[1] Born in Bihar, British India, Ahmad migrated to Pakistan as a child and went on to study economics at the Forman Christian College.

According to Pervez Hoodbhoy, warrants of arrest and death sentences were put on him during successive martial law governments in Pakistan.

Although he was indicted in 1971 on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger (who was then President Nixon's National Security Advisor), the case was eventually dismissed.

Edward Said listed Ahmad as one of the two most important influences on his intellectual development,[5] praising the latter's writings on South Asia especially as informative.

Eqbal Ahmad was born in the village of Irki in the Gaya District (now Magadh Division) of the Indian state of Bihar.

[1][8] His vocal support of Palestinian rights during the 1967 war led to his isolation within the academic community, causing him to leave Cornell.

[1] In 1971, Eqbal Ahmad was indicted as one of the Harrisburg Seven as a result of his activism against the Vietnam War alongside the anti-war Catholic priest Philip Berrigan, Berrigan's future wife, Sister Elizabeth McAlister, and four other Catholic pacifists, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger.

He collaborated with such left-wing journalists, activists, and thinkers as Chomsky, Said, Howard Zinn, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Richard Falk, Fredric Jameson, Alexander Cockburn and Daniel Berrigan.

Ahmad influenced several left-leaning activists including Chomsky, Zinn, Abu-Lughod, Richard Falk, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Cockburn, Said and Roy.

Eqbal Ahmad describes himself as a 'harshly secular' person and an 'internationalist' but he was quick to praise elements of religious thought and practice that he found admirable among the Islamic Sufis.

[20][1] [Ahmad was] perhaps the shrewdest and most original anti-imperialist analyst of the post-war world, especially in the dynamics between the West and the post-colonial states of Asia and Africa.In a review of The Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad, Keally McBride praises "his uncanny sense of human nature, and his encyclopedic knowledge of world history".

Shahid Alam of Monthly Review wrote that "Ahmad provided the most articulate, analytical, and passionate voice from the third world since Frantz Fanon.

Amitava Kumar argued, "As much as Said, he was a mentor to a generation of thinkers, mostly South Asian [...] notable for "not only the power but also the wide range of his sympathies [...] He was a committed engineer of emancipation, building imaginative roads, linking issues across continents."

He found some aspects of Ahmad's analysis less relevant in the 21st century but still praised "his commitment to resolving political problems through diplomacy, not war.

"[22] Irfan Husain wrote in Dawn that Ahmad was too biased in favor of the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also stated, "Perhaps his most precious gift was his ability to listen to others in a way most of us don't: he would pay young students the same courtesy of carefully following their argument that he would extend to the rich and powerful.

"[23] Muhammad Idrees Ahmad wrote in 2016, "He accurately predicted the consequences of western recklessness in Afghanistan, and his warnings on US intervention in Iraq would prove prophetic.