Quaid e Awam -- He Lived Like A Lion
by Benazir Bhutto - JANUARY 5 2002
Quaid e Awam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Shaheed was born on January 5, 1928. Many saw him as Destiny's child. He was chosen to pick up the pieces of a demoralised Nation that had disintegrated into two.
Few thought Pakistan could survive the conspiracies and threats against it in December 1971. The Generals had surrendered ninety thousand of their troops at Dacca Race Course. The Indian General Manekshaw promised his people another gift in the new year.
Pakistan survived due to the leadership of a bold and courageous leader, a peoples leader, who had the vision to break the shackles of poverty to emancipate his people and lead them into a new decade of glory, strength and achievement.
Quaid e Awam did not believe in destiny or fate guiding individuals to success and glory. Quaid e Awam believed in the manifest capacity of each individual to make their own future and to write their own destiny. He chose his destiny. He gave himself a goal. He had a self picture of serving his people and his land. He did it. He believed that an individual should never succumb to tyranny and injustice. He gave his life to live up to his beliefs. He was a leader of the people who lived and died for them.
The most important lesson that young people could learn from the Quaid is to set themselves goals and give up bemoaning their fate. Success comes to those that work for it through a set of principles.
We live in times where opportunism and expediency replace integrity and steadfastness of character. In these times when rulers break the laws, it is all the more important to remember the Quaid e Awam who believed in the rule of law. He believed individuals needed to change to meet the requirements of law rather than law being trampled to meet the requirements of individuals.
Quaid e Awam gave to Pakistan a unanimous, democratic and Islamic constitution with provincial autonomy and human rights. This was the first constitution to recognise human rights of the people of Pakistan. Today human rights has become a major issue internationally. Without it the dignity of humanity is compromised and the soul of a society destroyed.
For Quaid e Awam, politics was in his blood. Politics was a romance for him from the days of his youth. As an inquisitive student he showed unflinching commitment toward Quaid e Azam's demand for Pakistan. Quaid e Awam saw himself as a "soldier of Islam". Not in the way of the religious fanatics who use religion to justify terror and dictatorship. He saw himself as a "soldier of Islam in terms of serving the Muslim Ummah through freedom and the rule of law as well as a combined Muslim community. He believed that Islam's unity came through the unity of the Muslim community built on the principles of a common market and a common defense. In this way, he was the forefather of the concept which today sees the birth of the European Union, the Gulf Countries Cooperation and the South Asian Regional Countries Association.
According to his friend Piloo Mody, “Zulfi was a fanatic supporter of Jinnah’s two-nation theory and everything that Jinnah said or did was correct for him”. He was in constant communication with his leader. In a letter to Quaid e Azam in 1945 he wrote: “Being still in school I am unable to help in the establishment of our sacred land. But the time will come when I will even sacrifice my life for Pakistan”. These were prophetic words for a man who gave his blood to strengthen freedom in his homeland.
Bhutto saw for himself a role in Pakistan’s politics and also as a key player on the global canvas. He was a leader of the oppressed, of oppressed people suffering under oppressive systems and of oppressed Nations seeking to build self reliance. He was a leader of the Muslim and Third World.
As early as 1948 Quaid e Awam said,
“To civilisation we have given the essence of growth, and in return we have become a plaything of foreign powers…In our hands lies the future of our people and the responsibility of protecting their liberty.”
He always believed that the future lay in "our hands" and that an individual had to have the strength to stand for values. This strikes me as so different to the new culture of selling oneself for ministries that was promoted since his Martyrdom and to which greed many good men fell.
During his days as a post-graduate student in California, he wrote beautifully of Islam's opulent heritage.
Speaking at the University of California in Los Angeles on April 1, 1948--thirty years before his assassination on another April day--he said, “At the peak of Islam’s strength, the Christians were treated kindly everywhere and given full liberty to worship according to their ways. The Prophet (PUBH) had frequently stated that the lives, properties and laws of the Christians and the Jews were under the protection of God, and he said, “if any one infringes their rights, I myself will be his enemy, and in the presence of God, I will bring a charge against him.”
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto used to say that, “courage is in our blood, we are the children of a rich heritage. We shall succeed in our dream of an Islamic association since destiny demands it, political reality justifies it, posterity awaits it”.
He laid the foundation for his dream fortress of Islam in Lahore’s Islamic Summit in 1974. The rest is then a chapter of blood in history--the blood shed of the Quaid and of his young followers. He was hanged by his own general who once said that the amount of attention Pakistan army received from Prime Minister Bhutto had “no parallel in the history of Pakistan army prior to 1971.”
Quaid e Awam's life of fifty years was spent in the service of international, regional and national causes. Under his government, Pakistan gave overt and covert support to the African nations then under apartheid and minority rule. He was a hero of the Third World who spoke boldly against racism, colonialism and imperialism. He was the boldest voice for the rights of the Kashmiri people and the Palestinians.
For Pakistan Bhutto was the harbinger of colossal change—pulling the country from bullock cart age into the atomic one. He introduced nuclear medicine and nuclear power plants into the country. He got the blue print to enable the Pakistani scientists to enrich uranium and build the components of a nuclear device. He believed in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. He decided to build a nuclear bomb when Indian detonated its nuclear device in 1974.
As a cover to Pakistan's nuclear program through uranium enrichment, Quaid e Awam negotiated a Nuclear Reprocessing Plant agreement with France. His government was overthrown to cancel the Nuclear Reprocessing Plant agreement. However, the real program, undetected, went ahead. In fact, Quaid e Awam planned to detonate a nuclear device in 1978. His overthrow postphoned that event. However, had he lived, it meant that within four years Pakistan could have matched India in the nuclear feat, a phenomenal achievement.
His progressive socio-economic and democratic ideas gave him the strength and popular support to consolidate the state on an egalitarian agenda to attain roti, kapra and makkan.
Bhutto pushed politics out of the posh drawing rooms into real Pakistan—into the muddy lanes and villages of the poor. The party founded by him--Pakistan People’s Party—remains the only formidable challenge to the Establishment. Even though he brought ninety thousand prisoners home and saved the generals from death sentences in war crime tribunals, the establishment never forgave him or his party. The party he founded remains the most formidable challenge to the Establishment to this day.
Many Kings Parties were formed by the Establishment to counter the Pakistan Peoples Party. All failed in winning the hearts and minds of the people. None of them was a party dedicated to modernising Pakistan or alleviating poverty. Each one of them was a handmaiden to the establishment to pursue bankrupted policies based on upholding an exploitive anti people agenda.
Quaid e Awam was a principled friend to the poor, downtrodden and oppressed. He was fearless in his beliefs and refused to bow before any man or power other than the Almighty.
The ever-lasting contribution of Bhutto was to raise the consciousness of the people for democracy. He awakened the masses, making them realise they were the legitimate fountainhead of political power. He enlightened the peasants, the industrial workers, the students, the women and the rest of the common people of their importance and of their right of franchise, which is the definite means of bringing changes and improvement in the lives of the common people. He deeply cherished democracy and democratic values and in the end gave his life for the cause of freedom. In the case of Pakistan, he viewed military rule as a negation of the very genesis of the country that came into being as a result of a democratic process and a vote.
Bhutto believed that the army could only protect its professional competence as an institution by keeping out of politics. He said clearly: "The Pakistan Armed Forces cannot afford a moment's deviation from their real responsibility. Those soldiers who leave barracks and move into Government mansions lose wars and become prisoners of war as happened in 1971."
Bhutto led the struggles against the military Presidents Ayub, Yahya and Zia. Each of them is buried as a footnote in history today because dictatorship only has villains. Bhutto lives on in the pages of history as a hero.
Quaid e Awam's contributions to an impregnable Pakistan are seen in the Kamra Aeronautical factory, Heavy Mechanical Complex at Taxila, modernisation of Karachi Shipyard, creation of precision engineering works, Pakistan Steel Mills, Port Qasim, Pakistan Automobile Corporation to name a few.
By signing the Simla Accord of 1972 he negotiated longest peace between India and Pakistan. His social reforms laid the foundation of an egalitarian society, his non-aligned foreign policy earned Pakistan respect in the comity of nations. He lifted the nation drowning in a sea of despair to Himalayan heights.
Bhutto’s inspiring leadership filled Pakistanis with hope, energy and strength. There was a sense of purpose and direction in the country in pursuit of peace and prosperity. The economic growth rate increased and money poured in from expatriates who got the universal right to passport. The Muslim countries donated roughly $500 million annually to Pakistan, freeing it of international financial institutions. The people got jobs and opportunities. Women of the country were emancipated entering the police force, Foreign, Civil Service and subordinate judiciary for the first time in the country's history.
There is a story that the American President John F. Kennedy was much impressed with then Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When they met, Kennedy walked with him in the Rose Garden and said, "Bhutto, if you were an American, you would be in my Cabinet". To which Zulfikar Ali Bhutto smilingly replied, "No, Mr. President. If I were an American, you would be in my cabinet".
Quaid e Awam governed for five and a half years. His dedication and devotion to Pakistan is evident in each mountain, desert and part of Pakistan. He built the Karakorum Highway in the Northern tip of Pakistan down to Port Qasim in the Arabian Sea. It is amazing to think of the giant leaps of progress that Pakistan and its people took under the leadership of a man of vision and character who touched the soul of ordinary mortals with his powerful message of freedom, peace and development.
The death cell in which his killers kept him failed to break his will or his determination to challenge military rule and stand up as the leader of the people. He asked that he be remembered by his people as a "poet and a revolutionary for that is what I have been from the moment of my birth". His last words were, "God help me for I am innocent".
PPP supporters faced hanging, whip and persecution of the military and civil dictators out of their sheer commitment to Bhuttoism—a phenomenon meaning different things to different people. Some opportunists exposed themselves as turncoats but they remained few and far between. There could not be a better tribute to Shaheed Bhutto then the fact that the great majority of the PPP workers stood by the party through thick and thin out of their sheer loyalty and commitment to Bhuttoism.
Like the Quaid-e-Awam they also believe that: "It is better to live like a lion for one day than to live like a jackal for a thousand."
