The tragedy of Benazir

A story of struggles and sacrifices

Benazir Bhutto was benazir in many ways: she desired a career in diplomacy but her father wanted her to join politics and become the ruler of Pakistan. She sacrificed her personal ambition to fulfil the wish of her father. Not many people do that because for most of us personal aspirations are more important than others’ expectations. This sense of sacrifice remained the central plank of her life.

Politics in Pakistan has been the exclusive domain of the males because we have been a male dominated society. Reaching to the top in politics was a daunting challenge for her because in addition to being male chauvinists, we are a religiously conservative and traditionalist society in which women have no importance and are expected to remain either in background or on the sidelines of the happenings. She had to break these taboos which she did quite successfully. First, she had to struggle for the leadership within her party, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), against the entrenched experienced party leaders, some of whom had plans to lead the party after the execution of her father, Z A Bhutto. These senior leaders were not willing to accept her as their leader because she was just a ‘political upstart’ for them.

But Benazir was ‘benazir’: she had a very strong sense of determination or what Jehangir Badar, a former party secretary general and senator, in his doctoral thesis on Benazir calls ‘resilience’ to achieve the goals that she had set for herself. The unity, strength and popularity of the party received several dents when some of its senior leaders broke away and set up their own factions of the PPP but Benazir remained steadfast in the singularity of her purpose. She revamped the party organisation and built a cadre of party leadership that was loyal and had full confidence in her. That is why all efforts of the powers-that-be to finish off the PPP failed miserably. She was threatened, detained, imprisoned and forced into exile but neither did she give up nor compromise. The batons, barbed wires, tear gas and solitary confinement bruised her body but could not damage her soul.

One wonders how many women of her class and status could bear such humiliations and oppression for the cause of public service. She was rich, intelligent, and talented and therefore could live a very comfortable private life. She could excel in managing her agricultural lands or a business or a profession or an NGO for a social cause yet she chose politics as a profession to do the greater public good. She could easily afford an army of servants, expensive clothes and a ‘good life’ of consumption and waste as many women of such class indulge in but she felt happiness in ameliorating the lot of the poor and in identifying with the destitute. This relationship was inexplicable: how could a rich woman struggle for the rights of the wretched whose interests clashed with the interests of the class to which she belonged. One wonders how the Marxists or the aristocrats could interpret this unique relationship between Benazir and the people. Understanding this relationship becomes all the more difficult because she was brought up in high culture, educated in elite institutions and was fluent in English language which was neither spoken nor understood by an absolute majority yet the masses could relate to her due to the charisma emanating from her person.

Benazir was the hope of many in several ways. In her youth, she was the hope of her father. The common folks whether young, old, rich and poor hoped that that when she would come into power, there would be peace, progress and happiness all around. Despite the heavy odds against her, she managed to become the prime minister not once but twice. The great expectations floundered on both occasions: she did not manage the country as well as she managed the party and the struggle to reach the apex of power. She had shown the ability to bounce back when kicked out of power but was uncharacteristic of herself when ensconced in power. It is true that power remained a mirage to her when she was in power because the real power was never in her hands. Whether she should have accepted such ‘powerless power’ in the first place will continue to be debated by her critics and supporters alike.

The moot point is if she could use her imagination, determination and talent to attain power then why could not she use the same while in power to serve the public to its satisfaction? One cannot agree with those who allege that her aim to get into power was to make money because she could have easily become richer by remaining out of politics and by setting up some business or industry. There are quite a few examples that show that people in business or industry can make a lot more money than by being in politics.

Deep down she probably knew that she had failed to act upon ‘the New Social Contract’ that she had promised to the people and so made a third attempt to get into power but now Pakistan had become a very dangerous place with bombs and suicide bombers blowing up all over the place. She was the first political leader who had the courage to take up a clear stand against religious extremism and had the vision of a moderate, modern and liberal Pakistan. Like most of the politicians, she too could have either kept a criminal silence or adopted an apologetic stance against religious militancy but she was bold and preferred martyrdom over cowardice.

The life of Benazir was a tragedy. Her father and brothers died unnatural deaths. Although her mother spent her last years with her yet she was unhappy over the political differences between her elder son Murtaza and Benazir. Her father had married her to the cause of public service but the vulnerability of a single woman in the public life in the conservative Pakistani society made her to have a traditional marriage in which her husband had to undergo incarceration for several years owing to political victimisation. She could not be near her children in their childhood as a mother would have liked it and had to sacrifice her motherhood to the call of commitment to the people of Pakistan. And what was the reward of all these sacrifices: when she assumed power, the religious lobby raised a storm of protest that a woman could not become the ruler of a Muslim state while others declared her to be a security threat to the state of Pakistan. What a way to honour a dedicated, courageous and visionary leader! The tragedy of Benazir is actually the tragedy of Pakistan.