Living and dying for the people

For Bhutto, the real wealth was the people’s power

Politics starts with sacrifice. The ultimate sacrifice is one’s life. Bhutto gave it in the early hours of April 4, 1979, in the Rawalpindi Jail. If one looks at Bhutto’s life, it is a long journey of sacrifices. His journey started when he left Ayub Khan’s government in the mid-sixties. During the land reforms in Ayub’s rule his family willingly surrendered forty thousand acres of land. This happened again when he was the head of the state. He and his family scarified many things: their life, their property and their comfort. After the thirty five years of his sacrifice, the process still continues: his family is still offering sacrifices.

He was fed-up with the exploitation of poor people and wanted to change their lot. Bhutto made a people’s party, not an instrument to gain political power but the purpose of its formation was the empowerment of lower classes. He made them realise that the country belongs to them, he engaged them in political process and governance. He wanted to uplift people economically, socially and cognitively.

Bhutto’s political actions were based on his political philosophy. For him communicating with the people was the name of politics. He invented new methodology of engagement and communication with people. He started politics at the grass root level. He became the local leader because he knew the real issues, problems and concerns of the common man. He was the first ever leader in the history of Pakistan who talked about the issues. He went down to the people’s level, he entered their lives and thoughts and went to the towns, villages, and far flung areas. Bhutto did not confine his politics in the luxury drawing rooms; he went to the people where they lived. He was not a planted leader but a political genius and true reformer.

Bhutto was deeply religious and inspired by the greatest revolution introduced by the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him). Bhutto said, “I am like those Quraish who gave up their wealth and status and supported the Holy Prophet in launching the Islamic.” Bhutto believed that the Islamic revolution was a revolution of love, equality, peace, humanity and human dignity. Bhutto wanted that kind of a revolution in Pakistan. Bhutto derived his power from the people. He developed his roots in the public.

Bhutto knew the fact that empowering people is not easy in a social setup where exploitative forces are strong and ruthlessly brutal. When Bhutto talked about people’s empowerment, his enemies started encircling him. When they saw the spectacular political success of Bhutto, his enemies started making strategies. They understood that it was not possible to eliminate him politically, so they decided to eliminate Bhutto physically. Bhutto’s democratically elected government was toppled by dictator Gen Ziaul Haq (1977) in collaboration with an alliance of nine political parties with rag-tag political ideologies. When the dictator and his political stooges assessed that it was not possible to eliminate Bhutto politically, they decided to eliminate him physically. The usurper charged Bhutto in a murder case. The fabricated murder case, specially conceived and manufactured by the full force of the coercive machinery of martial law, had inherent contradictions. Legal community never accepted the genuineness of this case which to this day claims that it was not a legal case, it was an outright murder.

After physically eliminating Bhutto, Gen Zia started consolidating his power. He was able to win the support of some important members of the judiciary, the executive authority, bureaucracy and religious groups. All these groups were the beneficiaries of the dictatorial regimes. Bhutto was their common and natural enemy. If one looks at the social discourse and political history of Pakistan in late 1970s and 1980s, it is not difficult to detect a greedy and unholy alliance of judiciary, mullahs and military generals. Zia managed to have a judicial verdict against Bhutto and also empowered himself to amend the constitution. He not only murdered Bhutto but also punished people with lashes when they demanded democracy and the constitutional rights. Zia rewarded and promoted known anti-Bhutto judges to damage Pakistan People’s Party. He maneuvered judiciary to achieve his objective. Zia’s obsession to damage PPP was so deep that he damaged the impartiality of judiciary and cunningly altered the progressive components of law and constitution. His socio-legal interventions radicalised Pakistan’s civil society and polity. We are still living with consequences of his nasty acts of omission and commission.

Bhutto was a political idealist and had the capacity to translate his ideas into action. History is a witness to the fact that he never betrayed the nation; he never compromised with dictators. Man with such lofty ideals had no temptation for accumulation of wealth. He had no foreign account or any property abroad. Material things had no value for Bhutto. When he was in power, he used to receive precious gifts from other heads of the state but he gave these deposited these gifts to government exchequer. For Bhutto, the real wealth was the people’s power; he cared for it and developed it. He knew that nobody could defeat millions of people. He lived and died with the people and for the people. People and history are on his side.