A latest documentary about Benazir Bhutto. ('Darling of the crowd' Benazir Bhutto's 62nd birthday being observed)
- 9 years ago
‘Darling of the Crowd’ Benazir Bhutto was born on June 21, 1953 in Karachi’s Pinto Hospital. It’s just her 62nd birthday but it’s been more than 7 years since she was murdered by a terrorist in 2007 in Rawalpindi while returning from a public meeting during 2008 election campaign. She was a larger than life character. Being the daughter of one of the biggest Muslim political personalities of the 20th century, Benazir Bhutto had seen a lot during her short life of 55 years.
Benazir saw her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, becoming the foreign minister of Pakistan, then the first and only civilian martial law administrator of the country, then the President, the Prime Minister and finally she saw him getting hanged. She saw exiles, jails, malicious campaigns, oppositions, conspiracies and of course power. But one thing all her devoted workers testify to was her ability to remember them. She knew them; almost all of the old guards, from Peshawar to Karachi; she knew them by their names.
Born to a popular political family of Sindh, Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who later founded Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and granddaughter of Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto. Her mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, was from Iranian-Kurdish descent and Benazir was the eldest of her 4 kids. Sanam Bhutto, Shahnawaz Bhutto and Murtaza Bhutto were the other three.
Benazir started her political career when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went to India for negotiating the the situation after the 1971 war and took Benazir with him. There, the young Bhutto met Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. She saw her father pleading Pakistan’s case, negotiating from a point of weakness, before a proud and victorious Indira Gandhi. She learnt the art of politics from The Bhutto himself.When General Ziaul Haque staged a coup and overthrew Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government in 1977, Benazir was only 24 years of age but she led the protest rallies at this young age with brilliance. Meanwhile, she was also the closest aide of her father when the latter was in jail. In his book ‘Last 323 days of Bhutto’, Colonel Rafiuddin has mentioned that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto talked to each other in ears so that the bugged dungeon was unable to transmit their discussions to the government authorities.Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979, despite many clemency appeals from the foreign leaders. Benazir was immediately arrested along with her brother Murtaza Bhutto. Later, she was house arrested at her home in Larkana. In 1981, the military regime imprisoned her in a solitary confinement in a desert cell of Sindh. As she described the conditions she lived in during those days, her situation was miserable. Her hair started to fall and her skin ‘split and peeled’. She lived in this wall-less cell along with mosquitoes, grasshoppers, bugs, ants and spiders. “I tried pulling the sheet over my head at night to hide from their bites, pushing it back when it got too hot to breathe”, she wrote in her book Daughter of Destiny . She was hospitalized for several months afterwards and then imprisoned again.
Finally in 1984, Bhutto family was allowed to travel abroad under international pressure for medical treatment. Benazir Bhutto had a political rebirth in exile as she was allowed to use media in the West as a tool for spreading her message. However, in 1985, she received yet another shock when learned that her brother Shahnawaz had been poisoned to death.In 1986, Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan. She came to Lahore, the heart of Pakistan, and was given one of the warmest welcomes ever in the city s history. She was cheered from the rooftops by the ladies, hundreds of thousands of people rallying behind her as her caravan moved slowly towards the walled city. It was massive. Lahore hadn’t seen anything like this before. Crowd went wilder as she waived her hands at them in her father’s style.General Elections were held in 1988 after General Zia’s death in a plane crash on August 17 that year. She became the prime minister as a result of these elections as PPP won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.She said in her address to the nation, “We gather together to celebrate freedom, to celebrate democracy, to celebrate the three most beautiful words in the English language: ‘We the People’.”However, her tenures in PM Office remained turbulent. While there were some busy forging alliances against her party, bringing all the anti-PPP politicians and political parties together under the umbrella of Islami Jamhuri Ittehad (IJI), Benazir Bhutto was finding it tough to handle the civil-military establishment as the Prime Minister. Finally, her government was dislodged in 1990 over corruption charges by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan (Late). PPP lost the 1990 election to IJI and Nawaz Sharif, who had been Punjab’s Chief Minister twice till then, became the Prime Minister of Pakistan for the first time.
Benazir saw her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, becoming the foreign minister of Pakistan, then the first and only civilian martial law administrator of the country, then the President, the Prime Minister and finally she saw him getting hanged. She saw exiles, jails, malicious campaigns, oppositions, conspiracies and of course power. But one thing all her devoted workers testify to was her ability to remember them. She knew them; almost all of the old guards, from Peshawar to Karachi; she knew them by their names.
Born to a popular political family of Sindh, Benazir Bhutto was the daughter of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who later founded Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), and granddaughter of Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto. Her mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, was from Iranian-Kurdish descent and Benazir was the eldest of her 4 kids. Sanam Bhutto, Shahnawaz Bhutto and Murtaza Bhutto were the other three.
Benazir started her political career when Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto went to India for negotiating the the situation after the 1971 war and took Benazir with him. There, the young Bhutto met Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India. She saw her father pleading Pakistan’s case, negotiating from a point of weakness, before a proud and victorious Indira Gandhi. She learnt the art of politics from The Bhutto himself.When General Ziaul Haque staged a coup and overthrew Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government in 1977, Benazir was only 24 years of age but she led the protest rallies at this young age with brilliance. Meanwhile, she was also the closest aide of her father when the latter was in jail. In his book ‘Last 323 days of Bhutto’, Colonel Rafiuddin has mentioned that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto talked to each other in ears so that the bugged dungeon was unable to transmit their discussions to the government authorities.Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was hanged on April 4, 1979, despite many clemency appeals from the foreign leaders. Benazir was immediately arrested along with her brother Murtaza Bhutto. Later, she was house arrested at her home in Larkana. In 1981, the military regime imprisoned her in a solitary confinement in a desert cell of Sindh. As she described the conditions she lived in during those days, her situation was miserable. Her hair started to fall and her skin ‘split and peeled’. She lived in this wall-less cell along with mosquitoes, grasshoppers, bugs, ants and spiders. “I tried pulling the sheet over my head at night to hide from their bites, pushing it back when it got too hot to breathe”, she wrote in her book Daughter of Destiny . She was hospitalized for several months afterwards and then imprisoned again.
Finally in 1984, Bhutto family was allowed to travel abroad under international pressure for medical treatment. Benazir Bhutto had a political rebirth in exile as she was allowed to use media in the West as a tool for spreading her message. However, in 1985, she received yet another shock when learned that her brother Shahnawaz had been poisoned to death.In 1986, Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan. She came to Lahore, the heart of Pakistan, and was given one of the warmest welcomes ever in the city s history. She was cheered from the rooftops by the ladies, hundreds of thousands of people rallying behind her as her caravan moved slowly towards the walled city. It was massive. Lahore hadn’t seen anything like this before. Crowd went wilder as she waived her hands at them in her father’s style.General Elections were held in 1988 after General Zia’s death in a plane crash on August 17 that year. She became the prime minister as a result of these elections as PPP won the largest number of seats in the National Assembly.She said in her address to the nation, “We gather together to celebrate freedom, to celebrate democracy, to celebrate the three most beautiful words in the English language: ‘We the People’.”However, her tenures in PM Office remained turbulent. While there were some busy forging alliances against her party, bringing all the anti-PPP politicians and political parties together under the umbrella of Islami Jamhuri Ittehad (IJI), Benazir Bhutto was finding it tough to handle the civil-military establishment as the Prime Minister. Finally, her government was dislodged in 1990 over corruption charges by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan (Late). PPP lost the 1990 election to IJI and Nawaz Sharif, who had been Punjab’s Chief Minister twice till then, became the Prime Minister of Pakistan for the first time.