Rahul Gandhi, 52, and Bilawal Bhutto, 34, are living proof that political dynasties have an expiry date.
Bilawal’s grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had a chequered career. After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Bhutto went to Oxford University. Returning to Pakistan, he plunged headlong into the newly independent country’s theocratic politics.
Bhutto was by nature a boastful grandstander. My father, who was Bhutto’s contemporary at Berkeley, recalled a conversation the two had. He told Bhutto that Pakistan was a theocratic state and destined to fail. It would lapse into fundamentalism, as all religion-based states usually do.
During a chaotic career as foreign minister, president and prime minister of Pakistan, Bhutto had the unenviable task of securing the release of over 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war (PoWs) following the Pakistani Army’s surrender to the Indian Army in the Bangladesh war.
Bhutto used his rakish cunning (which some mistook for charm) to persuade fellow-dynast Indira Gandhi in Shimla in 1972 to release the Pakistani PoWs without in return surrendering any part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
Why did the astute Mrs Gandhi fail to do the obvious when she had Bhutto at her mercy? Dynasts have an odd fascination for old school and college ties. Mrs Gandhi went to Somerville College at Oxford University. Bhutto went to Christ Church College at Oxford University.
He gave her his Oxford word (which always had dubious merit) that once the PoWs were back in Pakistan, he would work with his party colleagues on concessions over PoK and other disputes. In 1972 Bhutto was both president and martial law administrator of Pakistan.
The July 1972 Shimla agreement in effect superseded the August 1948 United Nations resolution that had directed Pakistan to immediately vacate PoK. The Shimla agreement stated blandly: “The two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them. Pending the final settlement of any of the problems between the two countries, neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peace and harmonious relations.”
Bhutto was hanged in 1979 by President Zia-ul-Haq’s military junta. My father had warned Bhutto 29 years ago on the Berkeley campus about Pakistan’s inevitable descent into fundamentalism. That now took Bhutto’s life.
It would also take Bhutto’s daughter Benazir’s life. As Pakistan fell into ever-greater fundamentalist chaos, Benazir was assassinated in 2007 in a plot allegedly masterminded by those close to President Pervez Musharraf, including a senior officer of the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Just as Rahul Gandhi was parachuted into Amethi in 2004 aged 34, Bilawal Bhutto was installed in the National Assembly in 2018 aged 30. Today, at 34, Bilawal is Pakistan’s foreign minister, a post grandfather Zulfikar held.
As foreign minister, Zulfikar routinely spewed venom against India during speeches at the United Nations. On 15 December 1971, just before Dhaka fell to the Indian Army, Bhutto rose to speak, hands trembling with rage: “Mr President, I am not a rat. I’ve never ratted in my life. I have faced assassination attempts. I’ve faced imprisonment. Today I am not ratting, but I am leaving your Security Council. I find it disgraceful to my person and to my country to remain here a moment longer. Impose any decision, have a treaty worse than Versailles, legalise aggression, legalise occupation — I will not be a party to it. We will fight. My country harkens for me. Why should I waste my time here in the Security Council? I will not be party to the ignominious surrender (to India) of part of my country. You can take your Security Council; here you are. I am going.”
Bhutto then proceeded to tear up the UNSC resolution and walked out of the chamber. Outside, he said: “I hate this body. I don’t want to see their faces again. I’d rather go back to a destroyed Pakistan.”
Bilawal Bhutto took a leaf out of his grandfather’s book with his recent remark at the UN on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. The riots were provoked by a group of Muslim Ganchis at the Godhra railway station. They burnt to death 59 Ramsevaks returning from a pilgrimage in Ayodhya.
Like his grandfather, Bilawal knows that few countries take him or his incendiary remarks seriously. They are aimed at a domestic audience in Pakistan which will hold a general election before July 2023 when the five-year term of the current National Assembly ends.
The growing popularity of Imran Khan and the dwindling power of the Pakistani Army spell trouble for the ruling coalition led by the Sharif and Bhutto dynastic clans.
Bilawal’s malignant performance at the UN last week was triggered by the real prospect of impending electoral defeat as well as External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s lacerating remark on Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism.
While Pakistani dynasts like Bilawal Bhutto and the Sharif brothers use criticism of India in order to distract attention from increasing global condemnation of its sponsorship of terror groups, what drives fellow-dynast Rahul Gandhi to make inflammatory comments during his Bharat Jodo Yatra?
This is what Rahul said at a press conference on 16 December 2022: “Chinese troops are thrashing Indian Army soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh.”
Don’t Rahul’s advisors tell him that it was under the prime ministership of his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru that India lost 38,000 sq km of Indian sovereign territory in Aksai Chin to China through the 1950s?
As Prabash K Dutta noted in an India Today report on 22 June 2020: “Aksai Chin is almost the size of Bhutan and little smaller than Switzerland. Most of it is in occupation of China, which captured the region during the 1950s and consolidated its military grip over the area during the 1962 India-China war, rejecting all Indian attempts to settle border disputes peacefully.”
Rahul Gandhi and Bilawal Bhutto are living examples of a self-destructive streak that is encoded in political dynasts.
The writer is editor, author and publisher. Views expressed here are personal.
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