Benazir Bhutto - SZABIST

hospitable but not ostentatious, as befitted anyone from a promising but poor country like Pakistan.
She had a ready smile for everyone, tea, cake and sympathy in her cosy little room at LMH for anyone
in trouble; and a car ride for anyone who was exhausted, in her snappy little sports car. In her own
words "I am happy just to sit on the floor and listen to music". Her fierce loyalty to her friends and
compatriots is well known to us all. To cite an example, she once personally and furiously took to task
a gossip columnist who had slandered a friend and fellow Pakistani. He apologised in the very next
issue! She was sweet enough once to help my mother with her suitcase all over Oxford station, and
she had a wonderful rapport with my father. Like our other Oxford contemporary, Imran Khan, she
never forgot her many good friends in Pakistan and abroad. Whenever I have met her over these three
decades, whether she has been in opposition or in office, the years in between have just melted away,
the camaraderie complete.
Her background had however imbued her with a strong sense of purpose and patriotism, and together
with her formidable intelligence, powerful personality and impressive education, she could have
contributed considerably to Pakistan in her original orientation of diplomacy or law. She had a strong
sense of realism "If I joined the Foreign Service, they'd throw me out the minute my father were out of
office!" Then law would have been her alternative.
But her father had other plans for her, or perhaps it was her destiny. Justifiably proud of his eldest and
brightest offspring, he urged and encouraged her into public life and its consequent addiction by
urging her to aim for the prized position of the president of the Oxford Union and regularly - it seemed
to us relentlessly - monitoring her progress. Certainly she could afford to be more relaxed
academically than the rest of us, for at only twenty she was a "summa cum laude" from Harvard. But
for her the tension rose whenever there were Union elections - every term! Though of course her wit
and wisdom, her charm and charisma, her stature and sophistication, ensured her eventual success in
Oxford, as later against an army of adversities at home.
Her repartee, like her father's was remarkable and often had one awed, as when she forcefully
described political opposition as "vital to wake the sleeping man in power." Or in stitches, as when she
dryly remarked to a parliamentarian's son who failed to turn up to a meeting she had called "I left the
note in your hallway under your father's picture - it just shows how much you look at it!" Once asked
why her pet name was Pinkie, she at once replied, "Because I was a socialist from the day I was born!"
Thus I was not too surprised when her mother told me during a visit to Moscow in 1975 that "She
wants to enter politics, and is just waiting till she is twenty-five so that she can stand!"
Career politicians everywhere are ambitious and aggressive by definition, and she was no exception.
Some have been disappointed that despite her training in the traditions of accidental democracy and
her experience in leading Pakistan's largest populist party, she occasioned certain controversy and
criticism. But that can be said for all our contemporary leaders, and many abroad. Against this must be
weighed the great sacrifices her family and she, in particular, have made for the survival of democracy
in the country against extensive and intensive manifestations of dictatorship.
In her defence I shall always say that like many leaders, and most eastern ones, she has not always
been served well by her advisors, and by her foreign supporters that propelled her into such danger for
their own agendas. Yet 'nurturing the tender flower of democracy' was an ideal taught by her father, a
similarly complex persona that I have heard her aspire to in all sincerity since her youth. Perhaps her
initial involvement with Pakistani politics was a labour of love as an alter ego for her adored and
admired father, an honourable, if personalised, endeavour. But over a period of thirty-years, including