Songs of Blood and Sword

Title: Songs of Blood and Sword – A Daughter’s Memoir

Author: Fatima Bhutto

Publisher: Penguin/Viking, 2010 (First)

ISBN: 978-0-670-08280-3

Pages: 438

The author, Fatima Bhutto is the daughter of Murtaza Bhutto, the son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was the prime minister of Pakistan during 1970s. The book covers a daughter’s fond memories of her father who rebelled against a military junta who killed her grand father and had to go in exile to escape punishment. Murtaza fought elections while still in exile and won but was killed in a police encounter purportedly orchestrated by his brother-in-law, Asif Ali Zardari, the current President of the strife-ravaged country. Fatima witnessed the growth of her father in the political arena and had the misfortune to be an eyewitness to his untimely death.

The Bhutto family is one of Asia’s most prominent political dynasties in terms of the power they wielded over the lives of millions of fellow country men. They were feudal landholders with ancestry traceable back to Rajput warriors who emigrated from Rajastan. As is the wont of feudal lords everywhere, they maintained their domain on the good books of powers that be. Shahnawaz Bhutto was knighted by the British, while his son, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto first appeared on the national scene with a birth in the military dictator Ayub Khan’s cabinet. With power comes risk and many Bhuttos died a violent death. Zulfikar was hanged by opponents in 1979, Benazir assassinated in 2007, Murtaza killed in 1996 and the author’s uncle, Shahnawaz was found dead in mysterious circumstances in 1985. Tallying the family’s political gains against their emotional and financial losses through Zulfikar’s land reforms which made them lose property and murders which eliminated family members, we doubt whether the risk was worth the reputation power brought with it.

Zulfikar was the most pragmatic and the first well-educated member of the family. Though the author paints her grand father’s democratic ideals in glowing terms, his joining General Ayub’s cabinet belies the argument. When Bhutto became foreign minister, he paved the way for Pakistan to become bosom friends with China, cashing in on China’s ill will with India in the aftermath of its war in 1962. He was indirectly responsible for Pakistan’s wars with India. When Mujib-ur Rahman’s Awami League won the elections in 1970, Zulfikar refused to share power with him and Mujib was thrown into prison by General Yahya Khan who was the President. A civil war erupted between East and West Pakistan in which the Pak Army unleashed most heinous forms of terror against its own fellow citizens in the East of the country. Rape was institutionalized as a tactical weapon to stigmatize the Bengalis. As the author remarks, Bangladeshi women were taken as sex slaves by Pak Army regiments. When the refugee influx grew to become a serious concern, India intervened militarily and defeated the Pak troops stationed in present-day Bangladesh. Pakistan was split into two and this was a sleight Zulfikar could never forget, who vowed to fight ‘a hundred years with India’.

When he became the prime minister, Zulfikar alienated people close to him with high-handed measures. He was deposed in 1977 by Gen. Zia ul Haq, whom he had elevated to the top army post overlooking the seniority of five officers. Zia plotted against him, incarcerated him and finally hanged him in 1979 after a hastily conducted mockery of a trial. Murtaza, who was studying in London pledged armed struggle against the regime and chose Kabul in neighbouring Afghanistan as his base, where the author was born. Afghanistan’s occupation by the Soviets complicated matters. Murtaza and his associates found restrictions on their freedom for maneuvering. They were alleged to be involved in terrorist activities including the hijacking of a civilian airliner. He and his brother relocated to Damascus who was soon found dead in mysterious circumstances while on vacation in the south of France.

Meanwhile, things were changing in Pakistan. Gen. Zia was bent on converting the largely secular state into a fiercely guarded theocracy. Clerics were given undue power with authority to overturn the decisions of constitutional bodies. Sharia law was imposed and freedom of women severely curtailed. A set of archaic rules were enacted as Hudood ordinance which even prescribed punishment to rape victims too on the grounds that they had participated in a forbidden sexual act. Zia assisted the hardcore Islamic militia under Taliban to fight against Russian occupation. Harsh censoring was imposed on the press and rebels were summarily imprisoned to serve long terms. All political activity in Pakistan ground to a halt until Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988. Democracy made a hesitant comeback and Benazir was elected prime minister – a term which lasted hardly two years before being dismissed on the allegations of widespread corruption. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, had earned the nickname of Mr. Ten Per cent, an allusion to his rate of commission in government contracts.

When elections were declared in 1993, Murtaza contested to Sindh provincial assembly and won from exile. He returned to Pakistan in 1994 on a wave of jubilation, but was summarily packed off to jail from the airport itself on account of terrorism charges levelled against him during Zia’s regime. He was soon granted bail and formed his own party, the Pakistan People’s Party (Shahid Bhutto) as a pawn against his sister’s PPP. Murtaza riled against Benazir, who was the prime minister when Karachi was embroiled in a bloody ethnic strife between the native Sindhis and Muhajirs, who had immigrated from India during partition. Corruption, which skyrocketed and became a national issue was also a point of contention between the siblings. Two years later, he was killed in an alleged fake police encounter orchestrated by Asif Zardari, his brother-in-law. Though the family proceeded legally against him, their argument was thrown out by the courts later.

Even though the book cannot be credited with any extraordinary level of brilliance, we see in it the very high level of emotional bonding between a daughter and her father. Born and living in exile, young Bhutto adored her parents who were soon to be separated, casting her into the custody of her father. She was lucky to have a sympathetic and loving stepmother, but it is only natural that she had an inseparable affinity to her father. The hardships she had had to face while still quite young might appear to be devastating to any lesser mortals, but coming from a high profile family which controlled the stakes in national politics, Fatima Bhutto is well poised to take all miseries in her stride and continue her journey with grace. The book provides a good picture of Pakistani society from 1975 onwards when the country slowly began the slide downhill to the chasm of religious rule.

On the downside, it must be remarked that the author has pursued her preordained agenda irrespective of inputs from her interviewees. Many times, we get the impression that her subjects echo what she herself wanted to say. Through a psychological process, Fatima appears to put words in her subjects’ mouths, or less charitably, it might be a case of outright falsification of facts. The book is also riddled with sharp and irrational criticism against her aunt, Benazir. Even cases of childhood ruckus are projected out of all proportion so as to look like a grave injustice has been done. Selective reading from Benazir’s diaries make her emerge as a mentally unbalanced person. The author’s indirect accusation that she was behind Murtaza’s brother’s death, which was pronounced to be a suicide, also doesn’t look credible. The most severe shortcoming of the book may be argued to be her supporting the terrorist elements – in an indirect way – holed up in the country’s lawless North-Western province. She criticizes the national government and the U.S., which regularly conduct unmanned drone attacks against suspected militant hideouts. Though the attacks are performed inside Pakistani territory without the knowledge of its government, there is no denying that elimination of hardline elements is beneficial to Pakistan as a whole.

The book contains a lot of typographical errors, unexpected from a Penguin-group publication. Historical inaccuracies may also be traced, as in a suggestion that Khilafat movement took place around the second World War (p.187). Fatima’s sense of proportion is again called into question by a grossly overemphasizing adjective she uses for a crowd which assembled to hear her father speak. She says, “a huge crowd of about 2000 people had gathered for the Surjani town meeting” (p.29) – remember, this is in the suburbs of a city of 18 million people!

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star