Daily Times

In every nation’s history there are individuals who are larger than life, whose indelible imprints on sands of time are inerasable, and who are not born to die. Pakistan too has had a few such leaders. Pakistan’s founder Quaid-e-Azam was first among them. He was a powerful personality and lucky to die a natural death instead of being disposed of unnaturally at the hands of the emerging power troika that was to take over the reins of the government from the civilians.

Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was not so lucky. Chosen by Jinnah sahib as his second in command, a popular leader by his own right, respected internationally and just 50, he was first tried to be removed through a coup, having failed at that the conspirators got him assassinated in the garrison town of Rawalpindi. That dastardly event turned the course of history from the one chosen by the founder in favour of those who opposed him.

Comes Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a lad of 30, highly educated, a true disciple of MAJ who promised him as a student that if need be, he would lay his life for Pakistan—is favoured by destiny to find a place in the military-civilian enclave of power — to see how it works and to make an inroad in that totalitarian order to return Pakistan to MAJ’s original modernistic, secular and democratic moorings as laid bare in Jinnah’s August 11, 1947 speech.

Soon after MAJ’s demise his vision of a democratic, egalitarian Pakistan was transplanted with the notion of a security or garrison state with religion as its ideological base. Its military rulers occupied the centre stage more than the civilians thus setting the pace for the country’s break up in 1971, brief spurt of hope and newer aspirations during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s time, his judicial murder, dictator General Zia’s sell out of Pakistan and its defence in the service of Americans in their Jihad against the erstwhile Soviet Union followed by much more of the same under General Pervez Musharraf with his additional curse of Taliban have gnawed at the very roots of the country’s hope for survival against a prognosis of a failed stare.

Bhutto had emerged as catalyst at a juncture when socio-economic and political change had become unavoidable. He had foreseen the unleashing of forces that were to open floodgates of change in every walk of life

Indeed, had it not been for the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (judicially murdered on April 4, 1979) Pakistan would have disappeared in the dustbin of history in 1971. He picked up the fractured people, galvanised them into a nation and set it onto pastures new. He preferred to become a “horrible” example at the hands of General Zia rather than abandon Pakistan’s nuclear programme.

Bhutto had emerged as catalyst at a juncture when socio-economic and political change had become unavoidable. He had foreseen the unleashing of forces that were to open floodgates of change in every walk of life. He harnessed them. In the process he had challenged the power elite and the ruling oligarchy committed to sustain status quo at any cost. He turned tables on them when factors of change had matured into a formidable force. His electoral manifesto of ‘roti, kapra aur makan woke up the masses out of their deep inertia and ignited an inextinguishable fire in them to take the reins of destiny in their own hands.

General Yahya and his coterie of generals who presided over the surrender in 1971 were compelled by the Young Turks in the army to hand over power to the legitimate elected leader of West Pakistan to save it from further dismemberment. It was the darkest moment following fall of Dhaka, ZAB took over the reins of a defeated nation and the humiliated armed forces but soon he catapulted Pakistan on a trajectory of respect, peace, progress and prosperity and gave armed forces new set of teeth and nuclear bite.

He created a new Pakistan by reuniting its four federating units on the verge of achieving their irredentist ambitions by recasting them in a cast-iron constitutional framework in 1973 Constitution that resolved the tricky issue of the quantum of autonomy that had led to the partition of India in 1947 and was main cause of creation of Bangladesh in 1971. It also guaranteed unity in diversity. It is an undeniable fact that the 1973 Constitution more than religion has to date kept the country together.

ZAB had believed that when the masses lose power over livelihood, they are forced to accept a loss of democracy as well. Unprecedented unemployment and an unproductive economy had created conditions to enable Ayub to usurp power and project himself as the saviour of the nation in 1958. Bhutto, however, reversed this phenomenon and mobilised the deprived masses to take on the military dictator. His vision and his popularity among the ‘toiling masses’ pitched him against the forces of status quo resisting change.

ZAB determinedly strove to empower the masses, unshackling their voice and giving them self-respect. Obviously he emerged as the thorn in the back of the vested interest and the Establishment troika. Besides signing of Simla agreement with Indira Gandhi for peace in the region, his acquisition of nuclear deterrence and the 1973 Constitution are his astounding feats of achievements to make him immortal in the eyes of the nation, its armed forces and its federating units.

Bhutto’s most outstanding contribution to Pakistan’s polity was the establishment of Pakistan People’s Party as the vehicle of socio-economic change and harbinger of political consciousness to the grass-root level. It will require a bigger article to put in correct perspective the role of his elitist Marxists party colleagues who let him down and also others who betrayed him for short term gains, the fact that the party workers stood by him as his steadfast legacy when the chips were down is a history that shall always be recorded in letters of gold.

The resilience of Bhutto supporters is imbedded in the fact that they have been there all through — facing hangings, whipping and persecution at the hands of military and civil dictators — without any compulsion, out of their sheer commitment to Bhuttoism-a phenomenon meaning different things to different people. Bhutto’s battle cry was ‘all power to the people’. So was it pursued by his ‘dearest daughter’ Benazir Bhutto and now his grandson Bilawal Bhutto. It was relevant then, it is relevant now and it shall always be. Its translation into reality would be the best tribute to the martyred leader.

Election time has come, challenges faced by PPP are tough, Bilawal shall have to take tougher decisions to make Bhuttos party get up and go for the final kill by unleashing bottled up forces of socio-economic changes for the good of the largest number as promised by MAJ and martyred leaders ZAB and Benazir Bhutto.

The writer is the former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK and a veteran journalist

Published in Daily Times, April 4^th 2018.