Between Past and Future Selected Essays on South Asia
A contemporary of Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, Eqbal Ahmad was a scholar and public figure respected throughout the world for his deep insight, powerful writing, and principled and passionate commitments on the problems and prospects of the Third World, especially those of South Asia. Selected from more than thirty years of writing, this book brings together for the first time some of Eqbal's most important essays, magazine articles, newspaper columns and interviews on South Asia, focusing in particular on Pakistan. In these writings, Eqbal Ahmad illustrates how history, identity, power and privilege have made Pakistan what it is today, and points the way to understanding how the nature of Pakistan's state, its society, radical Islam and nuclear weapons are shaping a perhaps fatal path for the country's future. He assesses the contemporary crisis of the Third World, reflects on Pakistan's independence, the troubled relationship between Pakistan and India, the struggle over Kashmir, the tragedy of Afghanistan, and what he saw as the growing dangers to Pakistan.