Articles by Hamza Alavi

Religious parties were implacably hostile to the Pakistan Movement. When, inaugurating Pakistan's constituent assembly, Jinnah proclaimed Pakistan's secular ideology he was voicing the established secular ideological position that the Muslim League had adhered to throughout its career. Fundamentalist Islamic ideology played no part in the origins of Pakistan, although contemporary ideologues of Islamic fundamentalism, including academics, claim that it was Islamic ideology and slogans that created Pakistan and that they therefore have the right to decide its future.

PAKISTAN'S disputes with India were no doubt central to Pakistan's foreign policy immediately after independence. But it is a common mistake to look at it too narrowly, in the context exclusively of Pakistan's conflicts with its big neighbour. That obscures the extent to which Pakistan was increasingly drawn into the west Asia (as from the mid- 1950s) following on the role that it was assigned by the US in western military strategy for the region. Pakistan's relationship with the US was set on a new course in (he 1950s, culminating in a military alliance and treaties that imposed far-reaching and unilateral commitments on Pakistan to subserve US purposes.

Nationhood and the Nationalities in Pakistan Hamza Alavi Whereas in Europe nations were constituted into states, in post-colonial societies the problem is inverted- states have to be transformed into nations. This problem tends to be less acute where national liberation has been achieved through a long-drawn mass struggle, but the movement for Pakistan had a trajectory which did not include such a process. Political debate and conflict in Pakistan have revolved around the question: what is the legitimate place of sub-national aspirations and demands within a larger concept of Pakistani nationhood? The worst contradictions of the politics of ethnicity have been concentrated and have taken violent forms in Sindh.

Ideology of the Capitalist World Economy Hamza Alavi The Politics of the World Economy by Immanuel Walierstein; Cambridge University Press (London/New York) jointly with Editions de Ia Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (Paris), 1984; pp viii + 191.

Hamza Alavi The Indian debate on the mode of production revolves around the question whether, in the last 15 or 20 years, there has been a decisive movement in Indian agriculture from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. Similar questions have been raised elsewhere.