DAWN:Cowasjee Corner-16 August, 1998
The myth makers-I
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
FIRSTLY, to deal with and discard the camp-followers, proclaimed champions of democracy of which they are totally ignorant. Their sole claim to fame is their assistance in the myth-making of their leaders. Once the myth is made, they help sustain it, shamelessly clinging like leeches, waiting for their daily bread, the rewarding crumbs, to fall. A dime a dozen, they are a despicable lot.
Last week was the week of Benazir Bhutto. Not only did our media make much of her, her doings and sayings (bad news is, after all, 'News'), the BBC had her on 'Hard Talk.' Of course, no one here, except perhaps the odd crumb collector, believed a word she said. She was as credible as was Imelda Marcos, as convincing as Emperor Bokassa.
One moment she announces she has no money to pay her lawyers to defend her, her Pipian advocates having moved on to greener pastures. She says she has no money to pay for her air tickets from Karachi to Lahore or Islamabad, and the next moment she flies off to Dubai, London and the US. She is adamant about her oodles of inherited wealth, her privileged rich background, her vast collection of expensive jewellery, her ability to buy whatever diamond necklaces her eyes may alight upon, the money abroad that allows her to purchase vast estates and properties. Her accounts in Pakistan are frozen, her accounts abroad are not. She laughs when she is accused of robbing this nation, aided by her husband and family; she is outraged by the suggestion that she has been a party to the destruction of her own country.
The dynasty (if that is what it be) to which she is heiress was started by grandfather zamindar Shahnawaz Bhutto, the lesser landowning member of the Bhutto clan. A clever, affable, well-mannered, well turned-out man, he got along well with the ruling raj. Each liked and used the other. From his Larkana base, he involved himself in local Sindh politics and worked his way outward and up. He was rewarded. Wadera Bhutto was promoted to Khan Bahadur Bhutto and later was knighted and became Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto.
Along the way, he fell in love with Lakhi Bai, a young woman, whom he took as his second wife. She converted to Islam and took the name of Khurshid Begum. They were a devoted couple, parents of two daughters and an only son, Zulfikar Ali, who would rise even farther and higher than his father, and then suddenly drop.
In 1937, Shahnawaz lost the elections to the provincial legislative assembly through want of support from officialdom and his own family. He found the defeat humiliating and asked the government to find him a job somewhere out of Sindh, preferably in Bombay as a member of the Public Services Commission. The then Governor of Sindh, Sir Lancelot Graham, forwarded his request to Lord Brabourne, Governor of Bombay, who found it embarrassing but could find no way to refuse it. Brabourne felt that as a former minister of the governor's council, Shahnawaz's request was "utter lunacy" as once accepting the position he could never return to politics. It would be the end of his career. "I agree with you entirely'" he wrote to Graham, "when you say that if you sent him, he will look a coward .... if I were he, I would most certainly not ask to be sent."
Shahnawaz joined the PSC, abandoning politics for ever, and lived for many years in Bombay. In 1945 the British moved him to Junagadh as Naib Diwan to assist the Diwan, his fellow Sindhi and civil servant from Shikarpur, Khan Bahadur Abdul Kadir Mahommad Hussain CIE. On May 9, 1947, Abdul Kadir, having taken ill, the Nawab was pleased "...to appoint Sir Shahnawaz CIE, OBE to act temporarily as Diwan and Vice-President of my Council on his personal pay and existing terms." On August 10, 1947, "at the present critical juncture," the Nawab appointed the acting Diwan as permanent Diwan. Soon thereafter he lost his state, and both Nawab and Diwan came and settled in Karachi.
Shahnawaz was a good man, and a likable man. Unlike his famous son and his sons, he died peacefully in his bed.
Good old Dingomal Narayansigh Ramchandani, his lawyer and ours, privy to his affairs, knew that he had willed that Khurshid Begum be well provided for and that his property was to be equitably divided between the three sons and four daughters from his first wife, and the two daughters and son Zulfikar born of Khurshid Begum. The three elder brothers, suffering from chronic liver problems, it was left to Zulfikar to manage the inheritance. The usual family squabbles over money followed.
AS a contemporary of Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ayub Khuhro, who like the proud King Faisal, wore a perpetual sneer, Shahnawaz's life and times are well recorded by historian Hamida Khuhro in her recently published biography of her father. The myth began with Sir Shahnawaz, transformed by his heirs and their supporters into what he was not.
One of the great grumbles of Nawab Mahabatkhan of Junagadh was that whereas his Diwans had enriched themselves at his state's expense, he found himself impoverished in exile. In those far-off days shame existed. If moolah was to slide, it slid discreetly; it was not trumpeted to the world at large.
Whilst Shahnawaz was living in Bombay, his son Zulfikar (the next Bhutto to enter politics) was sent to the famous Cathedral High School on Outram Road. His contemporaries were fellow columnist Omar Kureishi, my late wife, Nancy Dinshaw (as she then was), and Karan Singh, the heir apparent to Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir. Omar has promised to write on those happy days.
Zulfikar, like his father, later in life contracted a second marriage, a love marriage, with Nusrat Sabunchi, an Iranian. The man who arranged the clandestine wedding ceremony, maulvi and all, was our mutual friend Ilahi Bakhsh Soomro, who was later jailed, as was I, by friend Zulfikar for no good reason. Ilahi Bakhsh had a much longer and harder time in his roofles cell in Sukkur jail. I was relatively comfortable in the barrack occupied by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 46 years before me.
Zulfikar's great boast to his friends was that since the day he entered politics, in the days of Iskander Mirza, he had never even paid for a pair of socks with his own money. He claimed that his skill, harnessed in the service of the people, warranted all the money he could rob and then spend, and at the end of the day he would still be owed a balance. His entry into politics and his doings will have to be covered another day.
He left a lot of money to his wife and progeny. Benazir Bhutto inherited more than enough and she and her husband have made much, much more than enough for them to be truly labelled 'filthy rich,' senior members of the Big Rotten League. This time round, Nawaz Sharif has organized an Ehtesab bureau to deal principally with bringing Benazir Bhutto and Co to book, with the hope that it will be able to retrieve and bring back into the country some of the wealth allegedly stolen.
Pending Ehtesab cases in the Sindh High Court against her, her government and cohorts number nineteen. Easily recognized and named amongst the accused are Abdullah Shah, Usman Faruqui Munawar Ali Talpur, Jam Mashooq Ali, Admiral Akbar H. Khan, Ahmad Sadiq, Pir Mazharul Haq, Nisar Khuhro.
In the Lahore High Court are some thirty Ehtesab cases. The easily recognizable accused, apart from Benazir Bhutto, include Asif Ali Zardari, Hakim Ali Zardari, Nusrat Bhutto, Jens Schlegelmilch, Mohammad Zaheer, Mian Manzoor Ahmad Wattoo, Yusuf Talpur, Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar, Khalid Ahmad Kharal, Anwar Saifullah, Haji Mohammad Nawaz Khokar, Arif Nakai, Ahmad Sadiq, Badruddin Zahedi.
Rather than chasing the major cases and individuals where there is incontrovertible evidence, the Bureau has taken on too many issues. This is rather like the 1990 to 1993 scenario when Ghulam Ishaq filed all his references against the Bhutto-Zardaris none of which were brought to their finality. However, whatever accusations (often false) may be levelled against Saifur Rahman, the fact remains that with inadequate help he has managed to get the Swiss and the British to move. No mean achievement. He needs better and more help.
Nawaz Sharif should be ashamed of himself that he has so far been unable to get Benazir Bhutto and family off our backs. He cannot be forgiven for this. To those who say that the Ehtesab process is one-sided, the answer is, let it be so. Nawaz Sharif and his lot can be caught by their successors.