Benazir and the Making of Jinnah
By Dr Akbar S. Ahmed
Washington, DC
“Yes. Of course, you will have my support,” Benazir Bhutto, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, said when I requested it for my Jinnah film project. We were at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad where she was delivering a lecture. Accompanying me from England was Guy Slater, my first choice of script writer and director, whom I introduced to Benazir along with my film project.
It was the early 1990s and Benazir Bhutto looked fresh and untouched by the politics of Pakistan. She wore a crisp white muslin shalwar kameez. It contrasted with the dark locks and looks of her ferocious-looking bodyguards: with kohl in their eyes, large turbans on their heads and heavy weapons. She appeared surreal, as if in a photo shoot for a top glamour magazine.
Guy Slater was bowled over. “I’m in love” and “She’s a goddess”, he began to mutter as we left. I took him aside and told him that in this culture we don’t use such words. In any case, I urged him to take a good look at her bodyguards before opening his mouth again. Guy was quiet after that. Her government fell not long after.
In the mid-1990s I visited Islamabad again to seek support for the Jinnah film project and sought an interview with Benazir Bhutto, this time into her second tenure as prime minister. I had been invited by Shakil-ur-Rehman, one of the owners of the Jang group, to be on the panel in a function at the Marriot Hotel in honor of his late father. I found that Benazir Bhutto was also on the panel, as was the head of the Jamaat-i-Islami. The packed audience was made up mainly of Bhutto supporters, with the rest supporting the Jamat-i-Islami. When she spoke, her supporters brought the roof down.
I had been invited by Shakil as a neutral scholar, a category that appeared to leave some members of the audience puzzled at my presence. During the discussion, the military secretary to the prime minister came up to me and quietly handed me a note. I was asked to accompany the entourage back to the prime minister’s office. In fact, I was to accompany the prime minister in her car. As we settled in the backseat of the car, she asked me what she could do for me. I said I needed support for the Jinnah film. She said, “Don’t worry about that, you have it. What else can I do for you?” Picking up the telephone to instruct her assistants, she enquired, “Do you have a Sitara-i-Imtiaz?” I said that I did. She asked, “What about joining my staff? You can take any post you like.” I shook my head and said I just wanted support for my Jinnah film and nothing else. We had reached her office, and she seemed slightly irritated at what she thought was my non-cooperative attitude. She said that everyone who met her tried to get something out of her.
The short ride with Benazir Bhutto caused consternation in her adoring circle. The brief journey was reported on the front page of The News. I was glad I had always kept my distance from the labyrinthine party politics of Pakistan and its bitter jealousies and in-fighting.
A little later I was on another panel with her, this time at Chatham House, London. It was a top-level conference on international affairs, and we were the two Muslims invited to speak on the Muslim world. There were many distinguished participants including Gorbachev, the leader of the former Soviet Union.
Benazir Bhutto was a formidable speaker. Articulate and well-read, she embodied charisma. She invariably enchanted the audience. At Chatham House the serious- looking, hard-boiled diplomats and scholars melted when she spoke. I was on immediately after her and I did not fail to notice the contrast as a resigned stupor fell on them. When I finished, I turned to her and whispered, “This is the last time I follow you in a speech.” She smiled.
She had a sense of humor. At a small state lunch in London arranged by the British government, she leaned across the table and addressed Sir David Frost, who was sitting next to a senior Pakistani politician, saying sweetly, “David, you must talk to the gentleman seated next to you as you have much in common. He has been married almost as many times as you.”
An Oxford scholar sat on her right and she was deep in discussion with him when she leaned across the table towards me twice to say something along the lines of, “Akbar please come to my rescue and explain to the Professor that I am correct in my understanding of Muslim history.”
Later she and her mother Begum Bhutto met with members of the Quaid Project Limited, my company which was making the Jinnah film. It included Sir Julian Ridsdale, the former MP and Sir Oliver Forster, the former British High Commissioner to Pakistan. During the meeting, Benazir turned to me and asked, “Who will make the film on Mr Bhutto?” As I was only interested in working on the Jinnah film, I felt it best not to engage with the question. Not long after, Benazir was dismissed before her help could materialize.
We next met again in London in 1997. Benazir was now out of office and in the opposition. She was on her way to the airport but agreed to stop and speak at the launch of my book Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity at the School of Oriental and African Studies. The Brunei Gallery was already packed with an overflowing audience of scholars, students, media and celebrities like Christopher Lee and Shashi Kapoor, who were both in the Jinnah feature film.
But the Pakistan High Commissioner, who was also present, objected strongly to Benazir’s participation and asked me to cancel the invitation. I suspect he feared the official reports to Islamabad would not look good and his loyalty would be questioned. It was an absurd suggestion and I thought an occasion like a book launch was the ideal place to bring different people with different views together.
I prepared to welcome Benazir as she arrived with George Galloway, the MP. True to form, as she entered the hall and was mobbed, she looked at Zeenat – my wife, who was with her in school – and loudly and generously applauded my contributions saying, “Your husband is the pride of Pakistan.” She spoke very warmly from the podium about my book and my efforts on behalf of Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan.
That did not prevent the High Commissioner from stopping my pay the next day, in a fit of spite. It was an illegal and irrational act. The pay was meager, but it was my only source of income. The matter did not end there. Benazir Bhutto found herself on the same table as the High Commissioner at a state dinner when he accompanied a British dignitary to Islamabad. Throughout dinner, she harangued him for actually withholding the pay of someone who had done so much for Pakistan. On his return, the High Commissioner conveyed his conversation at dinner with Benazir to me, and it had done nothing to improve his temper.
One evening, late in 2001, we were both at American University, Washington DC. I had just taken over as the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and she was guest speaker on campus. I could not attend her event, as I was a speaker at another function. I rushed to join the reception in her honor after I finished, but she had left by then. Several faculty and students came up to me and said, “You have an amazingly generous former prime minister.” I asked why they said so. They told me that Benazir spoke loudly and warmly to the President of the university, pointing out my books and Jinnah films, and saying, “We have given you our greatest scholar and I hope you are appreciating his presence on your campus.”
One of the most difficult interviews of my life has to do with the death of Benazir Bhutto in 2007. I was rung up by BBC television at an early hour in Washington DC and asked to switch on my television and comment on the breaking news that she had been shot. Barely awake, I spoke on the telephone while watching the news and the scenes of confusion and chaos – and an image of myself with my commentary. I found my emotions overcoming me on air, while I tried to maintain objectivity.
Her politics and judgment – remember the stories of corruption and the personality cult built by the sycophants around her – were sometimes fatally flawed, but Benazir’s spirit of generosity, boldness, sense of humor and sophisticated intelligence cannot be denied. She never lost her passion for the idea of democracy and striving towards Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan. In her untimely and tragic death, Pakistan lost a major political figure and the world had lost an internationally recognized champion of women and the Third World.
(Professor Akbar Ahmed is Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, Washington DC)
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