KARACHI, Oct 17: Scholars and critics said on Wednesday that the current situation in Pakistan could be better understood in the light of theories presented by social scientist Hamza Alavi.

Speaking at a seminar titled ‘Contemporary Pakistan and Hamza Alavi’, organised by the Karachi University Teachers Society, they lamented that the man whose theories were taught in renowned universities of the world was so little known by the people of his country, especially the youth.

Hamza Alavi was born into a Bohra business family in Karachi in 1921, completed his early education in the city and received higher education at Aligarh Muslim University and Gokhale Institute in Poona.

He joined the research department of the Reserve Bank of India when he was 24 years old and went on to become the head of operations of the State Bank in East Pakistan. Before he was 30, he was one of the five principal officers of the newly formed central bank.

Shortly after his retirement in 1953, he moved to London with his wife where he became a political activist. He contributed to the formation of the Pakistan Youth League and Pakistan Socialist Society. After the Ayub coup, he formed the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy. However, it is his academic work which provides the conceptual basis for studying the fabric of society in the subcontinent, for which Hamza Alavi is known. He died in 2003.

Listing the main themes of Hamza Alavi’s work, Prof Dr Jaffar Ahmed, the director of Pakistan Study Centre at Karachi University, said the major areas of Hamza Alavi’s work were: the mode of production, the state in post-colonial society, nationalism and ethnic politics, and the Khilafat Movement.

He said Hamza Alavi basically belonged to the neo-Marxist school of thought and believed that Asia never had the kind of feudalism found in mediaeval Europe and it was manifested during the colonial era. His work on nationalism in the subcontinent revealed that it was the ‘salaried’ class that was behind Muslim nationalism in India and Bengali nationalism in 1971.

One of Hamza Alavi’s most-cited works at the seminar was his paper called ‘the burden of US aid’, published in 1962, which has been a hot topic for policy makers and society in general for many years now.

Dr Muhammad Ali Siddiqui, a writer and critic, said Hamza Alavi understood, unlike many Marxists themselves, that to remain a Marxists all your life was directly opposite to Marxist philosophy. “One thing definite that I am not a Marxist,” he quoted Marx as having said to make his point.

Talking about the subcontinent, Dr Siddiqui said that there was a gap of 60 years between the Hindus and Muslims living in India. When Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was urging Muslims to learn English to get government jobs, the Hindus were receiving their pensions after retiring from government jobs. Talking about the Khilafat Movement, he said that what the people did not understand was that the Khalifas were themselves on the beck and call of the West. Dr Riaz Sheikh, who recently translated six articles of Hamza Alavi and compiled them into a book called Takhliq-i-Pakistan: tareekhi aur samaji mubahis (The birth of Pakistan: historical and sociological perspectives), agreed with Dr Siddiqui and said the Khilafat movement ruined the secular politics of the Muslim League.

Moving on to feudalism, Dr Siddiqui said the worst contribution of feudalism was the propagation of its mindset. The ‘tractorisation’ actually strengthened feudalism and since then “we have been consolidating a weakness”.

All speakers agreed that Hamza Alavi’s theories and work could be applied to the present situation in Pakistan to understand it better. He talked about subjects like religious politics and ethnicity objectively which people hesitated to do now, said Dr Sheikh.