Dogra - Where borders bleed : an insiders account of INDO-PAK relations

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Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2015
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Copyright Rajiv Dogra 2015

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author's own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

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First impression 2015

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To my daughter Radhika, who gave me the idea for this book, and who persisted for five long years until I agreed to write it

Contents

The root of all complexities is loneliness and that solitude feeds the imagination. It makes the mind wander and think the unthinkable. Would the following have been written in normal circumstances, amid the biases and passions of a work day?

By the time I was twenty-three, I had read Glimpses of World History four times. Nehru was one of the most polished writers of English prose of our times. There was inspiration and music in his words.

From Jakarta, I warned you in that letter written fourteen years ago, that I was not emulating him He was a freedom fighter, the great leader of Indian masses, the Cambridge-educated aristocrat with a trail of glory. He was not a petty murderer, an embezzler of the state, a nobody from a village of Larkana languishing in a death cell

Nehru was kept in jail by our alien rulers in some place with honour and respect His daughter was a thirteen year old little girl who had made her contribution to the politics of that time by organising what she called monkey brigades

But you are caught in the middle of a fire and it is the fire of a ruthless junta There is therefore a world of difference The similarity, if any, lies in the fact that you, like Indira Gandhi, are making history. I can claim to know Indira Gandhi quite well I respect her qualities very much but I have not been one of her greatest admirers True, she became the Prime Minister of India and remained in that high office for eleven years She was called a goddess when she seized East Pakistan.

Knowing all these things, I have no hesitation in saying that my daughter is more than a match for the daughter of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the goddess of India

One thing you have in common; both of you are equally brave. Both of you are made of pure damescene steel

Interesting, isnt it? These are the opening paragraphs of a long letter dated 21 June 1978 by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to his daughter Benazir. He wrote it in District Jail, Rawalpindi. The surprise, however, is not in guessing the identity of the writer, but the fact that he should have written in admiration of Nehru and his daughter.

Bhutto, after all, was a virulent India baiter for most of his active political life. When he was in power, he had talked of waging a thousand-year war against India. It was he who said that Pakistanis would eat grass if that was the sacrifice needed to make a nuclear bomb. Had he got one, while he was the prime minister, the history of the subcontinent may have been different. With his whimsical turns and Machiavellian love for intrigue, anything was possible.

Bhutto was impetuous and unpredictable. He pushed two military dictators into wars with IndiaAyub Khan in 1965 and Yahya Khan in 1971. Then, in defeat, he spared no effort in running them down to his political advantage. All along, he excelled in badmouthing India internationally and in clawing back diplomatically some of what had been lost on the battlefield.

After a lifetime of tricking and trapping India, why did he change track at the fag end of his life? What was it that brought about this softening in Bhutto? Or was it just a temporary phase, a momentary rush of blood, because later in this long letter to Benazir he resumes his strident rhetoric. Still, this temporary and rare departure from the usual is worth noting.

Was it motivated by a desire to be objective while writing to an impressionable young girl? Or, as he claims further on in this letter, was it on account of the fact that, With the exception of your father, the Qaid-e-Azam and perhaps Suhrawardy, either charlatans or captains have run this country. With such a paucity of local heroes, he may have wanted his daughter to follow those from the other side (India) as her inspirational figures.

Once again, and even here, his ego prevailed. In Bhuttos universe how could anyone else be better than his daughter? It wasnt, therefore, a flippant flourish of his pen that led him to write, Knowing all these things, I have no hesitation in saying that my daughter is more than a match for the daughter of Jawahar Lal Nehru, the goddess of India.

Still, lets give him the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that in prison Bhutto had undergone a change of heart. If instead of being hanged to death by General Zia ul-Haq, he had somehow survived and become the prime minister of Pakistan again, would he have changed that admiration for Indian leaders into something more substantial? Would he have toned down the confrontational posture against India? It is difficult to predict what a hugely ambitious man like Bhutto may have doneand he was both mercurial and imperious.

An impetuous man is capable of taking bizarre turns. Bhutto was such a man; he could change the course of his nations history to suit his whim. Therefore, it is quite possible that Bhutto, who was largely responsible for the bitterness that led to the creation of Bangladesh, could also achieve quite the opposite result if fancy struck him and his instincts told him that he could profit politically from a particular move.

It is often said that the partition of India may not have taken place had Muhammad Ali Jinnah been offered the prime ministership of undivided India. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that Bhutto, too, may have been tempted by such a prospect? If he is faulted for the intrigues that directly or indirectly led to the break-up of a nation, wasnt he capable of reverse engineering too? If there was one leader who could sway Pakistani people to his logic, perverse or otherwise, it was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

A hugely ambitious leader like Bhutto would have relished the prospect of ruling 1.5 billion people. As prime minister of a united India he would have been the master of the biggest nation in the world; a state larger in population than China, the country that he adored and cultivated.

Let us for a moment consider it done, with or without Bhutto. Let us also assume that at a not too distant date in the future, India and Pakistan (Bangladesh as well) somehow succeed in forgetting the bickering of their past and decide that the time has come to start a new chapter, that like united Germany they, too, should give union a chance. Such a thought, dear reader, isnt unique to you and me. Others in the past have considered it too.