By standards of books that are currently being written and published on contemporary affairs, Mr. Piloo Mody has not done a bad job of the biography of his friend, Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. But in fairness both to himself and the subject, he should have resisted the temptation to produce a quickie and an apologia for Mr. Bhutto. By surrendering to it, probably out of loyalty to an old friend, he has thrown away a splendid opportunity.
Since Mr. Mody is not and cannot claim to be a serious student of either Pakistan or of Indo-Pakistani relations, he should have contented himself with a study of Mr. Bhutto the man. A work of that nature could have been highly useful if Mr Mody had recognised that childhood friendship cannot be the basis of understanding so complex a character as Mr. Bhutto and delved into his family background and other relevant material.
This is not to suggest that Mr. Mody does not provide us some useful information about Mr. Bhutto as a child and as an adolescent. He obviously does. For instance, he tells us that even as a child Mr. Bhutto was very smart, spoke good English, was very fond of cricket, clothes and good food, had a perceptive mind and a phenomenal memory and did not permit occasional disputes to cloud personal friendships. He trailed behind his classmates because he was sent to school when he was already nine and failed in the senior Cambridge examination at the first attempt. But subsequently he more than made up through hard work. He was converted to Mr. Jinnah’s two- nation theory before he left Bombay for the United States for further studies and has since followed his political style with considerable skill.
But Mr. Mody would himself admit that his statements cannot by themselves help students of Pakistan answer the truly important questions about Mr. Bhutto. What makes him tick? Why is he so ambitious, ruthless and authoritarian? What is there in his background which enables him to blow hot and cold in the same breath and say one thing one day and quite the contrary the next day? Above all, how is he likely to react in a crisis if he happens to head the government of his country?
Students of Pakistan would have been in a slightly better position to attempt answers to these questions if Mr. Mody had given some information regarding Mr. Bhutto’s father, mother and other members of the family and his relations with them. But as he himself admits he did not know Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto and his household.
Mr. Mody tells us again and again that Mr. Bhutto is a pragmatist. Indeed, according to the author, he regarded discretion as the better part of valour even as a child. But facts, which Mr. Mody has conveniently slurred over, do not justify his rather simplistic assessment.
It is, for instance, a commonplace that following its military debacle in NEFA in 1962, India, under pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom, made an extremely generous offer to Pakistan regarding territorial adjustments in Jammu and Kashmir and that Mr. Bhutto rejected it because he failed to realise that his country could never again hope to get such a favourable settlement. This is not a very convincing demonstration of either his foresight or pragmatism.
It is, of course, possible that Mr. Bhutto privately advised President Ayub Khan to accept India’s offer which would have given it control over a substantial part of the coveted Kashmir Valley and that the latter turned down the advice. But Mr. Bhutto has not made any claim to that effect, nor has Mr. Mody done so on his behalf.
Similarly, if Mr. Bhutto is in fact the realist Mr. Mody makes him out to be, it would be difficult to explain his opposition either to the cease-fire in September, 1965, when he would have known that the Pakistan Army was running short of ammunition and that the Chinese would not intervene directly by creating a major diversion for India, or to the Tashkent accord which did not in any way hurt his country’s interests.
Mr. Bhutto’s behaviour in 1965-66 can be explained in two ways. First, as the architect of the policy of confrontations with India, Mr. Bhutto might have felt that the cease-fire and the Tashkent agreement involved a loss of face for him. Secondly, the romantic element in his character is so strong that he did not mind risking a disastrous defeat and a prolonged military confrontation with India. Mr. Mody does not discuss these aspects of his character at all. He doubtless tells us that Mr. Bhutto can be very touchy. But that is a very different proposition.
Mr. Mody inevitably devotes considerable time and space to the crisis beginning with the agitation against the Ayub regime and culminating in the break-up of Pakistan in December, 1971, to exonerate Mr. Bhutto of all responsibility for it. But he does not cite any independent evidence at all to support his sweeping assertion that the Field Marshal at one point sought to build up Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, that Mr. Bhutto offered to campaign against the six-point programme in East Bengal and that he could have won over the people there if only the government of the day had not obstructed him in the pursuit of his great mission to preserve the country’s unity. What is worse, he blandly suggests that the Sheikh had become pro-Ayub and does not even mention the fact that he refused to compromise over his six-point programme at the round-table conference that the Pakistani President had convened in early 1969.
Similarly, the author does not at all refer to the fact that Mr. Bhutto openly held out the threat that such West Pakistani members of the Constituent Assembly as dared to go to Dacca to attend its proposed session in defiance of the Pakistan People’s Party’s decision to boycott it would not be allowed to return or that he was thoroughly opposed – whether rightly or wrongly is a different matter – to the agreement that had more or less been reached between President Yahya Khan and the Sheikh or that he was primarily responsible for the destruction of the hijacked Indian plane at Lahore airport and thereby exacerbating relations with New Delhi at an extremely dangerous moment in his own country’s brief history or that when General Yahya Khan finally unleashed a reign of terror which he had an opportunity to witness on the fateful night of March 25, 1970, he returned to West Pakistan to proclaim “Thank God, Pakistan has been saved.”
And even Mr. Mody would be hard put to reconcile his twin statements that Mr. Bhutto’s opposition to the six- point programme was fundamental and that, given sufficient time by the Sheikh, he would have persuaded the people of West Pakistan to accept it. There would be a similar difficulty about supporting Mr. Bhutto’s claim that the generals in power did not expect his party to win more than 12 seats with the insinuation that Yahya Khan had offered the prime ministership to the Sheikh even before the elections provided he could “find some way of controlling Bhutto.”
It is self-evident that Mr. Bhutto could not have been primarily responsible for the tragedy that overwhelmed Pakistan in 1971 for the simple reason that he was not in command of the military-bureaucratic-industrial complex that has ruled Pakistan all these years. But no amount of special pleading on his behalf can help him evade his share of the blame. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the awesome feeling that despite all his brilliance and tactical skill, Mr. Bhutto is often not able to grasp the central fact of a situation and shape his policies accordingly.
Mr. Bhutto has undoubtedly matured considerably in the last one year or so. This augurs well for peace in the sub-continent. But notwithstanding the realism he displayed last summer in coming to Simla and agreeing to the realignment of the old cease-fire with the new line of control in Jammu and Kashmir, it is not easy for serious-minded Indians to dismiss altogether the possibility that the romantic and escapist streak in his character might again cloud his judgment.
Mr. Mody neither entertains any such misgivings nor is he able to dismiss them for a variety of reasons. Mr Bhutto is his friend and he has little feeling for the forces at work in the sub-continent. But others cannot easily follow him in this or other matters.
- ZULFI MY FRIEND, By Piloo Mody (Thomson Press, Rs. 24)
The Times of India, Sunday Magazine, 18 February 1973