Reading the Chairman

Half a century later, Bhutto’s writings continue to foreshadow the future. It may be time PPP stops pointing to past

During the trial of his life, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto accused his accusers, “This attack on the 2^nd of May was done by (Kasuri’s) opponents. I had nothing to do with it. I was not even mentioned in the FIR. I saved him from it … the public prosecutor has said several times that it was the last straw on the camel’s back.

“Last straw! This camel is not from Florida. This camel is from the deserts of Sindh. There is no last straw on him.”

It’s 2014 now, and Sindh never quite considered changing camels. Thirty-six is the number of years since the Chairman spoke those words; zero is the number of alternatives to have captured Sindh’s imagination. Last week though, right before rolling into Larkana, another chairman disagreed.

Around the 100^th day of his dharna, Imran Khan claimed he would finish what the elder Bhutto started. To Mr Khan’s foes, this was a hot button issue — in an ajrak filled with hot button issues — from building the Kalabagh Dam (he’s against it) to breaking Sindh (he’s against that too).

Fans point to the similarities instead — the manic energy, the youth drives, the vow to break the old order in two — but that gulf may be too wide to jump. The Kaptaan is to the Chairman what Zaman Park is to Larkana or, to the more discerning, what Keble is to Christchurch: worlds apart.

Perhaps, not a massive loss. To hold rallies in Interior Sindh, for a party that’s not the PPP, is a welcome move, and brave besides. To paint Sindh in the hues of urban Punjab, i.e., that Sindh is dumb and miserable, not so much. Which is why Mr Khan also brings his inner Bhutto to the stage: Sindh bleeds black, red and green, and will go on bleeding for the foreseeable future.

Such is the mantle of the Chairman, even his enemies want in (nationalised foundries and all). And that’s what Bhuttoism is all about, the left of this country says. Regardless of whether you give up on it or give into it, it’s a force that won’t go away.

But that’s the trouble with -isms. Too often, they break down big ideas into small words; witness the rise of ‘Islamism’ and ‘Maoism’ as our most modern misnomers. What is Bhuttoism? When Imran Khan promises to finish his agenda, is it the same as when Asif Zardari vows to avenge him? Is Mubashir Hasan’s understanding the same as Faisal Raza Abidi’s? And considering the right keeps hemming and hawing over the Chairman’s sins — real and imagined — what keeps it going in the first place?

Before she began bashing browns for the rest of her life, Oriana Fallaci came close, “Like many leaders, he too is weakened and crippled by shyness. He is also many other things … and all of them in conflict among themselves. So you can define him in countless ways and all of them are true: liberal and authoritarian, fascist and communist, sincere and a liar.”

As one can gather by now, there’s no set formula. That might be the secret to its success: Bhuttoism is everything to everyone — a trump card for Mr Khan, a begrudging acknowledgment by the Muslim Leagues, a meal ticket for Qaim Ali Shah.

The critics are fond of saying the PPP’s rallies sound like organ music at a funeral parlour — a solemn veneration of the dead and not much care for the living. The PPP, its detractors say, is a relic of the past; Bhuttoism with it. Just the second part holds.

The issue may not be that the PPP’s been engaging with Bhuttoism too much; it may be that it hasn’t engaged with it enough. To the PPP, Bhuttoism is a blood pact: voting for a surname; saluting a genetic code forevermore. But that’s cheapening an idea, in a country where ideas are so hard to come by.

As far as thinkers go, Mr Bhutto left behind a solid body of written work, usually written in anger and haste. And the Chairman’s ideas — both the good ones (foreign) and the horrendous ones (domestic) — were with a view to 50 years in the future. Some remain shockingly relevant.

He predicted the Soviet daulat in Kabul — propped up by the brutality of Taraki and Amin — would fall in on itself. He foretold the US would divorce Kashmir from the Indo-Pak equation. And long before Maggie waltzed with Reagan, he smirked, “Great Britain has now ceased to be a powerful force in Asia, but she continues to play an important marginal role in support of the United States’ global interests … She will have to make the choice between the welfare of her people and the overlordship of others.”

Common sense today; all of it utterly against the grain at the time.

Part of the reason Pakistani progressivism is encapsulated in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is because his ideas were a shot to the heart, after years of statist parties and princes and Convention Muslim Leagues. That intellectual curiosity is no longer there in the party he’s left behind or, for that matter, the discourse he shaped.

In a way, he may have seen it coming. After a blurry student outing in New York, the Chairman wrote, “The city was half dozing … yet alive … erect masculine skyscrapers standing undisturbed and unaffected by the events that went on inside them … It was a strange feeling, the strangest I have felt. Suddenly their character changed. The mask was withdrawn. They began to symbolise something magnificent — the elevation of man.

“I wondered if they had become uncontrollable monsters. I imagined they were capable of plotting against their own creator called man.

“I almost shouted and rebuked the tall stone structures, calling them ungrateful. At the same time, knowing full well that I had made them, they were a source of pride to me. People in primitive times were hospitable and simple. Now they are cold and aloof and complex. I went on thinking … till I returned to my room.”

For one Bhutto biographer, this was an analogy of the Chairman’s mixed-up feelings for the West. For his critics, it was a metaphor: a sophomore destined to destroy himself.

Half a century later, Mr Bhutto’s writings continue to foreshadow the future. It may be time his party stops pointing to the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2014.

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