Chapter 13 - Eqbal Ahmad: An Affective Reading of Afro-Asianism

Summary

Abstract

Born in Pakistan and educated in the United States, Eqbal Ahmad became one of the most influential anti-imperialist intellectuals of the 1960s-90s. He built a complex network of ideas and friendships across continents and crossed paths with leading third-world figures, creating a living geography of Afro-Asianism. By starting from the affective life and intellectual stances of Ahmad, this chapter explores how the emergence of Afro-Asianism as a political project was the result of affective conditions that emerged during revolutionary times. It does so by engaging with affect and emotion beyond the restriction of the subject, to explore the affective armature of Afro-Asianism which shaped history from the colonial period to post-colonial times.

Keywords: Eqbal Ahmad, Afro-Asianism, decolonization, affect, history of emotions

“The function of good intellectual work is to apprehend reality in order to change it”

—Eqbal Ahmad.

Introduction

The “Bandung Spirit” was more than a manifestation of the politics of Afro-Asianism. It was inscribed onto a longer period of transition and big changes on a global scale. According to one of the most important intellectuals of the postwar Global South, Eqbal Ahmad (1930?-1999)2, this transition was initiated by modernization, a process that was at the root of “a shift in the fundamental equation of human condition” which he identified as “the Third World transition from rebellion to revolution”. This shift changed the nature of the state, which became a concrete target of the people in need of a more just system. The challenge of the post-colonial period, he thought, was to deal with the inherently violent and inegalitarian process of modernization by allowing the people to protect their interests and aspirations through participation in transformative political processes. Even though Third World revolutionary movements did succeed in mobilizing people against state power, they failed to appease the political tensions of post-colonial times.

In a 1995 interview, Ahmad recounted the excitement that he and other young Pakistani college students had felt about the Bandung conference and the promise of a non-aligned, “Third Force” in the world. Yet Ahmad believed that Bandung’s failure began with the decision to adopt the model of rapid industrialization. Postcolonial political leaders failed to understand the modernization process.