Re-visiting Eqbal Ahmad’s book launch at Harvard with Noam Chomsky

Posted on December 24, 2023 by beenasarwar

A message from the journalist Amitabh Pal about a mutual friend, David Barsamian of Alternative Radio in Colorado reminded me of this piece originally published in The News on Sunday, 8 Oct. 2006, about an event with Noam Chomsky where I first met David. The article is still all-too relevant, but the link no longer works so I’m sharing the piece here without any changes; just added some hyperlinks and photos.

Essential reading – and doing: Eqbal Ahmad

Book launch: The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, Cambridge, September 28, 2006.

Beena Sarwar

John Trumbour addressing the event. Panel: Beena Sarwar, Stuart Schaar, Margaret Cerullo, Noam Chomsky. Photo: Courtesy MAPA.

When Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in his address to the UN on Sept 20, held up a copy of Noam Chomsky’s Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (2003) and recommended it as essential reading to understand contemporary world politics, he could have been talking about The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, for which Chomsky, Eqbal’s long-time friend, wrote the foreword. Chavez identified “the hegemonic pretension of the North American imperialism” as “the greatest threat on this planet” to the survival of the human race.

The book that Jack launched (at HLS)

Chomsky also gave the main address for this collection of Eqbal Ahmad’s writings (Columbia University Press, 2006) at the book’s launch in Cambridge, USA, on September 28. John Trumpbour and Emran Qureshi of the Labor & Worklife Program at the Harvard Law School, who organised the event, didn’t publicise the event too aggressively because of the hype Chavez had generated for Chomsky.

The hall did get quite full, but they didn’t have to turn anyone away at the door. The venue may have had something to do with this. Chomsky, a linguistics professor now retired from the neighbouring MIT, is rarely invited to Harvard. Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowtiz criticises Chomsky for being too “black and white” but often has to concede the basic truth of the points Chomsky makes.

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From the Zia dark years in Pakistan to the ‘hijab row’ in India

Posted on February 28, 2022 by beenasarwar

I was initially hesitant to add my two bits to the ‘hijab row’ in India about which so much has already been written. But I’m glad I did – gained a lot of insights and info that I tried to share with a wider audience. Thanks to Ullekh NP, Executive Editor at Open Magazine in India for prodding me. Published 25 Feb with the headline Hijab Row in India: Just Like Us, with a powchaerful illustration copied below. I’m thrilled that my SAWM sisters, the South Asian Women in Journalism, liked it enough to share it on their website under Article of the Day category. Posting the essay below with materials not used in the Open article, including my 1983 (or was it ’82?) piece in The Star with my own illustrations, HUNDRED AND ONE USES OF A CHADDAR, and link to Fahmida Riaz reciting her poem.

Illustration by Saurabh Singh for Open Magazine

WOMEN ACROSS SOUTH Asia and beyond have for centuries loosely covered their heads and bosoms, regardless of religion, shielding themselves from unrelated men as well as from the hot sun.

Those entering the work force in urban areas have been quicker to shed traditional attire. Those who find these changes threatening sometimes find ways to keep women in their place. Religion offers a convenient pretext.

The more conservative Muslim women in South Asia also traditionally wore a burqa, more all-enveloping than a chaddar or dupatta. My grandmother in Allahabad, U.P., used to wear a brown burqa that she discarded eventually in Karachi.

Growing up in Pakistan under the military dictatorship of Gen. Ziaul Haq, 1977-88, women like me have first-hand experience of such tactics. We watch in horror as shadows of the ZIa dark years seem to spread across the border into India.

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