Of course, we were lucky in having long years of stability under Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi while they were changing rulers every other year. Nehru put us on the right path, building an industrial base and at the same time developing our villages by linking them with roads, digging tubewells and electrifying them. The Pakistanis concentrated their energies on improving their cities where the rich upper classes live. Lahore is a good example of lopsided priorities. While the villages surrounding remained untouched, the city had its roads widened to provide for chariot-sized limousines of foreign make: Mercedes Benzes, Volvos, Toyotas (one fellow is said to have paid over eight lakhs for a secondhand car of Italian make). More parks for the Brown Sahibs’ babalog, big bungalows like those in which the rich and the corrupt Indians of the cities live. The bazars sell much the same kind of junk as ours; only their textiles are fancier than ours. They have many more music shops selling tapes. One book store I visited, Ferozesons, is bigger than any we have in India. Almost everything is more expensive than in India. And despite the harsh penalties imposed by the Nizam-i-Mustafa, liquor is easily available but at exorbitant prices. The one item we share in equal measure is corruption; it is as much on the up and up in Pakistan as it is in India.
To me more important than whether or not Zia would hang Bhutto was to find out whether or not the Pakistanis believed that Bhutto deserved to be hanged. From the few people I met in the first four days of my stay in Lahore and Islamabad I gathered that most Pakistanis believed that not only was Bhutto guilty of the murder of Nawab Kasuri, but of many other diabolical crimes for which he had not been brought to book. These included assassination of political opponents, torture, humiliation (buggery of a son in the presence of his father, abduction and raping of unmarried girls etc.). However a large proportion were equally convinced that though he had brought about a reign of terror the prosecution had failed to prove his hand in the murder of Kasuri and if the constitution of the courts had not been what it was, or if Bhutto had been tried under Islamic law, the outcome would have been different. But no sooner was Bhutto executed than opinion swung in Bhutto’s favour.
I was at a disadvantage at Lahore as most of my friends had suffered at Bhutto’s hands and their families were bitter about it. My closest friend, the late Manzur Qadir, had been put out of President Ayub’s Cabinet because Bhutto (himself a gay liver and a hard drinker) had published pamphlets denouncing the teetotaller, god-fearing, Manzur as a non-believer. Manzur was the chief defence counsel in prosecutions launched by Bhutto against his political adversaries. After Manzur died, Mohammed Anwar took over the defence of Bhutto’s victims. He organized the Lahore High Court Association to protest against Bhutto’s high-handedness. He was beaten up by the police and gaoled for fifteen days. He died soon after. My first call of duty was to pay homage at his grave. I strewed jasmine flowers and read the epitaph from Iqbal’s Shikwa:
Qaid-i-Mausam se tabeeat rahi azad uskee
Kash! gulshan men samajhta koee faryad uskee
(He remained free of the shackles of the changing seasons
Alas! there was no one in the garden to listen to his pleadings.)
The epitaph was a deserved tribute to Anwar’s character. He was not anti-Bhutto but anti-tyrant. Anwar had often told me that Bhutto was not only a wicked man but also bordering on insanity.
The baton passed from Anwar’s hands to those of M.A. Rehman who led the prosecution’s case against Bhutto and four men of the Federal Security Force (Bhutto’s private army) in the murder of Nawab Kasuri on the night of 10–11 November 1974. It was in Rehman’s home that I met the murdered Nawab’s son, Ahmed Raza the man Bhutto really wanted eliminated. Ahmed Raza has had a charmed life; he escaped as many as eighteen attempts to kill him. Bhutto emphatically denied that he ever wanted Ahmed Raza killed and dismissed him with lofty disdain as ‘a mere nobody’. Ahmed Raza is a man of substance; he was a student leader, one of the founder members of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), a member of the Pakistan National Assembly, and the leader of the anti-Bhutto faction of the same party. He was not a nobody but a somebody who had become a thorn (maybe not a big one) in Bhutto’s side. Behind his back Ahmed Raza was known as a bhaunka—the barker—and also as a chota Bhutto. He was in the witness box for eight days, five hours every day. The defence was unable to break his testimony in the cross-examination.
The pro-Bhutto element which was substantial and as vehement in his defence usually avoided getting into arguments about its leader’s involvement in Nawab Kasuri’s murder. Instead they emphasized Bhutto’s unique status as the only leader of world stature that Pakistan had produced since M.A. Jinnah (he was the Qaid-i-Azam, the great leader; Bhutto was the Qaid-i-Awam, the leader of the people.) When the anti-Bhuttoists condemned him as the architect of the destruction of Pakistan by forcing East Pakistan to break away and for his inept handling of the Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) dissidents, the pro-Bhuttoists were equally vehement about how he alone had saved whatever remained of Pakistan after the disastrous defeat at the hands of India in December 1971, the man who led a vanquished nation to deal on an equal level with victorious India at the Simla conference, the man who liberated the 93,000 prisoners of war (POWs) from Indian camps, and so on.
Between the two contending points of view there was no meeting ground. To one lot Bhutto was a villain; to the other a hero. The only point everyone agreed upon was that Bhutto was also a playboy: flamboyant in his dress, lavish with the use of public money, lascivious in his relations with women. (He had three wives: the first, Begum Ameer, was a cousin fifteen years older than himself; the second, an Iranian divorcee Nusrat who bore him four children; the third a Bihari sex-bomb who divorced her Bengali husband to share Bhutto’s bed and now lives in London.) He was not very discreet in his liaisons. As a cabinet minister he was caught in flagrante delicto with the wife of a visiting head of state. General Ayub reprimanded him but like an indulgent father did not throw him out. He had cavise to regret his paternal benignity. It was also common knowledge that Bhutto was a sadist. He beat his wife Nusrat often enough to compel her to wear long-sleeved blouses to hide the marks of injuries and at least once drove her to such despair as to take an overdose of sleeping tablets. He was at once an aristocratic wadhera (landlord) and a gentleman in the European mould, and a guttersnipe using language worthy of an urban hoodlum. Many people told me that when he lost his temper, which was often, he used epithets like haramzada (bastard), sooer ka baccha (son of a pig) and madarchod (mother-fucker).
Yet another point on which both the pro- and the anti-Bhutto elements were agreed was that if Bhutto had been released and allowed to contest the elections, he would have swept the polls. How then can an outsider make an assessment?
General Zia had given me an appointment for the evening of 4 April. I arrived in Rawalpindi two days earlier. Our Press Counsellor O.P. Khanna drove me round the Central Gaol where Bhutto was housed. It is a fortress-like square structure situated between the airport and the President’s House once occupied by Bhutto. The place bristled with barbed wire, soldiers and armed police. It was cold enough, and the thought of an unshaven Zulfie squatting on the damp floor of a dark dingy cell awaiting the hangman sent a shiver down my spine. Hadn’t he said that when he died, the Himalayas would shed tears? And so it seemed. By the time we got to Islamabad (fifteen kilometres from Rawalpindi) a fine drizzle was coming down.
There were over a hundred foreign journalists and newsreel cameramen in the Holiday Inn. They were hunched over cups of black coffee like so many vultures on the parapet of some abattoir. The presiding genius was Mark Tully of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Where and how he picked up news of what Zulfie was doing in his cell, who saw him at what time and what they said to each other, remains a mystery. But the first thing everyone said after good morning or hello was, ‘Did you hear Mark Tully on the BBC?’ General Zia’s bureaucrats hated him, the staff of Holiday Inn loved him; we jour
nalists envied him.
I had nothing much to do. So Khanna and I went off to see Khak aur Khoon a much-lauded film on the Partition theme produced by a government agency. I was sorely disappointed at its crudely propagandist approach to the great tragedy. All the angels were on the side of the god-fearing Muslims; almost all the devils on the side of the Hindus and Sikhs. It exploited the stereotype notion of the cunning Hindu Bania with Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) sympathies paying the simple-minded Sikh to murder Muslims. I only saw half the film—but that was bad enough. I was told the second half was much worse. Apparently, our Embassy had lodged a protest against this wilful falsification of history and the harmful effects it would have on the minds of young Pakistanis. In an otherwise depressing atmosphere, this film made me even more depressed.
The evening in the house of the Lambahs, a young couple in the Indian Embassy, roused my spirits. There were lots of Pakistani journalists with their wives and girlfriends. Warm, friendly and a good-looking bunch they were too. The topic of conversation was restricted: one question and two answers. Will Zia hang Bhutto? Answers: Yes, he will. Or, no he won’t. Most agreed that General Zia need not have put himself in the predicament he found himself in: where there was neither room to move nor to stand—Na jai raftan, na pai mandan.
One Day Before the Hanging
The chill rain and wind blew all morning. In the afternoon I called on Abdul Hafeez Pirzada at Piracha House, once occupied by Nusrat and Benazir Bhutto. Their pictures were on the walls. Pirzada, who was a minister in Bhutto’s cabinet, was convinced that Bhutto would not be hanged. Mumtaz Bhutto, Zulfie’s cousin, came in looking dishevelled and out of sorts. He had waited half an hour in the rain at the gaol gates and had not been let in.
Shankar Bajpai, the Indian ambassador in Islamabad, returned from briefing Delhi on the situation in Pakistan. I recalled that a year ago he had told me that General Zia would hang Bhutto. He had not changed his opinion. It was heartening to discover that the diplomatic corps in Islamabad regarded Bajpai and his team the best informed on Pakistani affairs. When I told him about my conversation with Pirzada, he brushed it away with a wave of his hand and repeated, ‘They will hang him for sure; when I cannot tell . . .’ I tried to solicit the views of Lady Vicky Noon and Miandad Aurangzeb, Wali of Swat and his wife Begum Naseem, daughter of the late General Ayub Khan. Like seasoned diplomats they parried my questions.
4 April 1979
I rose at 5 a.m. The sky was an azure blue, the Marghala Hills looked washed and green. ‘What a beautiful morning!’ I said to myself, ‘Allah is in His Heaven and all is right with Pakistan.’ Was it? I heard the sputter of motorcycles. Fifty men in air force grey and white spats took their places in front of the hotel. They were followed by jeeps loaded with soldiers. The hotel was surrounded on all sides. I sent for coffee. I asked the waiter if he had any news. He said that he had heard that the gaol and the airport had been cordoned off at night and people were saying that the worst had happened. He added the words ‘Bahut ziatee hooee’ (too much) and ‘zulum hua’. Neither the English nor the Urdu papers mentioned anything on the subject. Had Zulfie been taken to Lahore for the final act? I rang up Bajpai. As usual he knew. He had heard over the Voice of America (it had beaten the BBC) that Bhutto had been executed at 2 a.m. in Rawalpindi. But he had no confirmation. I was chilled to the bone.
I went down to the dining-room to join the vultures’ club. It was true. Zulfie was dead. His body had been flown to be interred in the family graveyard in village Nau Dero near Larkana. By then a new story was in circulation viz., that the Chinese Air Force had come to plead with General Zia to let them take Zulfie away to be confined for life in China but the General had jumped the gun by hanging him. The men in uniform outside the hotel were to escort the Chinese back to the airport.
Khanna and I drove to Rawalpindi to see if anything was happening. All seemed normal—if you can describe streets bristling with the soldiers and policemen as normal. Most shops were open, people were going about their business. But there was an atmosphere of fear and sullen resentment: supplements of Jang announcing the execution were selling fast; people lowered their voices when they talked; not even hawkers cried out their wares. I saw four men being led away in handcuffs: they may have been thieves.
There was some action in the afternoon. As the prayers ended people formed a procession: burqa-clad women in front, the men behind them. They raised slogans: ‘Zia kutta! Hai! Hail’ and ‘Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, zindabad!’ Four policewomen who faced the women protesters were brushed aside. Policemen retreated before the marchers: Pakistani men have an exaggerated respect for the burqa-clad which they do not have for the unveiled. Tear gas bombs exploded, the marchers broke ranks and fled. Some men were apprehended (not Mumtaz Bhutto or Pirzada), offices of Jang were put to the flames. An American cameraman had his leg blown off. An army captain riding a motorcycle was knocked down and almost beaten to death by the mob. That was all.
My friend Rehman called me from Lahore. He said nothing had happened in the city. The BBC news reported otherwise. Suneet Aiyar called from Karachi and said nothing had happened in Karachi. The BBC report said otherwise.
My appointment with General Zia scheduled for that evening was cancelled. That was understandable. But the order that no journalists were to leave Islamabad to visit other cities was hard to accept. The pitch had been queered by Nawa-i-Waqt stating that the BBC and All India Radio were between them causing all the mischief in Pakistan.
The Day After
The next day at a luncheon given for me by the Pakistan Times there were over forty journalists present. It was strange that the same people who for months had talked of little besides what Zia would do to Bhutto now talked of the weather. My statement that Zia had committed a political blunder and Bhutto’s ghost would haunt Pakistan for many years to come, elicited no response whatsoever.
They did not stop me from leaving Islamabad. The Pak Airways plane was packed. I arrived in Karachi on Friday, 8 April. They expected demonstrations after jumma prayers. At my request our consul-general, Mani Shankar Aiyar and his Sikh wife Suneet drove me round the city. All shops were shut because Friday is a public holiday. But we passed many open spaces where boys were playing cricket or hockey. We passed the grand Memon Masjid and the huge single-domed air-conditioned mosque. The congregations had dispersed and everything was peaceful—as peaceful as the grave. I was told that Karachi had never been for Bhutto.
At Karachi I met Sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari, leader of the PDP in Baluchistan, Khuro who had once been chief minister of Sindh, and Pesh Imam, secretary-general of Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehrik-i-Istiqlal party. The fate of poor Zulfie did not exercise their minds very much. Mazari was concerned with the repression of the Baluchis by Bhutto. The Khuros (particularly their Cambridge-educated daughter Hamid) with how the Sindhis had suffered at the hands of the Urdu-speaking mulhajareen (refugee settlers) a body pejoratively described as tiligars (starlings—because they chitter so much) from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the arrogant, bullying Punjabis. Pesh Imam felt that the PPP had disintegrated, the people disenchanted with backward looking mullahs of the numerous jamats and the future beckoned the Tehrik. The few journalists I met in Karachi dismissed the Tehrik as of no consequence.
The breakdown of Pakistan’s political parties almost sounded feudal. The PDF, in power in Baluchistan, and the NWFP is dominated by baronial landlords, the jamats by the Muslim clergy and the Tehrik by men in the professions. The only doubtful factor is Bhutto’s PPP. Now that Zulfie has become a martyr, his widow Nusrat or daughter Benazir may emerge as leaders invoking the spirit of their dead man.
II
The curtain rose for the final act in the drama of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s life at 8.30 a.m. on 18 March 1978. The scene was the main courtroom of the high court of Lahore. It is a large hall divided into three by two sets of wooden railings. On the northern end sitting at a higher level were five judges in their wigs and black
gowns. Facing them in the main body of the hall were members of the High Court Bar including counsels for the prosecution and the defence likewise attired in black. Behind them separated by another railing were members of the public. And on the western wing, alongside the judges and the lawyers, stood the five accused with armed police escort behind them. Chief amongst them was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, impeccably dressed in a light Spring suit and sporting a tie.
No prior notice had been given of this day of judgement. The lawyers engaged in the case had been rung up by the registrar in the early hours and asked to be present in the main room. The accused were brought in from Kot Lakhpat gaol in the Black Maria under heavy escort. Word had however got round and the court room was packed.
All eyes were turned on acting chief justice, Mushtaq Hussain. He read a summary of the unanimous verdict of the five judges in the case of the murder of Nawab Mohammed Raza Kasuri on the night of 10–11 November 1974 at Lahore. All the accused had pleaded not guilty. Four had presented their defence. Only one, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had refused to take part in the proceedings.
Justice Mushtaq Hussain finished reading the findings of the panel of judges and proceeded to pass the sentence ‘to be hanged by the neck till you are dead’.
All eyes turned from the judges to the accused—mainly on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. He heard the sentence without flinching and simply turned his face away from the judges. He was lost in his own thoughts. ‘You could see that he was stunned’, said one of the lawyers, ‘but he showed no sign of fear or anger, it seemed as if he had not heard the judge. Or believed it was some kind of grim charade he was witnessing.’
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 18