Hamza Alavi: A Life

Hamza Alavi, the renowned Pakistani scholar and political activist passed away on 1 December 2003 in his native Karachi unremarked by too many. He belonged to the first generation of independent Pakistan's professionals. As an employee of the Reserve Bank of India, he moved on after Partition to help set up the State Bank of Pakistan before embarking on a career of political activism and academic study. He was one of the pioneers of South Asian social science, particularly the study of agrarian society. Here we reproduce in three segments extracts from an autobiographical sketch by Hamza Alavi titled 'Fragment of a Life', all of this before he began his academic career.

Political activism Before I moved into an academic career in 1966, I spent ten years in London in political activism, writing, lecturing and giving seminars at universities. When I first came to London, I joined the London School of Economics (LSE) for a PhD on banking in Pakistan, which given my years of first-hand involvement in building it up, I could have written blindfolded. But I was sick of that subject. And I was disenchanted by empty academicism. I found myself attending sociology, social anthropology and political science seminars. I devoured a vast amount of literature. I was full of questions. What had happened to my country? I studied and wrote. In those days there was nothing much to read about Pakistan, to discover what had gone wrong. So one had to study, analyze and write! I founded and edited Pakistan Today (1957-62), a quarterly journal. Each issue would have an article that I wrote. We would bring out an issue as soon as there was a major development in Pakistan. After the Ayub coup we came out six times a year. Pakistan Today had a circulation of several hundred. The peak was about 1500 for our final issue which was wholly devoted to an article entitled The Burden of US Aid. The journal was sent to East and West Pakistan and clandestinely reproduced there or placed in libraries. The US Aid issue was reprinted as a booklet by Faiz Ahmad Faiz. It was also reprinted in the United States by a new left journal called New University Thought and as a booklet by the Detroit Radical Education Project (who also reprinted some of my later articles in booklet form). Tariq Ali acknowledged it as a source in his first book. We got letters from sympathisers in Europe and North America. When there was total silence in Pakistan itself, it was a worthwhile thing to do. A lot of my time was invested in it.