Our warrior princess

“Mazhab kay jo byopairi hain, woh sab se baree bemaari hain…. In jhute or makkaron se, mahzab kay thekedaron say, mein baaghi hoon, mein baaghi hoon” (The traders of religion are the worst disease, I rebel from these liars and hypocrites).

Regardless of your theological leaning, imagine a prime ministerial candidate in Pakistan passionately reciting these lines at a public procession. Further, imagine if you will that the candidate is a woman. Quite unimaginable now, is it not. It is almost four years since Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. We live in the wreckage of her death.

For me, writing these words presents an unassailable challenge, that of talking about perhaps the political figure I have admired more intensely than any other, without degenerating into hagiography as is so often the practice. I do not have exaggerated hopes of rising up to the challenge. The phrases that instantly spring to mind are the overused clichés ‘unique’ and ‘without parallel’. BB was and has been an inimitable phenomenon not only in Pakistan, but the world in general, the Muslim world at any rate. A charismatic and courageous young woman taking the military and religious establishment head on, at the time of one of the most sadistic, repressive theocratic regimes of the world, does not have many parallels if any.

Courage is one of many terms that hardly mean anything in Pakistan anymore. Yet, in the case of BB, it was courage in the most traditional, almost puritanical sense. One should be very sceptical about any romanticising of bravery which does not involve physical nerve. She returned to Pakistan for the first time when it was still under the depressing reign of a sick madman who had not only murdered her father but also derived voyeuristic pleasure from watching people being publicly lashed and executed. Incidentally, most of those who display vulgar gallantry now, decided then that discretion was considerably the better part of valour. The last time she returned, it was after having made public unequivocal statements against the suicide murderers, when most ‘leaders’ mumbled and jumbled about ‘understanding’ these barbarians. For the sake of fairness I will mention the NRO, to me whatever the specifics of an agreement (if there was any) are immaterial compared to her willingness to come back to fight and die. The mere presence of someone like BB threatened the core existence of the Taliban. No verbal condemnation of blowing up girls schools can ever be the same scathing indictment that was watching BB addressing a public gathering.

Like all great people, she made it all look effortless, a part of her personality. Immediately after the explosion in Karsaz, Karachi, killing more than a hundred of her workers, she addressed a press conference and said that she would not be deterred. The same unflinching nerve in the face of almost imminent death cannot be communicated by any number of hysterical shrieks of self-bravado. It is only when she is gone that we have realised how brave she was, or how cowardly the rest are.

Recently, when Ms Sherry Rehman was appointed as ambassador to the US, some of my more feminist acquaintances were thrilled and perhaps rightly so, that we now have a female ambassador to the US, a female foreign minister, a female Indian ambassador to the US, etc. In an odd way, BB was never a ‘female’ prime minister or leader, she was just a leader. The latent condescending chauvinism was never directed towards her. She never played the ‘oppressed woman’ card or ‘playing a man’s game’ card. Equally significantly, she never felt the need to overcompensate and be the ‘iron lady’ as in the likes of Ms Thatcher. BB’s rise and her tenacity did bring out more violently, an already — known trait of our ethos, vicious misogynism. The fact that she allowed no one to patronise her, brought to light the tendency of even the relatively enlightened to use the nauseous argument that ‘she is after all a woman’. The mullah had no greater enemy than BB. The fact that she was more articulate, more popular and braver than any other leader present was enough to shut up anyone with mistrust of women governing, at least anyone with a modicum of decency in them. BB was always an outsider to the chest-thumping, testosterone-fuelled idiocy which permeated and still dominates our establishment. However, she was always of the people. At the risk of generalising, BB was the biggest and bravest challenge that our Punjab-centric, male, mullah establishment has yet faced.

I implore everyone to listen to BB talk on the occasion when Ziaul Haq cheated justice by dying. Not a single word of abuse, for a man who deserved them all. That was BB’s way. Contrast that to the sinister comments saying that she should have never come out of the sunroof at Liaqat Bagh, Rawalpindi, and hence containing the sickening implication that she herself was somehow to be blamed for her death. BB survived in this system more than what she was designed to. And she knew it, which is what makes her without parallel. Those who capitulated to Zia and Musharraf without a shot being fired would not know it. Similarly, those backed by the establishment now, terming the Taliban as brothers and being mollycoddled by the military, would find recklessness, even fatalism, in BB’s undiluted resolve.

At the risk of falling prey to outright sentimentality, the soul was bruised when the news of BB’s assassination was announced. Not only for the reason that a personal heroine of mine was dead, our warrior princess gone but also for the immediate, stinging and unbanishable realisation that it would be a very long time before a Habib Jalib can justifiably write, “Darte kyun hain bandooqan walay ek nehati larki say,... mullah,tajir, general jiyalay, ek nehati larki say ( Why are those with guns afraid of one unarmed girl, why is the mullah, the trader and the overzealous general afraid of her).

Rest in peace, BB, you are being missed.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 25^th, 2011.