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.

Another reiteration that Jinnah had envisaged a different Pakistan than what it has become

Mao, who had largely used poor peasants as his foot soldiers during the 1949 communist revolution in China, did not agree with Alavi.

Mao critiqued Alavi’s proposition by observing that the middle peasantry had a lot to lose from indulging in a make-or-break revolutionary movement, whereas the poor peasants do not because they were less burdened by economic interests and ties, and, thus, were freer to play a more assertive role in a revolution.

Alavi propagated the flip side. In his paper he suggested that just like men from urban working classes who can always find employment and were thus not afraid to lose a job due to their involvement in a revolutionary movement, this is the same aspect that makes the middle peasantry an important revolutionary player. This was because unlike the poor peasants, the middle peasants can survive the onslaught of opposing forces (because they were more resourceful), whereas the poor peasants, for fear of losing whatever little they had, prefer to remain subdued during a movement.

Alavi’s paper was widely debated by scholars and contemporary theorists of the left around the world. The paper propelled Alavi’s status in the international arena of scholarly Marxism.

In Pakistan, the armed peasant movement initiated by the Mazdoor Kisaan Party (MKP) in Charsadda (between 1968 and 1974) was partially based on Alavi’s observations.

Alavi was born into a well-to-do business family in Karachi. He got an economics degree from a university in Poona (in pre-partition India), before returning to Karachi after the creation of Pakistan in 1947.

He was a passionate supporter of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and played a key role in helping the government set up the State Bank of Pakistan. He was still in his 20s when, instead of continuing his high profile career in the bank, he opted to accompany his wife to East Africa where both set up a farm.

It was here that Alavi began to study the political and economic dynamics of the peasants. In the late ‘50s he moved to the UK to study at the London School of Economics.

Alavi returned to Pakistan in 1960 as editor of the left-leaning Pakistan Times. But he quit and flew back to the UK after the newspaper was taken over by the military regime of Ayub Khan.

After establishing his scholarly credentials with his vastly influential paper on the middle peasantry’s role in revolution, Alavi delivered his second most important thesis in 1972: ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies.’

This paper too highlights his highly original thinking. In addressing the reasons behind the frequent occurrence of military coups in post-colonial countries in Asia, Africa and South America, Alavi suggested that most post-colonial countries (such as Pakistan) already had an ‘overdeveloped military’ even at the time of their inception.

According to Alavi, though at the time of their creation, the new countries lacked economic resources and political institutions, they inherited established militaries from the receding colonial powers.

Thus, when such countries struggled to develop civilian political institutions, their militaries were the only organised state entities to resolve issues triggered by political conflicts between underdeveloped civilian bodies. This singularity politicized the military and retarted the process needed to make civilian institutions reach maturity.

Alavi settled in the UK, becoming a professor of sociology, first at Leeds University and then at the Manchester University. He wrote scathing critiques of the reactionary dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq (1977-88) in various academic journals. By then, along with Iqbal Ahmad, Alavi had become one of the most cited Pakistani scholars in the West.

In 1987, two years after deadly ethnic riots erupted in Karachi, Alavi emerged with his third most significant paper Nationhood and Nationalities in Pakistan.

To get to the bottom of ethnic turmoil in Pakistan, Alavi observed that the movement to create Pakistan had a larger economic motive rather than a purely religious one. Alavi noted that bulk of the movement was driven by India’s Muslim ‘salaried classes’ who were competing for government jobs against their Hindu counterparts from the same class.

He informs that the salaried Muslims believed that this overwhelming competition will be eliminated with the creation of Pakistan. However, he continues by suggesting that this sense of severe competition was not resolved with the creation of Pakistan. Instead it was carried over and took the shape of competition between the salaried classes of different ethnic groups. This, according to Alavi, created ethnic tensions and turmoil in Pakistan.

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 …’

Until his demise in 2003, Alavi continued to insist that Jinnah had envisaged a very different Pakistan from what it eventually became after his death. On being a Marxist, he once told renowned historian, Dr Mubarak Ali, that Marxism works best as a tool to analyse history, economics and politics, but does not hold quite so well as a political ideology.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, December 13th, 2015