Unrepentant Marxist, writer, journalist, filmmaker and political campaigner, Tariq Ali is still searching for socialism with a human face. He sits on the editorial board of the New Left Review and is a regular columnist for The Guardian, Counter Punch and the London Review of Books. He compares Marx with the Prometheus of Greek mythology who stole the heavenly gift of fire from Zeus and brought it to the mortals. What we do with that fire is up to us, he is fond of saying. Tariq Ali was in Delhi recently to deliver the Faiz Ahmed Faiz Memorial Lecture. He had a freewheeling interview with Bharat Bhushan, a shorter version of which appeared in print:



When you look at your original homeland, Pakistan, what thoughts come to your mind?

A congregation of pain – to quote from Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s great poem Aaj ke naam – in Urdu, “dard ki anjuman”. The country has gone from bad to worse. You feel sometimes that things...