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She continues to inspire, enthuse and motivate women and the marginalised — both in Pakistan and abroad. For many, she is a symbol of hope, the poster person of dreamers and doers alike.
Having grown up in the shadow of her charismatic father, Benazir came into her own when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged in His death fueled her. His mission became hers and she carried on the fight for democracy in self-exile. She was a brilliant student and excelled in oratory at Harvard and Oxford, inspiring not just minds but also connecting hearts — it was she who introduced the incumbent British Prime Minister Theresa May to Philip May who would become her husband.
A shrewd politician and a committed family woman, Benazir has a legacy that refused to die down with her. She had two brief stints in office and during which she was busier firefighting the conspiracies and allegations against her than actually accomplishing anything. She wanted better ties with India, her meetings with Rajiv Gandhi are well remembered as a means to carve a new roadmap to peace. But this, of course, did not go down well with the military establishment.
She had an ambitious economic agenda but she was not able to realise much of it, partly because of the friction with the army, partly because of opposition from political players such as the Muttahida Qaumi Movement MQM and Nawaz Sharif, and partly because of the incompetence and corruption of her own party.
Most of her time in power was spent battling for survival against the machinations of those opposed to her, including the then presidents of the country, who were constantly trying to bring down her governments. Benazir faced constant character assassination, perpetual resistance from the mullahs who would try to stir up the public by proclaiming that a government headed by a woman was un-Islamic and persistent refusal by army generals to salute a female prime minister.
Yet she managed to leave behind a legacy of commitment to democracy, economic empowerment of the downtrodden and social equality that is rivalled by only the one left by her father. In spite of the bureaucratic machinery that hindered many of her ideas, she left in her wake the Benazir Income Support Programme that has proved a welfare lifeline for those on the edges of society. Though not established directly by her, it was a result of the ideas she had initiated and was thus named after her.
Pervez Musharraf has been living in a self-imposed exile since last year in connection with multiple charges. Her mother was nearly hysterical with fear that she would be killed. Thatcher, she often resorts to the use of royal we, though whether she is referring to herself, her party or the people of Pakistan is not always clear. The size, scope, and even location of the program is still being worked out, but the hope is to shape current-day policymakers from Muslim countries in the progressive mold of Bhutto, who was assassinated in while campaigning for a third term as prime minister. Left unsettled by the British was the question of which nation got the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
She set up the Lady Health Worker Programme that has become the backbone of the family healthcare system across Pakistan. She also promoted the idea of higher education and — though not in her term in power — many years later it germinated into the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology SZABIST that now has multiple campuses across Sindh and has expanded into the teaching of law, liberal arts and humanities as well.
Then there are hospitals, schools, roads and many other development initiatives that go unnoticed in the larger political events. The Indian-held part of the region in the south and east has most of the fertile land and most of the population, which numbers some 10 million people.
He traveled the country and delivered political speeches.
This was his message: Islam is our faith, democracy is our policy, socialism is our economy. All power to the people. Tension between her father and supporters of Ayub Khan grew thicker. Threats and charges of corruption against the government grew louder. Demonstrations and riots broke out across the country.
Finally, in , Khan arrested Bhutto and threw him in jail. Benazir received a letter from him late in the year. These exams were critical for her possible entrance into Radcliffe College at Harvard University in the United States. While her father was in prison and the rest of the family was in Lahore, Benazir remained at their home in Karachi and studied. The exams were given once a year in December. As the riots continued, there were calls for Ayub Khan to resign and to release the political prisoners.
About three months after his arrest, Bhutto was set free. He was sent by train to Larkana, where Benazir and her family met him. She said later that she never forgot his arrival because a Khan supporter tried to shoot him as he stepped off the train. Her father warned her not to look. With the country seemingly about to descend into total chaos, Ayub Khan resigned in March According to the constitution, the next in line was speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan.
It said she had been accepted to enter Radcliffe College in the fall. At the age of sixteen, she would be among the youngest of its students. For all her impressive schoolwork and life of relative luxury, Benazir was a shy young woman who knew little about the world. But he felt she would do well. In fact, many of the young women of Radcliffe at the time were unaware that there was such a nation as Pakistan. Gradually, Benazir made friends, and her shyness subsided.
There was so much going on, such as nationwide protests against the war in Vietnam. Benazir joined thousands of American college students who marched on Boston Common and in Washington, D. Galbraith was an economics professor at Harvard and had been ambassador to India. At late-night meetings, young women gathered and talked about what they would do with their lives now that the future seemed endless.
As Benazir felt more at home expressing her views, she became more relaxed among her friends. She even became the social secretary at Eliot Hall and gave guided tours of the campus. The government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other countries, opposed the communist government of North Vietnam and its communist allies. It was part of a plan called containment.
Finally, in , the forces of North Vietnam were victorious. An estimated 4 million Vietnamese on both sides died during the war years, as well as 2 million Laotians and Cambodians. The United States lost more than 58, soldiers. Her father was delighted. She also listened for reports of what was happening to her own government back home. The Bengalis formed the Awami League, which called for strikes and other forms of civil disobedience. He outlawed the Awami League and imprisoned its leader, Sheikh Rahman. Benazir remembered how shocked she was at the news.
She was even more shocked at the way her fellow students condemned her country for its actions. Benazir went to New York and sat in the council room as her father urged that UN forces be sent into the area. That led to the war between the two countries. Indian forces were victorious on December 16, and East Pakistan became a separate nation. General Yahya Khan was forced to resign. After women tried unsuccessfully to get into Harvard University, Radcliffe was founded in as Harvard Annex.
Harvard faculty taught the classes. A formal merger agreement was signed with Harvard in , and the two schools were merged fully in Today, the Radcliffe campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, functions as a research institute within Harvard. Bhutto later recalled her years at Radcliffe as among the happiest times of her life.
When she was prime minister, she arranged for a gift from her government to Harvard Law School. Not yet twenty years old, she was quite different from the timid girl who had entered those halls four years earlier. She had made several good friends, and she knew her way around the cities of Cambridge and Boston. Although she was accepted to continue her education at Oxford University in England, she was reluctant to leave the comfort of Cambridge. She asked her father to let her go to law school at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, instead. But he refused; Bhutto knew that his daughter must eventually return to Pakistan.
He did not want Benazir to become too used to life in the United States. Benazir said good-bye to Radcliffe and moved on. Instead, with her mother and brother she returned to Pakistan to attend the August 14 ceremony during which the National Assembly adopted a new constitution with a charter recognizing Pakistan as an Islamic state. After Bhutto was named president on December 20, , he appointed a new cabinet and nationalized all the major industries.
He rescinded martial law and told Pakistani leaders to write a new constitution. He negotiated a peace treaty with India and secured the release of 93, Pakistani prisoners of war. But many Pakistanis thought he made too many concessions to India. By January he had to send in troops to put down riots in Balochistan, where he dismissed the government.
Gr These books illuminate the lives of their extraordinary subjects and the important roles they played in history. Meir survived pogroms in Russia as a child . Although I had grown up in a Pakistan that witnessed the prodigal return of Benazir Bhutto against all odds, her miraculous rise, her predictable.
However, on April 12, he signed a new constitution that established Pakistan as an Islamic republic.