SHAHBAZ Bhatti was among the 22 lucky ones who had retained their ministries in the 'right-sizing' of the federal cabinet last month, but remained unlucky to take advantage of his position to work for the betterment of vulnerable minorities living in the country --- the job he had previously been doing for more than two decades from non-political forums.
Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs Bhatti, who became the latest victim of an ongoing terror wave, had been working on many ideas to promote interfaith harmony in the country and was very optimistic that one day he would succeed in convincing even the hard-line religious groups with the help of religio-political parties having representation in parliament.
“Every religion gives message of love and peace and there is no room for violence and bloodshed in any religion,” he recently told this reporter.
“I will prefer to die for the cause to defend the rights of my community rather than to compromise on my principles,” he had told BBC World in an interview a few months ago, adding: “The forces of violence, militants, banned organisations, Taliban and al Qaeda, want to impose their radical philosophy in Pakistan and whosoever stands against it they threaten him.”
It was perhaps after realising the sensitive nature of the issue that Mr Bhatti, 42, had started talking about finding a mechanism to stop the misuse of the country's controversial blasphemy law, instead of calling for its repeal.
He felt frustrated by the Jan 4 assassination of then Punjab governor Salman Taseer, also in Islamabad.
“This incident has thrown water on all my efforts,” a depressed Bhatti said sitting in his Blue Area office while commenting on the murder of the Punjab governor by his own bodyguard for his stance on the blasphemy law and for voicing a desire to help Aasia Bibi, a jailed Christian woman sentenced to death on a disputed blasphemy charge.
The visibly shaken minister was worried as to how he would now implement his plan of arranging seminars and conferences on interfaith harmony as those having liberal views would definitely hesitate to speak on sensitive and controversial matters due to the prevailing sense of insecurity.
Bhatti, a late entrant to the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was also unhappy with some of the government ministers and party leaders for not coming out with a clear policy on controversial matters and for succumbing to the pressure of religious groups.
He was not happy with the party's decision to go on the defensive on the blasphemy law after the Punjab governor's assassination.
He even named some of the party's senior members who, according to him, were responsible for making things difficult for him in his efforts to promote interfaith harmony and to plead for amendments to eliminate misuse of the blasphemy law.
It was because of his commitment to minorities' rights and his connections with international peace and human rights organisations that slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto always held Mr Bhatti in high regard, according to Naheed Khan, the former political secretary to Ms Bhutto.
When, as chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), Mr Bhatti announced his support to the PPP just before the 2002 elections, Ms Bhutto authorised him to award three party tickets to people of his choice.
And instead of himself, he nominated three other APMA members, who later became MNAs on the PPP ticket on the reserved seats for the minorities.
When one of his nominees — Mushtaq Victor --- defected to join former military ruler Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf's government as state minister, Bhatti personally went to Ms Bhutto to apologise for nominating “a wrong person”.
It was in this backdrop that during the 2008 elections, he accepted Ms Bhutto's offer to become a party representative in parliament.
Bhatti was the first minority member to become a fully-fledged federal minister for minorities affairs as all his predecessors had been offered only a state minister's position.
After taking oath in 2008, he said he had accepted the post for the sake of “oppressed, downtrodden and marginalised” people and to empower the religious minorities.
“I want to send a message of hope to the people living a life of disappointment, disillusionment and despair. Jesus is the nucleus of my life and I want to be his true follower through my actions by sharing the love of God with the poor, oppressed, victimised, needy and suffering people of Pakistan,” he said then.
In his recent interviews and private conversations, Bhatti had called for removing hate material from the curriculum and even formally proposed to the ministry of education to take steps for this. He had also planned to introduce a legislation seeking a ban on making hate speeches and distributing hate literature. Although, minorities had no representation on the 27-member parliamentary committee for constitution reforms that drafted the landmark Eighteenth Amendment, Bhatti succeeded in getting four Senate seats reserved for minorities. It was because of his initiative, that the Pakistani government declared August 11 as the “Minorities Day”.
He had also established a 24-hour hotline for reporting acts of violence against minorities and was in the forefront in the campaign to protect religious artefacts and sites belonging to minorities.
Bhatti was a strong admirer of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and was one of the founding members of the APMA, which was formed in 1985 with the objective of defending and protecting the rights of minorities living in Pakistan in the light of the Quaid-i-Azam's famous speech of August 11, 1948.
He has received numerous recognitions for his work, including a 2003 Finnish prize for religious liberty, a peace prize by an American organization in 1998, and a Canadian prize for his struggle for human rights the following year.
Bhatti was born on Sept 9, 1968, in Lahore, but his native town was Chak Khushpur, Faisalabad. After early education in Faisalabad, he did his Master of Business Administration from the Punjab University, Lahore.
He remained a bachelor and left behind a mother, four brothers, and a sister. His father died in January in Faisalabad.
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.