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From Papa’s Pinkie to people’s BenazirBy Maleeha Manzoor
“I am really proud to have a daughter who is so bright that she is doing O-levels at the young age of fifteen, three years before I did them. At this rate, you might become the president.” Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto writes to his eldest daughter, whom he used to call ‘Pinkie,’ from the prison cell of Sahiwal on the November 28th, 1968 - when he was sent to solitary confinement in Ayub’s regime. But who was Pinkie?
Unlike daughters of other traditional Asian families, Pinkie was an extraordinary girl who did not choose to confine herself within particular boundaries. Pinkie was descendant of a royal family, heir of an affluent Sindhi clan, daughter of a foreign minister who was later a President and then the first elected Prime Minister, but along with that, a young PPP stalwart who paid the four-anna dues to join her father’s party at the age of fourteen, a young political novice to protest against a dictator along with her father among the momentous crowds, the first girl from the respective family to study abroad for higher education in a prestigious university, a young girl whose own home was turned into a sub-jail for her, and an innocent daughter who, at the age of 24, started fighting the trumped-up charges against her father and suffered the trauma on his assassination when she was 26.
As the names influence personas, time did not take too long to transform her from pinkie into Benazir that means ‘the one incomparable’. After her release from Sihala in May 1979, the Benazir started to emerge in Papa’s Pinkie the moment she stood beside her father’s grave and pledged to not rest until democracy returned to Pakistan. Despite the confinements and torments, she was filled with resolve. She vowed to turn her grief to strength to beat the dictator at polls when her own uncles left her into solitude. With the party too weaken to stand again and the family too dispersed, she redefined heroism by marching towards a democracy with the millions of the destitute under her leadership.
As Bhutto’s daughter could not give up on the country her father sacrificed life for, the dictators could not quench their thirst for Bhuttos’ blood. In the struggle for a democratic Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto did not succumb to her foes’ ruthlessness, hence had to embrace imprisonments and later the long exiles. She lost both her younger brothers to the fight for democracy, thousands of her workers to the war against dictatorship and her own marital life to people’s dreams - dreams that were crushed beneath the boots of martial law administrators.
Becoming one of the youngest Prime Ministers of the world at the age of 35, she carried forward the mantle of her martyred father actualizing his and her people’s dreams. She was elected the chief executive of a country where rule of a woman was indefensible. With the menace of dictatorship, in a society too patriarchal, she was not allowed to complete her constitutional terms, so could rule merely less than 5years in total. Despite her governments burdened down with political instability, damaged economy,miserable law and order situation, and later ousted by ‘civilian descendents of dictators’, she still proved out to be an exemplary leader. Bright enough to take the lead to empower the people and brave enough to quit exile in 2007 and return back to strive for Jinnah’s Pakistan, she countered the extremists so valorously that they were left with only one option to silence her - that was a bullet.
Nevertheless, never wavered in her commitment to democracy, Benazir had achieved what her enemies could not have ever dreamt of - the people’s Benazir had already won the people and so the bullet failed to silence the most audacious voice of Pakistan. A voice that still remains undeterred. She has left behind that legacy of blood and valor which spellbinds the millions of her followers united under Bhutto’s slogan of roti, kapra, makaan. It is her legacy that today young women, resisting any kind of pressure, have started to stand up shoulder-to-shoulder with men to ‘lead’ the country, a place where, earlier, women were not encouraged to enter into assemblies as it could dishonor their honorable families. So, living through her vision, today sheleads the nation from her grave. She lives on like his father as she stood by his words to her: “Your place is here. Your roots are here. The dust and mud and heat of Larkana are in your bones. And it is here that you will be buried.”
Rest in peace BB, your enemies will fade away, what emerged throughout and will remain significant is you – it’s Benazir-ism.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk