- Today is Benazir Bhutto’s 12th death anniversary
By Abdur Rasool Syed
Benazir Bhutto,- one of the greatest leaders of the world and the first Muslim woman to head an Islamic country, was an epitome of courage, resoluteness, steadfastness and resilience. Her intrepidity is eulogized not only by diehard ideologues but also by her worst detractors. Her life is characterised by an indefatigable struggle against the despotic forces of dictatorship and fascism. She left no stone unturned to get the democratic ethos entrenched. She so carried forward her great father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s legacy of populism that every Pakistani wept over her assassination. Her coldblooded murder shook the people and her charismatic persona impresses the generations to come.
She was born on 21 June 21, the first of four children in a Sindhi landowning family. She grew up in the trappings of the post-colonial, English-speaking elite. With an English governess, called “Pinkie” due to her rosy complexion she was enrolled in a convent school.
While 16, she had to leave for Radcliffe College, Harvard University, for which she was not mentally prepared. “I cried and cried and cried because I had never walked to classes in my life before,” she once told an interviewer. “I’d always been driven to school in a car and picked up in a car, and here I had to walk and walk and walk. It was cold, bitterly cold, and I hated it … but it forced me to grow up.”
She proved an iron lady in her tragic death in a suicide blast at the height of her election campaign in 2007. Despite having life threats she continued her struggle unwaveringly. Hence, a lesson of steadfastness, courage and boldness can be learnt from her life
From Harvard, she went on to Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics, an arena where she honed her debating skills by becoming the first foreign woman to be elected president of the Oxford Union. She was a brilliant student and excelled in oratory at Harvard and Oxford, inspiring not just minds but also connecting hearts—she introduced former UK PM Theresa May to future husband Philip.
After completing her studies, she aspired to be a diplomat. But circumstances led her to continue her father’s legacy. Soon after her return in 1977, her father was ousted as PM and imprisoned, and martial law was declared. Two years later, he was executed, which became the defining moment in Benazir’s life, launching her full-steam into politics.
Over the next five years, with the PPP outlawed, she was in and out of detention, under house arrest or in prison, under harrowing conditions.
She was allowed to leave Pakistan in 1984 for treatment of a serious ear infection. She settled in London, but then there was the mysterious death of one of her two brothers at his home on the French Riviera. Some accounts suggested that he had been poisoned, which she believed to be the handiwork of Pakistani agents.
When martial law was lifted in December 1985, Bhutto felt the time had come to return. Her homecoming in April 1986 in Lahore was tumultuous, celebrated by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who so thronged the streets that her motorcade took 10 hours to travel eight miles.
In her elegant British-inflected accent, she called on General Zia to resign, saying that it was “a bad year for dictators” — a reference to the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in Haiti. The momentum of her welcome propelled her on a national tour and then her party to victory in the 1988 elections.
Government, however, proved difficult for both of her terms as PM, from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996. She was credited with ending media restrictions and speaking out for women’s rights, but she was constrained by the military and the mullahs, Pakistan’s two most powerful institutions.
Benazir faced constant character assassination, perpetual resistance from the mullahs who would try to stir up the public emotions by proclaiming that a government headed by a woman was un-Islamic and persistent refusal by Army generals to salute a female PM. Yet she managed to leave behind a legacy of commitment to democracy, economic empowerment of the downtrodden and social equality rivalled by only her father’s.
During her tenure, she strived hard to elevate the status of Pakistani women. She established the first women bank, a separate ministry for women affairs, inducted female judges in the judiciary, erected a separate police station for women, directed a five percent quota for women in every government department, set up the Muslim women’s Parliamentary Union, and established a women’s sport’s board.
She had to face many plots, orchestrated by her adversaries to make her government fail. Allegations of corruption were levelled at her that resulted in loss of government twice. Her husband, too, because of alleged corruption, was nicknamed “Mr 10 Percent”. Ironically, he spent eight years imprisoned without a formal conviction.
Benazir’s reputation was further damaged by the assassination of her brother Murtaza during her own regime which some believe was engineered, if not by her, but by her hubby Asif Ali Zardari since her brother coveted the leadership of the PPP.
However, even after her death, she continues to reign over hearts and minds even though she led quite an unusual life. As she was said, “I have led an unusual life. I have buried a father killed at age 50 and two brothers killed in the prime of their lives. I raised my children as a single mother when my husband was arrested and held for eight years without a conviction— a hostage to my political career.”
Benazir was undoubtedly a woman of great achievements. Some of her achievement came to limelight and were acknowledged even after her death—as is the case with a posthumous UN Human Rights Prize in 2008.
She was like a phoenix that rose from the ashes time and again. She proved an iron lady in her tragic death in a suicide blast at the height of her election campaign in 2007. Despite having life threats she continued her struggle unwaveringly. Hence, a lesson of steadfastness, courage and boldness can be learnt from her life.
