[Reader-list] Hamza Alavi dies : Call for obituaries, letters, for a web-memorial

[Harsh Kapoor]

Professor Hamza Alavi the widely known Marxist sociologist died on 
December 1, 2003 in Pakistan
A small independent web memorial web page has been set up in his 
memory. It contains reports some from the Pakistan press . . .
Scholars and non scholars, people on the left (also those left out by 
the left) citizens from the subcontinent or where ever are invited to 
send obituaries, letters, memories etc. for addition on this page. 
Please send your messages to the south asia citizens web  -> 
<sacw at sacw.net>


IN MEMORY OF HAMZA ALAVI
Reports, Tributes and obituaries
http://www.sacw.net/hamza_alavi/index.html

o o o

see report from DAWN

http://www.dawn.com/2003/12/02/local20.htm

Dawn
December 2, 2003

KARACHI: Hamza Alavi - a social
scientist-cum-political activist
By Bhagwandas


KARACHI, Dec 1: Hamza Alavi, who died on Monday, aged
82, led a very active intellectual life. He became
famous in the academia when he wrote an article in the
newly-founded The Socialist Register in which he
propounded the thesis that middle peasants were
initially most militant elements of the peasantry and
could therefore be a powerful ally of the proletariat
movement in the countryside. Through this hypothesis
he reversed the sequence suggested in the Marxist
text.
His thesis labelled as Alavi-Wolf thesis (since it was
reiterated by Eric Wolf four years later) is still
alive and refuses to die, as through it he had made a
distinction between the Marxist theory and the
practical Mao.
His strength lay in going to the practicalities of
things, and when he got interested in peasantry as a
youngman, he left a coveted State Bank job to take up
farming in Tanzania where he lived among peasants.
Later, a serious illness took him to London where he
had time for reflection and changed his career.
That is how a social scientist-cum-political activist
was born. For 10 years he remained involved in
political activism in London: writing, lecturing and
holding seminars in universities. For five years he
edited Pakistan Today in which various issues were
analyzed from the Left's perspective and obviously it
was anathema to the Pakistani establishment. The
journal was circulated secretively in the country.
His curriculum vitae makes an impressive reading: from
the post of research officer in the Reserve Bank of
India in 1945 to readership in the University of
Manchester and the post-retirement life in Karachi
since 1997.
What is most significant about Mr Alavi is that his
research is not the kind that is conducted in the
air-conditioned seminar rooms and libraries.
Accompanied by his wife, he went and lived for 15
months in a Sahiwal (Punjab) village in 1968-69 to do
an anthropological field study. In 1981, he returned
to the same village to do a follow-up on the changes
that had taken place over the years.
His field-oriented research, to which he applied his
theoretical knowledge of anthropology and sociology,
made his papers full of insightful knowledge and
information on Pakistani society.
It seems intriguing that while abroad he was
acknowledged as a distinguished anthropologist whose
ideas had influenced a large number of social
scientists, and he was acclaimed as a foremost
theoretical thinker in South Asia; back home, his
views were anathema to the establishment which found
it difficult to swallow ideas that criticized foreign
aid, spoke of the emergence of military-bureaucratic
oligarchy which tries to mediate between the imperial
powers and landlords and the native bourgeoisie.
He had been studying the Holy Quran to understand the
rise of fundamentalism which concerned him deeply. He
thought rational intervention was necessary as there
was a pluralist view of Islam as had been advocated by
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who had said that religion should
remain a private matter.
He had founded a number of organizations in his early
life like the Pakistan Youth League, which was a broad
liberal social forum, the Pakistan Socialist Society
and after Ayub Khan's coup, he set up a committee for
the Restoration of Democracy in Pakistan. He also
formed The Forum, Pakistan Welfare Association, etc.
Mr Alavi wrote a large number of research papers. His
writings are so diverse that it is difficult to
identify his area of specialization. Some of the
subjects of his papers were the class structure;
nature of colonial and post-colonial economies;
relations between colonial, post-colonial and
metropolitan elites; role of military and bureaucracy;
changing production relations and mode of production
and kinship in the political economy, etc.