The Bhutto phoenix

Benazir Bhutto was not an ordinary woman: in 1996, she was declared by the New Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most popular politician. The same year, the Times Magazine and the Australian Magazine included her in the list of the hundred most powerful women of the world. The opponents of Bhuttos leave no opportunity to malign their name but it is a fact that Benazir’s grand-father Sir Shah Nawaz was instrumental in the separation of Muslim Sindh from the Hindu dominated Bombay province, back in the 1930s, and her father, Zulfikar Ali, while being a student wrote to the Quaid that he was ready to sacrifice his life for Pakistan. In his struggle to build a progressive Pakistan, Zulfikar A Bhutto had to confront reactionary forces. In the ensuing battle, he preferred death over dishonor to uphold the popular cause. From the ashes of Bhutto’s struggle, the world witnessed the emergence of Benazir as Bhutto’s phoenix.
The phoenix is said to be a beautiful mythical Egyptian bird – the only one of its kind- that lived in the deserts of Arabia for hundreds of years with the distinct quality to be born again out of its ashes. Pakistan, too, has been like a desert of millions of wailing voices, crying for a dignified life. Benazir was their hope. Like the mythical phoenix, which built its own funeral pyre, lighted the fire by fanning its wings, burned upon the pyre and then rose eternally young from its ashes. Benazir, too, was believed to be the reincarnation of Z A Bhutto.
Like her father, she also envisioned a modern Pakistan. This brought her in conflict with the entrenched vested interests. Like the phoenix that lighted the fire by fanning its wings, she too, moved from place to place to expose injustice and create awareness. But the vested interests silenced her voice. Like her father, she too, had the option to compromise on her principles: give up her creed of public good and live a comfortable life but just like her courageous father, she too, preferred death over disgrace, so as to live eternally, like the phoenix, in the hearts and minds of people.
I don’t know how deeply she had studied the nineteenth century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who theorised that the ultimate driving force in life was the human will. Her political career is a clear testimony to the fact that she was a strong-willed lady. And, that too, in a predominantly male chauvinistic society.
When Benazir was expecting her first child in1988, General Zia called for general elections with the assumption that she would not be able to campaign effectively but she proved otherwise by winning those elections. In November 1992, when she was in the family way the third time, she braved the batons and tear gas to lead a protest rally from Islamabad to Rawalpindi.
In addition to being a public figure, she was a mother of three children. After her government was dismissed in 1990, the anarchic situation forced her to send her two-year son, Bilawal, and the six month old daughter, Bakhtawar, to the house of her sister, Sanam, in London. Only a mother can realise the pain and anguish of such a separation. This was the cost of leadership that she had to pay as a mother. Yet she consciously sacrificed the emotional well-being of her kids for the greater good of the people. She knew well that in all the challenging fields such as business, politics, etc. there were ways to play safe with least resistance but that is not the Bhutto way of leadership.
When the country faced the surge of religious militancy, like most politicians, she, too, could have adopted an ambiguous stance; but as a clear-headed leader she knew that selective morality by its very definition was immoral, because her guide was Dante, who constantly reminds us that “the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.” Consequently, she publicly opposed religious extremism. She was a dedicated Muslim; however, at the same time she cherished the finest western traditions of liberty, equality and fraternity. She felt that extremists had hijacked her religion, exactly the way they had hijacked the American planes on 9/11. Societies cannot allow themselves to be held hostage to the tunnel-vision of a few myopic persons. Goethe’s words served as a source of constant inspiration to her: “Freedom has been re-made and re-earned in every generation.”
Much before others, she had sensed that freedom was threatened by militants in Pakistan. They wanted to establish the dictatorship of their interpretation of religion on the society but Benazir believed that Islam opposed dictatorship and approved democracy based on consultation, consensus (ijma) and independent judgment (ijtihad). Only such an Islamic polity can have political legitimacy because in the words of a Muslim scholar Louay Safi, “the legitimacy of the state depends upon the extent to which state organisation and power reflect the will of the people.” The will of the people was coerced into plain submission, when vigilante groups began to threaten all sorts of people from barbers to beauticians.
While most people can be silenced through coercion, certainly not Benazir, as she liked to lead from the front. As an informed Muslim, she knew there was no compulsion in Islam. In an interview to Newsweek in Nov 2006, she clearly stated, “The time has come when we within the Muslim world need to realise that each of us has a right to interpret religion as we wish, and we do not need clerics or the state to tell us how to worship.”
She strongly held that the leftovers of the Afghan war of the eighties could not be allowed to turn their guns on nations, religions and people. As her adversaries could not outclass her brilliance, she was assassinated. This was not new for the Bhuttos and the PPP. It was a sacrifice for the greater good of the people as well as a tradition that has, now, become the hallmark of the Bhuttos. As Bhutto’s phoenix, she just followed the footsteps of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto “who gave his blood and the blood of his sons, both from his party and family, [because he] knew there could be no sacrifice greater than the sacrifice for the people …”

The writer is an academic and journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]