I met Ms Bhutto briefly a few years ago at one of those summits that have become so fashionable in Delhi of late. She was a keynote speaker and inevitably her address arrived at Kashmir. She toed the Pakistani line that the Hurriyat Conference leaders are the sole representatives of the Kashmiri people. During the Q&A session that followed I made my disagreement with her assessment known. When she returned to her table she was gracious enough to write me a little note about how she considered people like me and a few other mainstream politicians as representatives also and was sorry that she had overlooked mentioning this in her speech. Perhaps she meant what she wrote, perhaps she was just being the consummate politician by saying privately what she couldn’t afford to say publicly, I guess we will never really know.
I read Reconciliation with great interest. I wonder if there would have been as much interest in this book if Benazir had not been assassinated within days of finishing it. But, still, I was glued to what were to be her last thoughts left for the world to ponder over. I must admit it read better than I had expected and was an easy read.
The danger with a politician writing a book on such a tricky subject, and that too around an election, is that the author will write what she thinks the people want to read rather than what she believes in. Benazir has been remarkably candid about her views on Islam, the use of jehad and how the West has helped fuel the fires that threaten to destroy the base of tolerant Muslims. She has talked about the conflict within Islam as well, between sects of Muslims and, within the same sects, between the more tolerant and the hardliners.
If I were to fault this book it would be because the book, and by extension the author, sees everything in black and white, where it is largely shades of grey. She has looked at Islam and its problems with the West but has completely ignored Islam and its relations with the East, particularly India. India has been a major factor in determining the shape of Islam in Pakistan. Zia-ul-Haq’s interpretation of Islam, his promotion of this thinking in the Pakistani army and its continued effect in Pakistan and Afghanistan are facts that can’t be ignored. Sadly, Benazir chooses to ignore her own contribution to the spread of what is known popularly and rather simplistically as "Islamic terrorism". She was prime minister of Pakistan when the incursion of trained and armed militants into Kashmir started. It is impossible to imagine that the political leadership of the day in Islamabad would have been completely unaware of what was going on in an important part of their country.
What amazes me is how accurately Benazir seems to have read the pulse of her people, even in self-imposed exile. She writes about the need for Islam to take a long, hard look at itself and reform; the need for the more tolerant schools of thought to exert themselves. The defeat of the Islamist parties in the recently concluded elections in Pakistan has shown that the majority of Pakistanis seem to agree with this assessment.For me, having been the target of more than one assassination attempt, the most gripping part was living through her eyes the attempt on her life in October last year. It reveals the fragile need she felt to soak in the love and adoration of her people. It was this fragility that was to cost her, her life. If only she’d stayed in her vehicle that December evening and not stuck her head out through the sunroof. But she did, and a promising life was tragically cut short.
Benazir Bhutto died a martyr to the cause of democracy. Just how much impact her death is to have on her country, her religion and her region is something we will all have to wait to see.
(Omar Abdullah is president of the National Conference.)
