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My friend, Benazir
Karan Thapar*
 Sitting
in my digs at
Cambridge after
dinner during the Easter vacation of 1976, Benazir, who had driven
over from Oxford that morning with her friend Tricia, suddenly
suggested we dash out for ice cream. So we bundled into her MGB
sports car which was parked outside. But instead of driving towards
the centre of town, she headed for the A40.
"Where are you
going?" I asked perplexed.
"London!
It's the nearest Baskin Robbins I know."
Benazir loved
ice cream. She could eat vast quantities of it. In later years, her
favourite became Ben & Jerry's. Whenever I finished a particularly
acrimonious interview, she would insist that we eat ice cream
together.
"It will cool
you down!" she would laugh.
There were
several interviews that annoyed her, a few that upset her and at
least one that riled her. But she never held that against me. She
accepted that a journalist had a job to do just as she insisted that
a politician couldn't answer every question. She always ensured that
our professional relationship - as interviewer and Prime Minister or
Opposition leader - remained separate from our friendship.
As
a young politician, in the years after her father's cruel hanging,
she often consciously modelled herself on Indira Gandhi. I remember
her fascination for the traditional Indian namaste. "It's dignified,
friendly but not familiar," she once said. I suspect the adab that
she made her personal greeting was in her eyes an equivalent.
In 1984, when
Maqbool Butt was about to be hanged, Benazir wrote to Indira Gandhi
pleading that he be saved.
"Why are you
doing that?" I asked. I couldn't understand her need to write the
letter. I thought it was a mistake.
"I have to,
Karan," she explained. "I've lived through my father's hanging and I
know the trauma it created for the family I can't watch someone .
else go through the same misery without doing what I can to prevent
it."
Indira Gandhi
never replied but Benazir didn't hold that against her.
As a Bhutto
daughter, Benazir was always conscious of her family's similarity
with the Gandhis. After Sanjay Gandhi's plane crash and Indira's
assassination in the early 80s were followed by her brother
Shahnawaz's mysterious death, she once commented that there was a
curse on both families. At the time, Rajiv's killing and her own
were still far in the future. To day there can be no doubt about
that curse.
In 1988, when
Rajiv visited
Islamabad,
during the early weeks of her first prime ministership, she invited
him and Sonia to a private family dinner on their first night. Her
husband Asif, her mother Nusrat and her sister Sanam were the only
other people present. In those days, a common joke in both countries
was that Rajiv and Benazir should marry each other and sort out
their two countries' problems. Benazir told me they laughed over it
at dinner.
"Rajeev", as she
always pronounced his name, adopting a misplaced Punjabi accent for
a Westernised Sindhi, "is so handsome," she said when I next met
her. And then she added, "But he's equally tough."
During the BJP
years, Benazir forged a link with the Advani family with equal
facility and friendship. A few months after her first meeting with
L.K. Advani, we were together in
Washington for
the Prayer Breakfast of 2002. During a break in one of the sessions,
she insisted that I accompany her shopping. "But we're walking,
okay? I need the exercise and so do you!"
As we sauntered
down
Connecticut Avenue, she stopped outside an old-fashioned bookshop.
Minutes later she bought a Robert Kaplan paperback as a gift for
Advani. I carried it back to Delhi. It was the first of several
similar gifts she sent to him through me.
I know that as
Prime Minister, her two terms in office disillusioned many Her fans
were disappointed whilst her . critics felt justified. But between
1989 and 2007 the change that characterised her attitude to
India
and Kashmir in particular steadily progressed and didn't falter.
From the young Prime Minister who would shout on television "Azadi,
Azadi, Azadi!", she became the first, the most consistent and
perhaps the strongest proponent of a joint India-Pakistan solution
to Kashmir. As early as 2001, she began to speak about soft borders,
free trade and even, perhaps unrealistically a joint parliament for
the two halves of Kash , mir. Musharraf 's concept of
self-governance and joint management draws heavily upon her original
thinking.
When I last
interviewed her in September, days before her return to
Pakistan,
she went fur ther than ever before. Not only did she forcefully
repeat her commitment to clamp down on all private militias and shut
terrorist camps but, in addition, she promised to consider the
extradition of Dawood Ibrahim and even the possibility of giving
India access to men like Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed and Masood Azhar.
In private
conversation, she would readily admit that the strident Prime
Minister of 1988-89 was a mistake. In fact, she came close to saying
as much on television as well. Had she lived to become Prime
Minister, I feel certain she would have fulfilled this commitment.
This is why she was so upset, actually angry at the National Securi
, ty Advisor's scepticism of her. Her death is, therefore, an
irreparable loss for
India as well.
The two months
since her return to
Pakistan have
proved beyond doubt her incredible bravery But it wasn't . just
death that she refused to be frightened of. She was equally fearless
of failure. In 1986, at the peak of the Zia dictatorship, an untried
and inexperienced 33-year-old flew home to challenge the might of
the General and his loyal army .
"Are you
worried?" I asked on her last night in
London.
"When something
has to be done, fear is the last thought in my mind." To some that
might sound pompous, but I took it as a reflection of her steely
confidence.
This October,
when I asked her if she could repeat the miracle a second time, she
shot back with the question, "Why do you ask?" I told her that now
she was 54, she had been Prime Minister twice and disappointed many
and
Pakistan was a very different country .
She heard me in
silence and then softly smiled. Her eyes seemed to take on a knowing
but playful look. When she spoke, her words sounded measured and
well-considered.
"It will be an
even bigger return home."
In fact, it was
an explosive return. But I doubt Benazir would have wanted to die of
old age. Instead, she died a hero, a martyr and an inspiration for
many.
Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, the father she adored, would have been proud of his Pinky
But she leaves behind three . young children and an ailing mother
who will miss her sorely And there is a hole at the heart of
Pakistan's re .
turn to democracy that may never get filled. Was she her country's
last chance of a peaceful, moderate, enlightened, Muslim future?
The day after
her death, I received Benazir's New Year card. It reads, ‘Praying
for peace in the world and happiness for your family in 2008.'
Unfortunately, they were denied to her.
Karan Thapar is
a well known TV personality.
*Courtesy:
Hindustan
Times
2
January, 2008
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