KARACHI: As part of the celebrations to mark the 60 years of Oxford University Press’s publishing in Pakistan a book titled The Class Structure of Pakistan by Dr Taimur Rahman was launched at the OUP head office on Tuesday. Oxford mobile library and Oxford University Press Pakistan Museum and Archives were also inaugurated on the occasion.

The event began with a little ceremony outside the main door to the OUP head office where an OUP employee Hamid Hyder, who has been with the organisation for the past 39 years, cut the ribbon to inaugurate the mobile library. Then everyone moved inside the building to reach the auditorium.

Managing Director OUP Ameena Saiyid was the first speaker. She gave an introduction to the mobile library and the OUP Museum and Archives. She said the library would introduce the underprivileged children to the pleasure of reading. She informed the guests that 40 million out of the 60 million children in Pakistan went to school. The teacher-pupil ratio was poor.

Libraries in the country were under-resourced. In such a situation, she said, the library was set up to develop library culture and to instill reading habits in children. With regard to the museum she said it was set up to preserve the history and heritage and to showcase the achievements and challenges over the six decades of publishing. Then she invited the guests to have a look at the museum which was inaugurated by another OUP employee Sandra Rodrigues.

The book launching ceremony was next. Managing Editor OUP Shehla Naqvi welcomed the attendees. Ameena Saiyid gave an overview of OUP Pakistan’s academic publishing programme, after which The Class Structure of Pakistan was launched by senior journalist Ghazi Salahuddin.

Mr Salahuddin’s conversation with the author of the book Dr Taimur Rahman was the last segment of the event. Mr Salahuddin started off with a witty question asking the author that a revolution required overcoming the elite of society, and quite a few members of the audience represented the elite. Dr Rahman said the progress of any society required certain social changes and ours had reached a point where change was important as the country was facing a severe crisis. When the moderator asked about the Marxist framework of the book, the author replied that the book was a study of the economic structure of Pakistan, not a social or cultural one, written within Marxist framework. He argued there was a huge gap in literature on the issue.

Mr Salahuddin touched on the Leftist movement in the country to which Dr Rehman responded while one could view it with regard to the strength of the Leftist movement, when Marx was writing Das Kapital the strength of such a movement was abysmal. Salahuddin countered it by suggesting that the Marxist point of view was one way of looking at things in a society where there were different schools of thought, which led him to the issue of the role of religion. Dr Rahman pointed out that though religion was a powerful factor, it was the product of certain material social relations.

Mr Salahuddin then asked the question about the Asiatic mode of production mentioned in the book with reference to India and particularly to those parts of the subcontinent which were now Pakistan. Dr Rahman said the mode of production of pre-colonial South Asia was different from European feudalism and Marx’s idea of Asiatic mode of production was consistent with the pre-colonial historical evidence.

He said the colonial path of capitalist development in South Asia resulted in a combination of Asiatic and capitalist modes of production. He argued in Europe there was a different kind of feudalism where there would be a lord looking after property, whereas in India the jagirdar was not necessarily the owner of the land. He would live in other cities, while the zamindar, the middleman, would participate in production and transfer certain percentage of the produce to the jagirdar.

In the end, at the request of the guests, Dr Rahman, who is also the singer and guitarist for the pop band Laal, sang two numbers. One, Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ‘Hum jo tareek raahon mein’ and two Iqbal’s ‘Utho meri dunia ke ghareebon ko’.