Eqbal Ahmad was clearly one of the finest examples in South Asia of what his friend Edward Said called a “public intellectual.” He was also one of the first to urge a serious examination of the political roots of modern militancy in the Middle East and South Asia.

Eqbal Ahmad taught at a number of universities and colleges in the US, but he was not only an academic. He had actively engaged with the anti-colonial struggles in Algeria and Vietnam. It is equally well-known that Eqbal Ahmad remained a committed Marxist throughout his life (he once called Marxism “a non-narcissistic outlook on life”) even as he turned critical of Leninist politics.

Eqbal Ahmad’s first exposure to the Left was among the Communist fighters in Kashmir in the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-48. Some leaders of the Communist Party of India in the 1940s saw Kashmir as a possible launching pad for socialism in South Asia and were involved in the Pakistani effort to secure Kashmir in late 1947. Eqbal Ahmad was among the first Pakistani fighters in Kashmir in the fateful October of 1947 and had a four-month long fighting stint in Kashmir.

Eqbal Ahmad had been recruited by the activists of the Muslim League from his college campus in Lahore. This was the Talim-ul-Islam College of the Ahmadi sect which had been relocated to Lahore after Partition. The Ahmadis were not only actively involved in the efforts to organize for Kashmir in the Punjab, but also fought in the 1947-48 war. Only five students volunteered to fight in Kashmir when Muslim League activists visited Eqbal Ahmad’s college. At the young age of 15, after about four days of training in small firearms, Eqbal Ahmad was taken by the Muslim League activists to Muzaffarabad where he joined volunteers from the northern areas of Pakistan.

Even though the young Eqbal Ahmad had been brought to Muzaffarabad by the Muslim League, he joined a Communist Party unit led by Latif Afghani. This was his first introduction to Communist politics.

Latif Afghani was a Communist activist and a trade union leader who had also been a member of the All India Students Federation of the Communist Part of India. Latif Afghani was later arrested in 1950 by the Pakistani government for his protests against the pro-US Iranian Shah.

This frustrated attempt to liberate Kashmir with the force of arms by a coalition of ragtag forces took place against the background of genocidal violence in neighboring Punjab which had spilled over into Jammu by the September of 1947.

Later Eqbal Ahmad wrote that the Pathan tribesmen had started fighting each other before they could even enter the city of Srinagar in the last week of October. He reported heavy casualties among the Pakistani fighting units from the northern areas once the first battalion of the better-armed Indian Army was airlifted to Kashmir on 27 October 1947.