On the sad demise of Begum Nusrat Bhutto, my eyes soaked with tears, I looked back into the past when she was like a blossomed flower and her smiling face welcomed the needy and the downtrodden. By nature she was kind and considerate. She was born in Isfahan, a city of Iran famous for its cultural heritage. I visited this city a few years ago. Justice Dr Javed Iqbal, the son of our national poet and philosopher Dr Allama Iqbal, and I were invited to Iran to attend an international conference on Jamaluddin Afghani in Tehran. I still enjoy cultural heritage sites. I was bestirred to see the small palace of the emperor Shah Ismail constructed with great adroitness and craft. She belonged to that city which was once the seat of rulers who loved art, culture, and spiritual sublimity. The blood running in her veins was made of love, kindness, and fidelity.
She married Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a man of erudition, vision, and commitment. She passed her days of life with comfort and composure. She was the wife of a young minister. She plucked the flowers of fortune. She was a graceful lady devoted to nourishing and upbringing her four children. She was a house lady. She did not participate in politics during the lifetime of her beloved husband. She was a lady from the elite class. Her father was a businessman. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She attended functions with her charming and charismatic husband and moved among the high-ups absolutely oblivious of the woes and worries of the future and fate. Her life was like a fresh morning breeze far from the scorching winds of the deserts. She passed her days and nights like a queen. Her personal life was enviable. She had an easygoing life of a lady who was part of the upper class. Being part of the ruling elite, she enjoyed the moments of life like the dancing daffodils poeticised and idolised by William Wordsworth.
The same lady made of roses turned into an Iron Lady after the hanging of her beloved husband at the hands of a cruel and callous military dictator General Ziaul Haq, who deposed her husband and manoeuvred to hang him with the connivance of a few thankless and consciousless judges and generals. She was harassed, intimidated, incarcerated, attacked, wounded, and exiled. Her great husband had shifted the hectic charge of politics on her soft shoulders. He asked her to continue his revolutionary mission and mantra. It was tantamount to playing with flames. The military ruling clique was hostile towards the Bhutto family and the party workers. The leaders and the workers of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) were jailed, flogged, killed, and exiled. Under the circumstances, she lit a candle before the cyclones. She steered the skiff by stars in the tempests. The martial law authorities were scared of her mettle. She kept aloft the standard in the oddest times of our history. Her son Shahnawaz was poisoned in Paris. Her other son Murtaza Bhutto was killed. Her daughter, Ms Benazir Bhutto, who twice remained the prime minister of Pakistan, was also killed publicly after addressing a huge gathering in Rawalpindi in the election campaign of 2007. The lady of roses was constrained to pick up the thorns of life after the death of her great husband. In the words of English poet Shelley, she “fell on the thorns of life and bled”. She suffered much. Her life became like a Shakespearean tragedy. She lost her health and memory. The jolts of personal losses and tragedies shattered her soul. She turned into a living corpse. A great Urdu poet Mir Anis, on the martyrdom of Hazrat Ali Akbar, the young son of Imam Hussain, at Karbala, had said, “Let the enemy even not see the woe of the death of a son as the death of a young son is the woe for the whole of life.” She did not lose one son but two. Her gloomy and pensive last days of life spent in loneliness in Dubai tore the hearts of the Bhuttos into pieces. Such a harmless lady bore the brunt of atrocities and tribulations with such courage and forbearance that no other lady in the politics of Pakistan can be a match for her. After her death, she has been named the ‘Mother of Democracy’. She deserved this much. She had valiantly fought for democracy and the rights of the poor people of Pakistan.
She was fully cognizant of my services for democracy and Bhuttoism. When she became the senior minister in 1989 in the cabinet of her daughter Ms Benazir Bhutto, I wrote her a letter in which I complained about the misconduct of the Intelligence Bureau (IB). I wrote her that she knew well that during the fascist regime of General Ziaul Haq, I was under the surveillance of intelligence agencies for being the supporter of Bhutto, but still they chase me. She took serious notice and immediately instructed the director of IB to stop it. An intelligence officer of IB visited me and apologised for previous conduct. Once, in a function presided over by her in the Hotel Marriott in Islamabad, I asked her to give time for a delegation of religious moderate clerics and some intellectuals. She said, “Professor Jafri, could you come tomorrow at 10 am in the Sindh House? We can have a meeting there.” The next morning I was there with the delegation in which the grand cleric of the city Maulana Faiz Ali Faizi was also included along with some other prominent clerics and intellectuals. She asked me to have a meeting with Mr Khan Bahadur, the federal minister of the Religious and Minority Affairs. I met with the minister and also with some clerics and made a plan for the policy of moderation as directed by her. Actually, I had stressed the need for a tolerance and reconciliation policy among different Muslim sects and non-Muslims. I had visualised the imminent dangers of religious extremism, the result of the pugnacious sectarian policies of General Ziaul Haq. I had mailed her one of my English poetry books titled Visions and Vistas. After a few days, we met in a function at Marriott. I asked her whether she had received my book. She nodded and smiled. I said the reason was just to know whether it was received by you or not. I was amazed to receive her personal letter of thanks the very next day by a special messenger from her office. Once, she asked me to write on the policies and philosophy of Shaheed Bhutto in the newspapers. I wrote two columns titled ‘The horrors of martial law’ and ‘The ideals of Bhutto’. They were published in the daily The Muslim of Islamabad. She highly appreciated the columns and suggested to launch an English weekly from the US. It could not be materialised, but it was her wish to have a party organ in the US. Later on, in 2005, Ms Benazir Bhutto asked me to write a book on the political life and philosophy of Shaheed Bhutto. In 2007, I wrote a book titled The Ideals of Bhutto per her wish. Now its second edition has been published by the National Book Foundation, Islamabad, with a special illustrious message of the President of Pakistan, Mr Asif Ali Zardari.
I have narrated a few personal events so that the readers of this column and the coming generations may know how committed to the party and the mission of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto she was. I call her an Iron lady as mentioned earlier as I have seen her crusading against the military rulers and cherishing the desires and dreams of democracy.
The writer is an author, poet, scholar, and a politician based in New York. He can be reached at [email protected]