Farewell Imtiaz Saab. In your passing away I have lost a dear friend and mentor. I have also lost the opportunity to host you in Goa. The thought of having you as my guest gave me immense pleasure over the years and I am sad that fate decided otherwise. Our calendars could never be aligned. In the next life, Sir, you will start with a credit.
It is inadequate to describe Professor Imtiaz Ahmad, as many have sincerely done, as an insightful sociologist, a secular academic, a pioneering scholar of Indian Islam, and a caring teacher. These are all correct descriptions, but they do not say enough. They do not reveal the mind of the man and his life force. It is the combination of mind and spirit which made him special, a man of the times who, in seminars and classes, would describe, with a calm tone and an enigmatic smile, the transformative processes of power in Indian society and the internal dynamics of its communities. There would be no zealousness of the idealogue. It is hence wrong to see him primarily as a scholar of Islam in India or as a sociologist studying caste among the Muslims because of his seminal work Caste and Social Stratification Among Muslims in India. He was first and foremost a scholar interested in the play of power in society and what it was doing to communities, institutions, and democratic processes in India and South Asia.
