans.

How influential was he? In a world where seers are plentiful, he stood out as a Muslim scholar chiding the indulgent West for its blunders, but content to argue the matter over good food and a glass of brandy. His own hero was Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), regarded as the greatest of Arab historians, the first to identify the regular rise and fall of civilisations, a theme taken up by many subsequent writers, including some contemporary ones. Like Eqbal Ahmad, Ibn Khaldun was respected for his wisdom, but regarded as controversial: the Egyptian ruler he served did not care to contemplate the decline of his power.

In 1995 Mr. Ahmad returned to Pakistan and made his home in Islamabad. It may be that he felt he should be attenting to the blunders of his own country. He noted that nearly 50 years after independence 65% of Pakistanis were illiterate, 55% had no access to clean water, and 30% lived below the poverty line. The country's rulers, he said, were more concerned with their politics than with the anguish of the ordinary people. The country was drifting towards religious intolerance. Mr. Ahmad decided that the best contribution he could make towards making Pakistan more civilised was to found a new university based on the humanities. He died before a rupee was raised to pay for it. But he gave it a name, Ibn Khaldun.