SUKKUR:
A sad end to a photographic legacy was witnessed at circuit house, Sukkur, on Saturday night. The personal photographer of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto, Agha Feroze, organised an exhibition showcasing more than 3,000 photographs of the Bhutto family, including rare photos of Benazir starting from her birth till her martyrdom near Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi. “This is my last exhibition,” said a visibly upset Feroze. “After this I will wrap up all the photographs and place them in my store in Karachi.
The exhibition was inaugurated by the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah, and will continue till April 15. However, despite the treasure trove of rare photographs on display spread over 36 years of artistic work, the venue was deserted except for a handful of people. Agha was clearly despondent, sitting in a corner, with his head hanging. Dr Arshad Mughal, of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Sukkur chapter also turned up to visit the exhibition but he too was disturbed be seeing the almost deserted venue.
Agha Feroze informed The Express Tribune that he was born in Dhaka in 1958 and in the 1971 war, he was one of the 90,000 prisoners incarcerated by the Indian army. “My father was martyred in the war, and my mother accompanied me to Pakistan in 1975,” said a teary-eyed Feroze. “It was due to the efforts of Zulfiqar Ali Butto that I was released, along with several hundred other Pakistanis, and even though I was just a teenager, I owed much to Shaheed Bhutto and wanted to do something for him. He gave me fatherly love, affection, and provided for me, and the Mohtarma continued the same way, but after her departure it seems as if there is nothing left for me.”
After their release from an Indian jail, Feroze and his mother were given a hut to live in Orangi Town and he started work at the Daily Musawwat, an Urdu newspaper of the PPP. “Between 1975 and 1977 I developed hundreds of photographs of Shaheed Bhutto and his family,” he said. Unfortunately, the government was toppled by Zia’s coup when the power of the PPP was at its peak.
When asked for his memories about the conditions under the Zia regime, Agha Feroze said many previous leaders and supporters of the party threw away any photographs they had of Zulfiqar Bhutto because of threats and intimidation from the government. “I would gather all the photographs that they had thrown away and keep them safely in my hut,” he stated. “These two-faced supporters turned their back on the family to the extent that they did not even visit 70 Clifton to pacify the women of the Bhutto family after Bhutto sahib’s hanging.”
Agha’s allegiance to the Bhutto family was unwavering. When current president Asif Ali Zardari was sent to the Landhi jail in 1990, he would stay with him from morning to evening every day, and would also accompany him to court. “But now, President Zardari doesn’t even recognize me.” He informed The Express Tribune that when Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto came to Pakistan on October 18th 2007, he was part of her convoy and was very lucky to survive the suicide attack that followed. At her last public meeting in Liaqat Bagh, he was packing his camera and cables outside the park with vociferous slogans of ‘Jeay Bhutto’ emanating from the large crowd. She then emerged out of the sunroof of her car and was shot as she could not keep her distance from the people, whom she adored and loved.
The first photographic exhibition organized by Feroze was in Karachi, on the occasion of the first death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto. Further exhibitions were held in Islamabad, Lahore, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Nawabshah, Larkana and Sukkur. He claims to possess over 15000 photographs of the Bhutto family, but could only manage to bring 3000 to Sukkur. The PPP administration has maintained a totally indifferent attitude towards me,” complained Feroze. “I have to literally beg people for money to transport photographs from one city to another.”
Agha Feroze had recently organised an exhibition on April 3 in Larkana. “Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah inaugurated the exhibition,” he said, “But I didn’t receive even Rs100 as a grant from him. This, despite him awarding Rs200,000 to a photographer who had arranged an exhibition in the last week of March showcasing Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari and Faryal Talpur.”
The current exhibition in Sukkur was also overlooked by the PPP hierarchy. “Despite the presence of Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah, I was not given any money in lieu of my efforts to spread the message of PPP,” remarked Feroze. “This is the last of my exhibitions, as there is nobody to encourage me. If Mohtarma was still alive, this venue would have been thronged by people.”
Published in The Express Tribune, April 11th, 2011.
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