“It was your great good fortune to be born on the longest day of the year, Pinkie; even the [military] regime couldn't make the sun set early on your birthday.”
Thirty long years since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said this to the then naive but still steel-willed Benazir who was only beginning to take up the cudgels against the military dictatorship that had by then imprisoned her father, and would go on to execute him and torment Benazir and her fold for long years thereafter. It’s June the 21st again, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s metaphoric prophecy seems eerily, ominously wrong.
And yet as a new sun hopes to rise again in Pakistan amid worrying premonitions of its many previous false dawns, the vacuum left by the celebrated and yet enigmatic Ms. Bhutto seems onerously hard to fill. On her 55th Birth Anniversary, I consciously refrain from pondering over what we may have lost in her death, but instead think about what she leaves us with.
It’s ironic that Pakistan’s greatest stalwart of representative democracy, was least representative of its larger demographics. Benazir belonged to a wealthy and respected aristocratic family in a largely poor, feudal country. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford in times when literacy rates posed a big challenge for her country, especially for women. Outspoken, candid and firm even as most women in Pakistan were still struggling for voice and an emergence from the purdah, Benazir seemed to be everything that the people she represented were not. Few characters in democratic history may claim such distinction.
This Daughter of Destiny was never a “goongi-gudiya” struggling to emerge from her deceased father’s shadows. With a mind and will of her own Benazir evolved her own leadership identity, consciously but never openly avoiding her father’s scathing and arrogant demeanour (remember he led his delegation out of the UN security council after its resolution on the 1970 Bangladesh War in a dramatic huff generating more heat than light). She instead brought words like reconciliation, dialogue and flexibility into her political lexicon. Reconciliation remained Benazir’s cherished ideal, and hauntingly her final memory, as the title of her last book released posthumously. While clearly seeking to extend her political agenda, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West gives a clear insight into issues close to Benazir’s heart: understanding, dialogue, democracy and the need for systematic reform of the current terms of political intervention by the West. With an astute academic as well as real-politik grasp of policy and strategic issues, friends, associates and supporters in power circles across the world, Benazir was able to situate her politics in the context of the larger forces and issues at work in the world at large, and engage with it in a kind of optimism, focus and drive unknown of most politicians globally.
When an enthusiastic Pervez Musharraf, serving then under Madam PM, narrated his grandiose plans of invading India from Kargil and capturing Srinagar, it was Benazir who struck the idea down, grilling the battle enthusiast right till she made clear that the plan was flawed and would be struck down by a condemnation at the UN Security Council asking for a unilateral withdrawal. Precious advice, which Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf himself could have later benefited from.
Towards India, despite being severely antagonistic and rhetorical during her second term as PM, Benazir was the original proponent of the idea of a South-Asian economic and cultural exchange block, introducing and ratifying the SAFTA, declaring support for the composite dialogue process being undertaken with India by the military government and recognizing the need for Indo-Pak dialogue not to be held hostage to specific sticking points. Much credit must go to BB for expanding the India-Pakistan agenda beyond the territorial dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. In the case of the Afghan mujahideen supported by Pakistan and the US to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Benazir had remarked to George H W Bush as early as 1989 that “ . . . [W]e have created a Frankenstein that will come back to haunt us”, long before the world community took notice of the threats lurking in the region. She had been on record in the Pakistani Parliament, as leader of the Opposition calling for the government to snap ties with the Taliban regime.
Foresight, statesmanship and courage apart, Benazir remained compromised in many ways. Her terms in office were marked by antagonism with the Presidency and Intelligence agencies who consistently sought her removal. Corruption charges tainted her image and that of her husband who spent 11 years in prison without any conviction. The albatross of those charges remained firmly around her neck well into her last triumphant return to the country where her confrontation with the regime was, as many claim, blunted by the need to cover up. Yet, as she would eloquently argue, the corruption charges were part of the larger propaganda to malign the Bhutto name to keep the PPP away from power. She often asked compellingly; after 11 long years, where is the conviction?
Despite my evident biases, it always surprised me how much Benazir would be slandered for not living up to an ideal scenario. The media-savvy BB probably allowed an encouraged a chance to defend herself and claim the moral high ground, I feel sometimes to her own slight disadvantage. While she was quizzed at every stage during her exile, Nawaz Sharif struck such a deal with the military regime which insulated him from the public glare, erasing memory and allowing him to position himself as a champion of democracy.
Thirty long years since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto said this to the then naive but still steel-willed Benazir who was only beginning to take up the cudgels against the military dictatorship that had by then imprisoned her father, and would go on to execute him and torment Benazir and her fold for long years thereafter. It’s June the 21st again, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s metaphoric prophecy seems eerily, ominously wrong.
And yet as a new sun hopes to rise again in Pakistan amid worrying premonitions of its many previous false dawns, the vacuum left by the celebrated and yet enigmatic Ms. Bhutto seems onerously hard to fill. On her 55th Birth Anniversary, I consciously refrain from pondering over what we may have lost in her death, but instead think about what she leaves us with.
It’s ironic that Pakistan’s greatest stalwart of representative democracy, was least representative of its larger demographics. Benazir belonged to a wealthy and respected aristocratic family in a largely poor, feudal country. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford in times when literacy rates posed a big challenge for her country, especially for women. Outspoken, candid and firm even as most women in Pakistan were still struggling for voice and an emergence from the purdah, Benazir seemed to be everything that the people she represented were not. Few characters in democratic history may claim such distinction.
This Daughter of Destiny was never a “goongi-gudiya” struggling to emerge from her deceased father’s shadows. With a mind and will of her own Benazir evolved her own leadership identity, consciously but never openly avoiding her father’s scathing and arrogant demeanour (remember he led his delegation out of the UN security council after its resolution on the 1970 Bangladesh War in a dramatic huff generating more heat than light). She instead brought words like reconciliation, dialogue and flexibility into her political lexicon. Reconciliation remained Benazir’s cherished ideal, and hauntingly her final memory, as the title of her last book released posthumously. While clearly seeking to extend her political agenda, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West gives a clear insight into issues close to Benazir’s heart: understanding, dialogue, democracy and the need for systematic reform of the current terms of political intervention by the West. With an astute academic as well as real-politik grasp of policy and strategic issues, friends, associates and supporters in power circles across the world, Benazir was able to situate her politics in the context of the larger forces and issues at work in the world at large, and engage with it in a kind of optimism, focus and drive unknown of most politicians globally.
When an enthusiastic Pervez Musharraf, serving then under Madam PM, narrated his grandiose plans of invading India from Kargil and capturing Srinagar, it was Benazir who struck the idea down, grilling the battle enthusiast right till she made clear that the plan was flawed and would be struck down by a condemnation at the UN Security Council asking for a unilateral withdrawal. Precious advice, which Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf himself could have later benefited from.
Towards India, despite being severely antagonistic and rhetorical during her second term as PM, Benazir was the original proponent of the idea of a South-Asian economic and cultural exchange block, introducing and ratifying the SAFTA, declaring support for the composite dialogue process being undertaken with India by the military government and recognizing the need for Indo-Pak dialogue not to be held hostage to specific sticking points. Much credit must go to BB for expanding the India-Pakistan agenda beyond the territorial dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. In the case of the Afghan mujahideen supported by Pakistan and the US to counter the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Benazir had remarked to George H W Bush as early as 1989 that “ . . . [W]e have created a Frankenstein that will come back to haunt us”, long before the world community took notice of the threats lurking in the region. She had been on record in the Pakistani Parliament, as leader of the Opposition calling for the government to snap ties with the Taliban regime.
Foresight, statesmanship and courage apart, Benazir remained compromised in many ways. Her terms in office were marked by antagonism with the Presidency and Intelligence agencies who consistently sought her removal. Corruption charges tainted her image and that of her husband who spent 11 years in prison without any conviction. The albatross of those charges remained firmly around her neck well into her last triumphant return to the country where her confrontation with the regime was, as many claim, blunted by the need to cover up. Yet, as she would eloquently argue, the corruption charges were part of the larger propaganda to malign the Bhutto name to keep the PPP away from power. She often asked compellingly; after 11 long years, where is the conviction?
Despite my evident biases, it always surprised me how much Benazir would be slandered for not living up to an ideal scenario. The media-savvy BB probably allowed an encouraged a chance to defend herself and claim the moral high ground, I feel sometimes to her own slight disadvantage. While she was quizzed at every stage during her exile, Nawaz Sharif struck such a deal with the military regime which insulated him from the public glare, erasing memory and allowing him to position himself as a champion of democracy.
Her relevance to and importance in Pakistan’s current and future political environment cannot be over-emphasied in these precarious times. And yet, to the extent that her life of struggle, triumph and courage continues to push her agenda of moderation, reform and reconciliation, her contributions live on. One of Benazir’s last photographs taken before her assassination is strongly etched in my mind. Having delivered a fiery speech Benazir looked very happy, waving triumphantly at her supporters. Bright eyes, in a wizened, pale face. The world as she saw it from that final podium was steeped in fear, misery and insecurity. Yet one knew instinctively that Benazir remained undaunted, and that her eyes saw through the darkness to that new order which must come, and of which, she is the symbol.
