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In a reflecting pool ripples gently the unbearable lightness of being a Bhutto, a Gandhi or a Sheikh. Locked within the watery images are the hearts and hopes of 1.5 billion South Asians. Fated to rule yesterday, today and tomorrow, this family chain does not snap even when death overtakes.
Fathers, sons, daughters and spouses pass into eternity, but the three names live on. When historians and biographers sit to write the political history of the subcontinent, nowhere will they find the Hand of God so clearly defined as in the life and times of these three first families. Violent death mixed with charisma and karma has immortalised them. Sheikh Hasina joined the league of Widow Sonia Gandhi and Widower Asif Ali Zardari 14 days ago. Dr Wazed Miah, 66, slipped away as quietly as he had lived. They had led separate lives — the husband, an internationally recognised nuclear scientist and the wife, a fiery politician whose home was either the jail or the prime minister's house. In between was exile abroad.
While the three first families have been dogged by corruption charges, with Zardari and Hasina facing jail/exile for alleged financial wrongdoings and the Gandhis accused of graft, Dr Wazed Miah was 'Dr Clean.' He was a shining example of a principled man who despite being the spouse of a prime minister never took undue advantage. 'A person like him is rare in our country,' said the BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) leader Nazrul Islam Khan whose party was defeated by the Hasina-led Awami League in the 2008 election. A relative testified, 'He always tried to maintain a low profile in his personal life; he led a very simple life and was an amiable person but never compromised on anything unjust.'
Miah began his career by joining the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1963 after his return from Imperial College of London. In 1969 he joined the Pakistani Nobel Laureate Professor Dr Abdus Salam in Trieste, Italy. Men like Salam and Miah are stunning, vivid and utterly memorable examples of excellence purely wrought by sheer hard work and honest labour. Today, the Gandhis, the Zardaris and the Hasinas have come to power on the coattails of their family names and not on their own merit. Their foundations will forever remain shaky as will the destinies of us all tied like an umbilical cord to them.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has not forgiven Pakistan for the 1971 war. Again, her government has demanded an apology for the alleged atrocities committed by Pakistan Army in the former East Pakistan. Our Foreign Office has rejected the demand saying that Pakistan had already regretted the incidents. But Bangladesh has approached the UN for trial of what it calls the '1971 war criminals.' Hasina seems frozen in time.
Let me take you back 21 years when Sheikh Hasina was only 39. I interviewed her in her office at Parliament House, Dhaka. As leader of the opposition, she enjoyed the status of a minister. Sitting under a huge portrait of her father Sheikh Mujib, the sari-clad Hasina with hazel eyes, the colour of her late father's, looked small and vulnerable then. But the anti-Pakistan venom was clearly visible that beautiful December morning in 1986. It stemmed more from the shabby treatment we gave to her father than the 1971 war.
'How can I describe to you what I felt when I heard I had lost all my near and dear ones?' said Hasina. The eldest of five Mujib children, Hasina and her sister Rehana escaped the mass slaughter. They were in London on August 15, 1975. Was it the CIA? I asked.
'Well we heard Pakistan and the US were responsible because they didn't support our War of Liberation.'
Do you also believe this? I asked her again. After a lengthy pause, she said, 'Why not?'
At this point, two of her male political advisers, sitting in on the interview, whispered to her in Bengali. She looked into the mini-tape recorder I'd placed on her armrest. She wanted to make sure the little thing picked up her carefully chosen words. Hasina continued 'Well, let me make one thing clear,' she unfurled, 'We have nothing against the people of Pakistan. We fought for our liberation against Pakistan. We won. There's no hatred anymore.'
Having made herself amply clear on the subject, she continued, 'I met Ms Bhutto in London. She has my support (fighting dictator Zia then).' Sheikh Hasina was fighting her own General Ershad, who was the president. She had returned after meeting PM Rajiv Gandhi in New Delhi. Did Pakistan come up in their talks? I asked. 'No. I was representing my country, my people, not Pakistan!' I got badly snubbed.
She bristled with contempt for the army, both in her country and in Pakistan. 'We have no ill feelings against your people but we cannot support any military government and military junta. Ideologically we're against them.' She mentioned Major Farooq, the confessed assassin of her family of 27. 'He was given a diplomatic posting and is now contesting the presidential election,' she said. 'I lost everything. They can harm me, but I'm not afraid. I believe in God.'
Deriding her opponent Begum Khalida Zia, the BNP leader, she said that Zia lived in a 'sprawling bungalow in Dhaka cantonment which the family occupied when her husband was the president.' Still, Hasina believed, 'Women make better leaders because they don't become A.M.B.I.T.I.O.U.S.' For the first time a wry smile played around her lips shaded with a pearly pink lipstick as she spelt out the word. But reality soon hit her 'We live in a male-dominated society.' How true, I said to myself, looking at the two oily characters shadowing Hasina. These men appeared distrusting of the diplomatic gaffs the lady might make. And Hasina let them interrupt, prompt, whisper throughout the interview.
Later, a visit to Sheikh Mujib's Dhanmondi house was organised for me. It's a museum. I went around the rooms that were deserted. It was spooky and scary because everyone knew I was from Lahore and a Punjabi, which is like a red rag to a bull. Despite the passage of 15 years, I do come across hostility in some quarters during my stay in Dhaka. The books and pictures in Sheikh Mujib's study have bullet holes in them, reminding one of the bloody butchery. A macabre portrait of the slain leader lying in a pool of blood with his pipe beside him hangs in the formal drawing room. Sitting on the mantelpiece is a photo of him addressing a huge gathering with the words 'This time our struggle is for emancipation (from Pakistan); it's for independence.'
Finally, my eyes rested on the staircase, the landing where 'Bangabondhu' (father of the nation) was shot dead. I was asked to take off my shoes. As I left the house with its gory memories of defenceless inmates running around with bullets being pumped into their bodies, the shrieks of the nine-year-old son of Mujib pierced my ears. 'Please don't shoot me, where's my mother?'
Those shrieks of her baby brother must haunt Hasina, 61, today, as she reopens her wounds of the past with Pakistan once more with feeling.
