“She is part Radcliffe and Oxford, with an extremely well stocked mind, full of feminist literature, peace marches, the Oxford Union, and with a very liberated social life. She is also part feudal Sindh, a haughty aristocrat, the daughter and granddaughter of immensely wealthy landlords, whose inheritance gave her the right to rule…She is an Eastern fatalist by birth, a Western liberal by conviction, and a people-power revolutionary…She is an expensively educated product of the West who has ruled a male dominated Islamic society of the East. She is a democrat who appeals to feudal loyalties.”
–1993 Profile by Mary Anne Weaver for the New Yorker
Benazir is no more. Pakistan’s tryst with misfortune continues. Her loss is catastrophic and irreparable. It is difficult to see how anything good could result from this. Benazir’s return home brought some hope that democracy would be restored, if not immediately, then eventually. These hopes rose high especially after she nixed the pact with Musharraf. In addition, she seemed to be taking a determined stance against extremists, although the Taliban did expand its foothold in Pakistan during her second term. Maybe this was a ploy on her part to gain US support, but if in fact she was being sincere, this was exactly what Pakistan needed.
Pakistan has been in desperate need of credible and legitimate leadership for years. Benazir’s death has only strengthened the dictator’s hand and created chaos and confusion that actually helps extremists expand their grip. Benazir was a consummate politician, no stranger to corruption charges (must read fascinating report from the New York Times), unsavory deals of expedience, but also not free of the oversight of the all powerful army and burgeoning Islamists. Nevertheless, Benazir was a true leader and a liberal one at that. Read the first page of the Dawn newspaper from yesterday (before her death) and you will be shocked at the number of forces ripping this state apart. Her death could not have come at a worse time. Pakistan is not too far from becoming the next Afghanistan.
Love them, hate them, given the cult of personality that defines politics in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, loss of leaders is a major blow to stability and national unity especially when those leaders are substantively committed to some (albeit imperfect) form of democratic government. I, like others before me, wonder how Pakistan would have fared if Jinnah hadn’t passed away so shortly after independence.
No amount of condemnation and condolences will make things right again. The finality of death is a jarring but indelible fact. Nor is there much hope for justice. News channels are reporting that the evidence was literally washed off the streets hours after the blast. The Musharraf government doesn’t really have to answer to anyone, anyway. As the Dawn editorial below makes clear, political deaths in Pakistan tend to remain shrouded forever. We Bangladeshis need to learn from that alternate reality. All politicians in captivity must have speedy, fair, open trials. We must insist that democracy is restored without delay. There really is no defensible alternative form of government. We certainly don’t want to end up like Pakistan.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 28, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Nizamuddin Mahmood Selim
Excellent post,- Leela!
A definitive commentary not only on the late Benazir Bhutto, but also an incisive and thought-provoking piece on the inner-makings of the political ethos and strands of political ilk in the body-politik of countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The dire prognosis of a political void left by cult-figures like Ms. Bhutto in spite of their graft and corruption blemishes ought to be a reminder about the possible emerging scenario of a “derailed” Bangladesh divested of its own political protagonists like Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina! A dented Democrcay, as Leela has subtly pointed out, does not fare worse than a dead Democracy under the boots of the soldiers. Lessons learnt from Pakistan should be an eye-opener for Bangladesh, indeed!
Let us have unbound Democracy, with all its faults, flaws and failings, rather than a lip-service and pretentious Government bereft of the people, by the people and for the people, and under the garb of th “Care-Taker Government” that doesn’t care a hoot either about the State or the Nation. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as the saviour of Democracy, Bangladesh’s martinets are rolling over the minion-public in the rampant rampage of the men in arms, a-la Pakistan.
As Leela has eloquently summed up: “We certainly don’t want to end up like Pakistan.”
December 28, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Nizamuddin Mahmood Selim
In the penultimate paragraph, please read : Bangladesh’s mandarin-martinets.
December 29, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Leela
Thanks Mr. Selim, but really, you write far more eloquently and give me too much credit. I am merely pointing out the obvious here. I was personally saddened by Benazir’s death. Regardless of her failings, she was a remarkable person, strong, resilient, courageous, opinionated and deeply committed to her roots. When she came to power there was a lot of hope that she would really change things in Pakistan. She disappointed in many ways. Is it fair to blame it all on her husband? She should have taken a stand. After all she had pledged to the highest possible responsibility. There was a lot of hope that third time around (although I hear legally there are no third terms in Pakistan) she would get it right. In life, third chances are hard to come by it seems. Ultimately, this type of dynastic/personality based politics needs to come to an end. One of the major advantages of democratic government is that the succession problem is dealt with in a fair and legitimate manner via elections. If succession is going to become dynastic affair (through stranglehold over political parties), then all the uncertainty and illegitimacy associated with autocratic government will continue to haunt these pseudo democracies. But I am getting ahead of myself…cheers for dented democracy nevertheless.
January 12, 2008 at 4:16 am
Nizamuddin Mahmood Selim
Dear Leela
Once again, your you ddin’t get ahead of yourself ..-, you did predict rightly! Bilawal’s and Jardari’s election as Chairman and Co-Chairman of PPP after Benazir has proved beyond doubt “dynastic/personality based politics” under the garb of Democracy!
Will you blame it on the dynasty (Bhutto Dynasty) or the people at large for having succumbed to the moorings of feudalism? Harvard sociologist Barrington Moore Jr.’s 1966 work “Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Pesant in the Making of the Modern World” sheds light on the mindset of people in countries like ours, tied down to the traits of a subject-people psyche of our feuadlistic origin and as if subservient to the liege lord, revolting only when our backs are against the wall!
It may therefore be understandable why and how the Benazirs, Khaledas and Hasinas of this world dominate and rule in spite of their frailties in a populace largely bereft of education and the moral and intellectual emancipation that goes with it. Rickshaw wallahs and Kajer-Buas constituting the bulk of the electorate in what Lord Mountbatten had forecasted would-be Bangladesh as the “largest slum in the world”, one is hard put to expect that such categories as electorate would have the perceptive level for judging from a moral high ground what is right and what is wrong, or which candidate is good or bad in an Election under Democracy!
As I recall, such gullible “Voters” could be swayed with a cup of tea or a “Five-Taka Bakhshish” in any “Election”. That is why, clever political mavericks in cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet, Comilla, Bogra, Feni -you name it, build up “Vote Banks” among the “poorest of the poor” in the patronized slums for/among Rickshaw wallahs and Kajer Buas. One reason why one sees so many unlicensed Rickshaws on the city streets is that they have been provided for by the Political Parties and their “Maastans”.
What I prefer to call a “Rickshwwallah Democracy” prevailing in Bangladesh (or, even in erstwhile East Pakistan of the 50s, 60s and 70s), such a Democracy shall throw up leaders that the Rickshaw wallahs and Kajer Buas demand and deserve. So, one has Jainal Hazari, Shamim Osman, Hajee Selim, Mofazzal Hossain Maya, ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury, Mirza Abbas, Sadek Hossain Khoka, Falu, Haris Chowdhury, et al, as “Local Leaders”, and they, in their turn, have their “National Leaders”! And, one has to accept rabble-rousers as “National Leaders”!!!!!!!
The rise and dominance of Mafia cliques and coteries such as “Kala Jahangir”, “Murgi-Milon”, “Sweden-Aslam”, “Ershad Majumder” and their likes as the leaders of the slums and ghettos is the apanage of “Rickshaw wallah Democracy”.
A political system based on dispensation of favours for support to power is decidedly fraught with with the dangers of blind allegiance to the powers that be, not with democtaic choices and options based on national aspirations and national development. Democracies in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh are indeed subterfuges for Feudalism.
As long as Education per se is denied to the people, and ignorance is sustained through the State System, or Establishment, Democracy per se shall remain elusive or non-existent in the real sense. One shall have to do with autocratic and/or Fascist regimes unaccountable to the public, such as BAKSAL, or the current CTG, or, even for that matter, BNP, Awami League and the Jatiyo Party!! So, what have you in the line of this legacy? Coterie or family names persisting till the end: Sheikh Mijib-Hasia-Joy, Zia-Khaleda-Tariq, HM Ershad-Roushan-GM Kader,- the list goes on and on. Or, even for tat matter, just think for ages now the same names and personalities are still being bandied about in the smaller and Leftist Political Parties of Bangladesh : Begum Matia Chowdhury, Rashed Khan Menon, ASM Rab, Hasanul Huq Inu, Tipu Biswas, Moinuddin Khan Badal, or even Dr. Kamal Hossain!!! These same old fossilized chameleons are still sermonizing us!!!! There is also, interestingly, a redundant and almost-permanent “Shushil Samaj” pervasively constituting some blabbering idiots droning the same age-old tune: Kabir Chowdhury, Momtazuddin, et al.
That is our fate in an uneducated society of serf and plebeian.