On 01 December 2003 one of Pakistan’s leading social scientists passed away. Had someone who had reached the top of the powerful professions---politics, military, bureaucracy, judiciary, industry---died the state would have lowered the flag or, at least, made headlines in the official media. But Hamza Alavi was a scholar so he was not showered with awards and plots of land while alive nor was he given the attention of the state when he died. And yet, he was a man who influenced generations of social scientists, especially those working in the progressive tradition, in Pakistan.
He was born in Karachi on 10 April 1921 and he gave up
banking to join the academic profession. He taught at some of the world’s best
universities---British, American and Asian---retiring as professor from the
University of Manchester. His articles appeared in many books and in scholarly
journals and Dr. Mubarak Ali, the well-known historian, got some translated
into Urdu. The books comprising his articles are called Jagirdari aur Samraj and Pakistan:
Riasat ka Bohran. They bring the thoughts of this great scholar to those
who cannot read English very well. I believe this is an excellent service which
Mubarak Ali, another intellectual whom the state does not appreciate despite
his being well known to the progressive, Urdu-reading youth, has performed for
us.
I wrote an article on Hamza Alavi ((News 07 October 1998) when he was alive. It was meant to honour a
scholar who did not believe in the kind of PR which makes people famous. He was
not a TV icon. He did not have a manager to publicize his work. He did not go
to the parties of the powerful. He was a dignified scholar who gave lectures
when requested to do so by people he appreciated and valued. He hardly ever
refused Dr. Jaffar Ahmad of the University of Karachi who told me how kind and
gentlemanly professor Alavi had been to him when he was a student in England.
But apart form these lectures, Hamza Alavi did not travel much. His health was
frail and he could not exert himself too much.
In 2002 S. M
Naseem and Khalid Nadvi published a book entitled The Post-Colonial State and Social Transformation in India and Pakistan
as a festschrift to Professor
Alavi. And, indeed, he deserves this honour because it comes from people who
sincerely feel that they are intellectually indebted it to him. For this
recognition Hamza Alavi did not have to sneak into the corridors of power. That
is why it is so valuable. For me the pleasure of the event of its launching, at
which I was a speaker, was that I got to talk to Professor Hamza Alavi---not
the first of my many conversations with him.
But let me remember the first time I met him. That was in
London and I remember that glorious summer morning. The clock ticked away and
we waited. Outside the windows I could see the greenery of a British summer but
inside there was the grayness of the carpet. This was the library of the School
of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London in July 1993.
The librarian looked at the clock intently. Then it was
exactly nine o’clock and we entered. The distinguished looking man in a gray
suit started talking to the clerk. The clerk asked his name: “I am Hamza
Alavi,” he replied. I turned around. At last I had seen him in person---the man
whose articles I had read with such appreciation. I introduced myself and we
chatted briefly.
Hamza Alavi’s greatest contribution to political theory
is the concept of the salariat. The idea is that the colonial state, which is a
modern state, creates a large ubiquitous bureaucracy. Such a bureaucracy is
necessary to control people more effectively and tax them more systematically.
The state, therefore, becomes the greatest single employer. Most educated
people, or at least those who are educated in the educational institutions
created by the state, want jobs. These people, who are employed and draw a
salary, or who aspire for employment, or their dependents, are the salariat.
Such a salariat, says Hamza Alavi, was the product of the
British colonial rule in India. This salariat is not one homogenous whole. Its
highest members, in the civil bureaucracy and the military, are extremely
powerful. Indeed, they are the rulers, in lieu of elected leaders, in a
conquered country. The lowest members can hardly make ends meet. But all live
off the salary which comes from that which the farmers produce from the land,
the workers produce in factories, and taxation.
This concept helps us understand both the Pakistan
movement and the rise of ethnic movements in Pakistan. The Hindu and Muslim
salariats competed for jobs and power in pre-partition India. Thus, in Hamza
Alavi’s view, Pakistan was not obtained for Islam but for Muslims. The
difference is crucial and relevant today. If Hamza Alavi is right, and all the
evidence supports his point of view, the creation of a theocracy is not what
the Quaid-i-Azam would have approved of. He was a liberal democrat who wanted
the Muslim salariat to live without fear of Hindu domination but did not want a
theocracy.
The rise of Bengali, Sindhi, Pashtun, Balochi ethnicity
is because the salariats of these groups aspire for their share in power and
goods and services the state provides. They resent Punjabi domination while
state functionaries justify it. Hamza Alavi, in common with others in Pakistan
and abroad, have developed this line of thinking in several papers.
During the course of this analysis he has referred to
major developments in Pakistan’s history. He has given an account of how the
politicians, because of their weakness and infighting, could not prevent the
bureaucracy from consolidating its power. The military also joined a little
later and, since then, the military-bureaucratic complex has been the most
powerful entity---called the ‘establishment’---in Pakistan. He also tells us
that the bureaucracy dominated in the first two interludes of military rule
but, during General Ziaul Haq’s days, the military was dominant. Among other
things he tells us about the lives of the peasants of the Punjab and, in
general, about women in Pakistan’s male-dominant society. Although papers about
politics and society would appeal to more people, the papers on how the
transition from feudalism to colonial capitalism took place in South Asia would
repay reading.
The latest papers on history, arguing that the communal
stridency in Indian Muslims was the result of the Khilafat Movement, are most
intriguing. If this is true then Gandhi contributed, however indirectly,
towards creating Muslim aggressiveness and assertiveness in India! These are
questions which need to be debated at length. Hamza Alavi has something for
everybody. His work should be read and discussed and not ignored as it
generally is in our universities.
Hamza Alavi is no more with us but his writings are.
Pakistani universities hardly make their students read these writings
presumably because they question the false myths laboriously constructed by
official spin doctors. The best way to honour this great mind would be to
reprint his works, make them known to students and understand our society in
the light of the insights they give us.