by NADEEM F. PARACHA
Marxist academic, sociologist, and activist Hamza Alavi (1921 – 2003) PHOTO/Zubeida Mustafa
In 1965 a lengthy paper titled, ‘Peasants and Revolution,’ caused a considerable storm in the international academic circles associated with the left. The paper was authored by Pakistani social scientist and historian, Hamza Alavi.
The paper was published during a period when China’s Communist set up was about to implode in the shape of Mao Tse-Tung’s ‘Cultural Revolution;’ and when Mao’s thesis (through which he had constructed China’s 1949 revolution), had begun to inspire peasant-based revolutionary movements in various developing countries.
Mao’s thesis (aka ‘Maoism’) had attempted to include peasants as the main forces of a communist revolution in countries that did not meet the conditions set by classic Marxism. The condition required that such countries must first have a developed bourgeoisie (middle-class) and an equally developed urban proletariat (working class). The economic conflict between the two was predicted by Marx to produce a revolution that would lead to a dynamic state of perpetual communism.
Alavi, a Marxist intellectual as well as a vehement Pakistani nationalist, argued that in agricultural economies and developing countries (especially Pakistan and India), the ‘middle peasantry’ should be treated as the main militant element of a socialist movement. He suggested that it was this section of the peasant class who were natural allies of the urban working classes, as opposed to the poorer peasants.
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In 1997, Alavi turned his attention on the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan. In his fourth most significant thesis, The Contradictions of the Khilafat Movement, Alavi analysed the Khilafat Movement (1919-1926) in depth. He suggested that it was the emergence of this movement that enhanced the political role of the Muslim clergy in South Asia.
Alavi writes that though the movement pretended to be an anti-imperialist entity, its main aim was to promote a communalist understanding of politics among Indian Muslims. He adds that, ‘it was no small irony that the Khilafat Movement was supported by Gandhi and opposed by Jinnah …’
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