TO break the shackles of the ruling elite, to create a more equitable system for wealth distribution and to ensure better wages and conditions for workers, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto fulfilled his election manifesto and nationalised key industries and banks.

Further, a programme of massive infrastructural capitalisation, with the view to acquire self-sufficiency in essential items, was undertaken.The fruits of that programme were reaped by successive governments and to this day are providing a source of wealth (through privatisation) to the present regime. The Port Qasim Industrial Estate, the Pakistan Steel Mills, fertiliser plants, the Karakoram highway and Karachi’s Sharea Faisal are but a few of ZAB’s lasting legacies. That today our armed forces march with all their pomp and splendour and display their impressive arms on Pakistan Day, or hold exhibitions of locally manufactured equipment, is thanks to Bhutto’s gift to the nation. It was he who built the Taxila Heavy Mechanical Complex and the Kamrah Aeronautical Complex.

ZAB opened the doors for Pakistani labour to work in the Arab Gulf states, thus alleviating unemployment and providing the base for foreign remittances. The honour and morale of the demoralised armed forces was restored and they were equipped with some of the most sophisticated weapons the world had to offer.

From the ashes of defeat was emerging a new Pakistan. In no time at all, the engines of government were rolling. “If you think FDR had an amazing first 100 days, watch us,” he prophetically declared.

Perhaps, ZAB’s greatest contribution to Pakistan was the 1973 Constitution. It was the only unanimously adopted Constitution in the history of this nation and for that reason, even today, in spite of its many mutilations by military dictators, remains the index and the reference point for Pakistan’s legal and constitutional system.

In the field of foreign affairs lay the genius of ZAB. He was a titan who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the great giants of his time, men like Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, Soekarno and Nasser, Tito and Nehru, de Gaulle and Adenauer. ZAB’s politics and diplomacy were based on what he called “the total sweep of history”.

In December 1971, we were walking a diplomatic tightrope that would have tested the skills and capabilities of a Metternich or a Talleyrand. ZAB had to reinforce the friendship bonds with a more reticent China in one neighbourhood and appease a hostile Soviet Union in another.

The defining moment of ZAB’s diplomacy was of course the Shimla accord. He went to India as the head of a defeated country and with no cards to play. He returned home with Pakistan’s captured territory back in his pocket. His detractors accused him of secret deals but only time was to prove that it was a treaty even a Kissinger would not have imagined possible. His enemies chose to harp on the immediate return of prisoners but ZAB had the vision and sense of history to know that, in time, pressure would build up for the return of the prisoners; territory once lost, however, is rarely recovered. This is abundantly borne out by the fact that the Arab territories captured by Israel in the 1973 war are still largely under occupation.

He broke free from the shackles of Pakistan’s cramped obsession with India and took it beyond into a Middle Eastern and pan-Islamic identity. He did not wish the world to view Pakistan through the prism of the Indo-Pak rivalry.

He was a consummate statesman whose vision and grasp of events presented a challenge and threat to his enemies. First, during the course of the Islamic Summit conference at Lahore, he brought together disparate and detached leaders of the Islamic comity under one banner. Having established unity among the Muslim ummah, who for the first time spoke with one voice for the Palestinians and other Islamic causes, he moved to a wider forum in the quest for a Third World conference, a vision and thought he propounded in his essay titled New Directions.

This thesis had far-reaching implications for both the industrialised nations and the Third World. He held that the countries of the Third World must pool their resources and stand united to end exploitation by the industrialised nations. Only if they were united could they demand better terms for trade, obtain wider export markets for their goods and fairer debt rescheduling and a more suitable monetary system.

The industrialised world had hitherto succeeded in keeping the Third World countries divided by grouping them into oil-producing and non-oil-producing blocs, defining them as aligned and non-aligned or industrial and agricultural. ZAB could see that other international forums such as the Non-Aligned Conference had become obsolete and pressed for a new direction more in keeping with evolving international realities. ZAB’s vision of bringing to an end the superficial differences between such countries and thereby releasing them from the yoke of political, social and economic exploitation threatened vested interests and earned him powerful enemies.

ZAB was a masterful judge of international events, capable of extrapolating global trends and tendencies to Pakistan’s internal issues to maximum effect. As he said in an interview with the correspondent of Tehran Journal on September 10, 1976: “It is we who form part of the world and not the world that forms part of us. Taking a lesson from something that has been done elsewhere in the world does not mean we are compromising on our principles. Some in our country do not want Pakistan to move forward. They do not want Pakistan to form part of today’s civilised world, which is marching ahead. They want to tie Pakistan down, to tie it down to the past, to retain past slogans, to retain the past hatreds and to retain the past bitterness.”

He advocated flexibility in politics and was not tied to any fixed dogmas or prejudices. “The dogmas, the theories and the script stand outside the gates of history,” he wrote in his political testament.

There are those who, forgetting that a military dictator was at the helm of affairs of the state, unkindly accuse ZAB of thwarting the rule of the majority and creating the conditions for the break-up of Pakistan. Yahya Khan had no intention of relinquishing power. He had been assured that the 1970 elections would result in fragmented power blocs and he could rule forever. Yahya’s LFO, the basis on which elections were conducted, clearly precluded parties with separatist manifestos from running. Why then was the Awami League allowed to contest? The intentions were nefarious from the very start. He knew that a Punjabi army and bureaucracy would never consent to hand over the reins of power to East Pakistan and planned to use ZAB as the fall guy.

Bhutto spelt out his position succinctly in an interview with R.K. Karanjia, editor-in-chief of Blitz, Bombay, on October 31, 1972: “I made it quite clear that if Mujibur Rehman had a federal constitution, we would be happy to sit in the opposition and work in a democratic arrangement. But he wanted a confederal arrangement and, in a confederation, both sides had to have representation in the government.”

Contrary to the charge that he desired a boycott of the assembly, ZAB consistently called for either a minor delay in its convening so that the two protagonists could come to some workable agreement prior to entering parliament or for waiving the 120-day condition for framing the Constitution.

Till the end he pleaded with Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to compromise on only two of his six points which were seen as a recipe for the separation of the two wings. Bhutto held that it was outside the legal scope of parliament to strike against its own sovereignty and to vote for the separation of the state. What people fail to appreciate is that Mujib’s political compass was pointed precisely in that direction. ZAB’s position stands vindicated today as the much-demonised Hamoodur Rehman commission finally and accidentally found its way in print.

ZAB possessed a vital magnetism which he transmitted to the people. He could touch the raw nerve of their emotion. He could tap the emotional wellsprings of the nation. He knew the pulse of the people, their heartbeat. They would laugh with him and cry with him. There was a compelling chemistry, an electrical charge that has not dulled with time. It was, in his own words, his greatest romance. He gave to the poor a future and he gave them a voice. He gave them consciousness and dignity which no tank, no dictator can take away. That bond has been frozen into doctrine.

His greatest gift to this nation is its security from external threats. That in spite of India’s sabre-rattling and bellicosity the people of Pakistan can today sleep peacefully is because he gave his life to give them a bomb.

ZAB’s detractors have distorted history and tampered with the written word. They killed Plato’s philosopher-king and filled the space with charlatans.

But he has written his own history in blood and the legend has been nourished by the tears and the sweat of those who work in the fields and the factories. Bhutto belonged to the sweat and sorrow of this soil. His soul has mingled with the soul of the multitudes who cry out in their sorrow and in their pain, “Jeay Bhutto, Jeay Bhutto”.

ZAB gave the people of Pakistan the foundation on which to build an inspired dream palace of their national thoughts. Today, we have surrendered ourselves to the momentum of mediocrity.

In Plato’s words, “what is honoured in a country will be cultivated there.” But we are not a nation given to honouring our heroes. Today, let us rise above narrow considerations and interests and acknowledge a man who was a brilliant beacon on the highway of history.

Concluded