In Conversation with Fatima Bhutto

A brief chat with Fatima Bhutto on her new book Songs of Blood and Sword.

It’s coincidental that we meet on a day which also happens to be your grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 31^st death anniversary. How has Pakistani politics evolved over the last three decades?

Well I wasn’t alive for all those 31 years but with his death – his murder actually – a very dangerous precedent was set. The first democratically elected leader of the country, who was truly committed to socialist principles put to death which sends the message that when we disagree with our political leaders, we don’t entrust the people to vote them out.

Any country, over a 31 year period, goes through tremendous shifts and changes but in Pakistan what we see is that problems like corruption are allowed to continue; the people are not given an agency that they deserve in a participatory system

In the book you write very glowingly of your grandfather but a lot of people in India and elsewhere would like to believe that he was more dictatorial than his predecessors. How would you react to that?

First of all, I didn’t write glowingly about him. I wrote very critically of Balochistan and of the powers he increased for himself towards the end. But I think the assumption that he was more dictatorial than his predecessors was totally unfounded because his predecessors did not come into power on a one-man-one-vote ballot. They didn’t even abide by the Constitution let alone pen a Constitution. His predecessors followed the dictates of America and the Soviet Union rather than engage in foreign relations with Asian and African countries. Certainly, he made mistakes like we saw Mujib in Bangladesh and Indira Gandhi did.

Also, if one looks at Pakistani history, certainly there hasn’t been that sort of freedom in terms of the right to vote, right to a constitution etc. All these things are now identified with the repression in Pakistan like the Hudood laws, the blasphemy laws etc which came after Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

In recent interviews you’ve been called ‘the other Bhutto’, ‘the lonely Bhutto and ‘Benazir’s niece’. Have you ever felt that your individual identity as a writer has been overshadowed by your surname?

No. It’s a very South Asian thing to bio-data everybody; even on the book cover you see it written. And I have to say, this phrase ‘the other Bhutto’, I’ve only heard it in India. This book, obviously, is a very big book and a book on an important family..

But even when your previous book, 8.50 a.m. 8 October 2005, came out you were referred to as Benazir Bhutto’s niece…

And it’s very strange; it’s way for people to connect something which I completely understand. In countries like ours, which are so dominated by life figures, it’s easier for people to say ‘oh this person comes from so and so family’ when in fact, neither my family nor I had anything to do with the earthquake relief work. It is a very strange thing because for two years I wrote very critically of the Musharraf regime; at that point it wasn’t Benazir Bhutto’s niece. It was only when my aunt returned to Pakistan and I spoke about her it became ‘oh look, the criticism is coming from inside’. I was in Hong Kong for a literary festival and I remember being introduced as being the granddaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, niece of Benazir Bhutto etc… And I said, you know these things have their place but when it is referred to as a profession, then we’re losing sight of things slightly because as South Asians we do have multiple identities. Yes, I am all of these things but it feels very restrictive to be told ‘you are only this’. I for a woman in a South Asian country, you are always someone’s something. It takes a while to break out on your own. But I’m not worried about it; it (being labelled as Benazir’s niece etc.) doesn’t affect me.

You spoke about South Asian countries, which have a long history with dynasties. Is there a problem with our political systems that we throw up dynasties? Do you think these systems need to be re-examined?

Well I think if we look at this region, we also have to remember that for hundreds of years we ruled by foreign powers and when they left, they didn’t do so willingly; they left begrudgingly and left incredible cleavages in our country. I don’t think there’s any mistake that in all the countries the British left – Greece and Turkey, Palestine, the Irish – they left us with really fractured senses of self. And not just that but the way they ruled when they were here was really vile; by pitting people against each other, by strengthening education systems in one part and neglecting the other. For me, the main issue with dynasty is that it negates participation. And the British, if nothing else, were famous for not encouraging participation.

I think it’s one of the tremors they left us with. I think it was their refusal to deal with the country as a whole; it was their tendency to create factions that leaves not only Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, but Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma and Bhutan all with these ridiculous dynastic systems that otherwise we wouldn’t have had. I think, unfortunately – and this is probably an unpleasant thing to say – we still have this complex when it comes to Britain and America and our countries. We still have these ridiculous sort of histories told through foreigners’ eyes. The best sort of writing on Pakistan is by Tariq Ali and on India by Khushwant Singh. It’s not people who parachute themselves and explain our countries to us. Certainly, we don’t go to England and write their histories for them; I think colonialism has a lot to answer for and dynasty is one of them

Most reviews in the Indian press say that your book is a partisan account. In fact, one reviewer went to the extent of saying that you’re being ‘vengeful’. How do you react to such statements?

There’s not a drop of vengeance; this is a search for justice. There is no calling for violence; there is no calling for revenge. My father’s murder is reconstructed through the eyes of survivors, witnesses, police officers and judges. So anybody with the faculties to read can open up the footnote section and see it. And I would ask those critics what is vengeful? And I would ask them to find me a part that is vengeful. I don’t believe in vengeance as a human being. And in terms of partisan, I am a Bhutto and I’m writing about the Bhuttos so I will be partisan.  What does objective mean? There is no such thing as objective history because we are writing about countries we know, we live in, we’ve experienced. So the idea that it is partisan is not pretended – it is very clear here on the cover. There are the people who killed and I’m writing about them, I love them. As objective as I can be, I am. In fact, the opposite is said of me in Pakistan; ‘you’re too critical of your family, why are you being disloyal’. So I hope that at the end of the day, critics who read the book, read it and see that there are sources and they can double check. This is ultimately a labour of love and there is no call for blood in this book.

After the death of your grandfather, your father, Mir Murtaza Bhutto moved to Kabul and travelled frequently to Damascus and Libya. Do you think that if he remained in Pakistan, he could’ve been the political heir to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto rather than Benazir?

I don’t think it was possible because the two sons (Mir and Shahnawaz Bhutto) were sent out because Zulfikar believed there was a threat against them and he turned out to be correct; Shahnawaz was killed six years later. But I think my father was on a quest for justice, not for power. So before Afghanistan, Libya and Damascus, he spent two years travelling the globe meeting human rights activists, presidents, publishing newspapers, books and organising law conferences. So his quest was really very different from Benazir’s; his quest was to get justice in the murder of his father, to get clemency in the case of his father. Not to sort of take hostage a political legacy. So had he stayed, his quest would’ve been different from his sister’s.

But don’t you think that had he stayed in Pakistan, his task would’ve been made easier?

Not under Zia because, as you know, the patriarchal societies that we live in, the son would’ve been assumed to be the political heir of his father. So would Shahnawaz have lived had he stayed back in Pakistan? I don’t know because this was an environment where you had journalists flogged in public. And not only that, the family of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto never saw his dead body. The Army claims that he was hanged but there is no proof of that. So I think that Murtaza and Shahnawaz’s fate wouldn’t have been very different from their father’s.

You call this book a search for justice; what is the next step in this search? How do you see this search going forward?

This is not the first attempt; we’ve been fighting for justice for 14 years and it has consistently been denied to us in the courts. Of course, we understand the courts in Pakistan are not always free especially in these last few years. They’ve been heavily influenced and heavily hijacked. For me, justice is not revenge because that means violence and that I’m not interested in. Justice is about memory. To be here and talking to you, it took 14 years to reach this point. For me, justice means that there is a remembering of these men who were killed and not just in my family, but the 3000 people who were killed. That this never happens again; that we are never faced with a government that kills 3000 people in a period of one year. So it’s a long road ahead.

Is there any hope for justice?

There is always hope for justice

Even with President Zardari at the helm of affairs?

President Zardari will come and go but the truth and justice are much stronger than his corruption of his government, of any government. If people say that they believe in truth and justice, then there is no force stronger than this belief.

Fatima Bhutto image courtesy: The Daily Beast

Songs of Blood and Sword image courtesy: Amazon