Baby Bhutto, the Kashmir issue is way out of your league

Baby Bhutto evoked serious backlash from the Indian side and made himself a butt of joke in both Pakistan and India.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has spoken.

“I will take back Kashmir, all of it, and I will not leave behind a single inch of it because, like the other provinces, it belongs to Pakistan.”

This statement has evoked serious backlash from the Indian side and has made him a butt of jokes in both Pakistan and India. The statement was disturbing on many levels. It came at a time when the “political intern” was visiting flood affected areas and was, ironically, asking all political parties to set aside their differences and work in unison for the flood victims.

By mentioning Kashmir out of the blue, he contradicted his own agenda of channelling single dimensional attention towards the grief ridden awaam. It clearly exposed the lack of coherence in the party’s policies and fateful flaws in the young patron’s understanding of politics and empathy for the people of Pakistan. As Kiran Bedi said,

As a Young Man he is already out of sync with current realities! Sad for region) @dna: "PPP to get entire Kashmir from India:Bilawal Bhutto"

— Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) September 20, 2014

It seemed as if, in attempt to replicate his grandfather Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, he forgot the obvious yet delicate changes in the popular political scenario of Pakistan. Baby Bhutto might dress like his grandfather in his signature awami shalwar suit with sleeves rolled up, but he cannot blindly imitate his ideology as he tried to do so by quoting Kashmir at the wrong time. Even though his statement made his grandfather instantly popular, it certainly cannot help his “tailored” heir. He has to be an original if he wants to be taken seriously in politics.

Another thing that bothers me is our leaders' failure to teach their kids Urdu when they are preparing them to rule the land of pure. When the time finally comes to take over the throne, the poor kids can’t speak or understand a single Urdu syllable. Therefore, they have to practise it on us in their Roman Urdu speeches. Hence, whenever Bilawal is delivering speeches, he tries to compensate the lack of his language expertise with exaggerated body language. His eerie smile during the Kashmir speech could be taken as a recent proof of it.



By diving into age old rhetoric, he completely missed the point that the will and decision of Kashmiris mattered more than our territory-expanding greed. We must stand for their rights and freedom rather than playing politics on their miseries. We never heard a word of sympathy for the flood stricken Kashmiris from our politicians nor did our media spend any of its precious time on them. Kashmir has been morphed into a populist slogan that we raise only to prove ourselves more patriotic – without ever caring for ground realities.

The irresponsible statement caused damage on foreign policy fronts as it started an unnecessary war of statements and arguments at a time when the country is already in turmoil. Internationally, it could be interpreted in any light, coming from a country where extremist elements are already raging war against the state.

On a lighter note, the world of social media exploded with hilarious remarks on the statement. Pakistanis have this flair of seeing the lighter side of every precarious situation and this time too they found some comic relief in it. Twitteratis suggested that Baby Bhutto should first learn to take his cars out of the mud and then think of Kashmir, while Facebook users drew hilarious analogies of him asking for the moon.

So what is the best #BilawalBhutto joke so far? Just him?

— Vikram Chandra (@vikramchandra) September 20, 2014

https://twitter.com/L0keshBK/status/513997512374358017

https://twitter.com/amarsree/status/513938851438788608

#BilawalBhuttoZardari Fairies should stay Fairies. NOT give their 2 cents because daddy handed them a mike. Leave politics to grownups child

— Emaan Arshad (@EmaanArshad) September 21, 2014

If Pakistan Peoples Party wants us to take Bilawal seriously then they must tutor him intelligently, ask him to spend more time here to get accustomed to our culture and current political narrative and kindly arrange for some serious Urdu lessons. If a regular expat stutters in Urdu, it comes across as cute, but if a leader is not well-versed in his own language, he appears ridiculous and is mocked, nationally and globally.