On India-biting, with one byte, Bilawal out-does grandpa Bhutto’s life’s work

With a measured criticism, did India still confer undeserving respectability on Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto for his uncouth comment about Prime Minister Narendra Modi? It was undiplomatic, to say the least? It’s one thing for Bhutto-Zardari, 34, to hold a personal view on men and matters, but it is another thing when he comes to express them in the public when he is also his nation’s 34th Foreign Minister in 75 years. That averages 2.72 years for his 33 predecessors, with his famously infamous grandfather, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928-79) filling two slots, as the eighth (1963-66) and 12th (1971-77) foreign minister, totalling nine years.

Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was prompt in condemning Zardari for the personal attack on Prime Minister Modi as a “new low” even for that country . He said that Pakistan foreign minister’s “frustration” would be better directed towards the masterminds of terrorist enterprises in his own country, who have made terrorism a part of their “State policy”.

“Pakistan is a country that glorifies Osama bin-Laden as a martyr , and shelters terrorists like Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Sajid Mir and Dawood Ibrahim. No other country can boast of having 126 UN-designated terrorists and 27 UN-designated terrorist entities,” he asserted. Maybe, India was putting it all on record one more time, but it does not matter to Pakistan, going by the way the likes of Bilawal Bhutto as its foreign minister spoke – without anything demanding such a grave provocation from him.

Firing in the air

The Indian reaction was to what Bhutto, Jr had said in a New York news conference. “I would like to remind the External Affairs Minister of India that Osama bin-Laden is dead but the butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the Prime Minister of India. He was banned from entering this country (the US) until he became Prime Minister. This is the prime minister of the RSS and the foreign minister of the RSS. What is the RSS? The RSS draws its inspiration from Hitler’s SS," he said, a day after Subrahmanyam Jaishankar had ticked off Pakistan for promoting and shielding cross-border terrorism, without naming it.

Of course, it was not just fire and bluster. At least Bhutto and his strategists seemingly fired in the air, hoping and praying that at least some of it stuck.

Apart from the fact that he too happened to be at New York when Jaishankar said what he said about Pakistan’s unbridled backing for cross-border terrorism, Bhutto seemed to be hoping that his harsh comments on PM Modi would help revive the controversy, both in the US and also in other national capitals, which too are watching the periodic tensions along India’s border, though mostly with China purportedly unconnected to Kashmir, Pakistan’s eternal bug-bear.

Epi-centre of terrorism

India is concluding its elected membership of the UNSC this year-end. Before it does so, the nation has got a rare chance of being president of the month for a second time. In that capacity, Jaishankar presided over the UNSC Briefing: Global Counterterrorism Approach: Challenges and Way Forward, and described terrorism as an existential threat to international peace and security and said it knows no borders, nationality, or race.

For all of Bilawal’s unbecoming outburst, Jaishankar had only recalled what other world leaders, especially from the West, have been saying for long. Borrowing from what former US President George Bush Jr, had claimed about Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the world sees Pakistan as the ‘epi-centre’ of terrorism , Jaishankar said without naming the neighbour. The country needed to clean up its act and be good to its neighbours, he added. Though unnamed, it referred to India, of course, and also Afghanistan, where Islamabad has been interfering and influencing domestic politics for decades now.

Jaishankar also recalled former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who “a decade ago… during her visit to Pakistan, said that if you keep snakes in your backyard, you can’t expect them to bite only your neighbours ”. He added, how there are ministers in Pakistan who can tell how long Pakistan intends to practice terrorism. “The world isn’t stupid, it increasingly calls out countries and organisations indulging in terrorism,” he said.

In a veiled reference to Pakistan the EAM regretted that the “contemporary epi-centre of terrorism” remains very much active, and expressed the Indian hurt and disappointment that evidence-backed proposals to black-list terrorists were put on hold without adequate reason . The latter was a reference to China which keeps vetoing US moves to ban a few more Pakistan-based terrorists under the global ban-list, at the UN Security Council (UNSC).

AQ Khan saga

As if in response to Jaishankar, his Pakistani counterpart said that India’s EAM unveiled a bust of Mahatma Gandhi at the UN, he would be knowing that the RSS does not believe in the ideology of Gandhi. As if to prove Hillary Clinton prophetic, Bilawal Bhutto said that Pakistan has lost more lives to terrorism than India. Needless to say, he did not own up it was all a part and fall-out of what his country had professed and practised all along, against India in particular.

Bhutto said, “Political parties, civil society and the average people in Pakistan, across the board, have been the victims of perpetrators of terrorism. We have lost far more lives to terrorism than India had. Why, why, why would we want our own people to suffer? We absolutely do not.” He said in a dramatic fashion, which to old-time observers brought back fading memories of his more dramatic grandfather.

It was thus that Zulfikar he told his countrymen in 1965: “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own . We have no alternative.” Whether Pakistanis went hungry, or ate grass or leaves, theirs was not an honourable way to make the atomic bomb. The western media, and also their governments, especially those in the US, have well documented the A Q Khan way to make the bomb , but when it was happening all of them were looking the other way, despite India’s constant updates and reminders.

In constant comparison, there is a lot of difference about the Indian nuclear bomb-testing, which preceded that of Pakistan, and which the West condemned even more. At the time at least, they did not acknowledge or want to do so, how India’s Pokhran-II tests alone forced Pakistan’s hand, after which they could not deny the Indian alerts and pleadings in the matter.

No fears about India

More importantly, at no point since has the world has had any apprehensions about India going trigger-happy with its nuclear weapons. That is not the case with Pakistan. The world is eternally suspicious and apprehensive about Pakistani generals’ moods and methods, and their domestic feud for political legitimacy and personal supremacy. It dreads the possibility of the Pakistani bombs falling into ‘wrong hands’ (meaning terrorist groups) or a group of lone wolves in the Pakistani hierarchy taking things into his hands.

When Indian armed forces reversed the Pakistani military hopes yet another time in the Kargil War (1999) and were advancing, the country’s then leader, Gen Pervez Musharraf declared that they would not hesitate to use ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ if the former crossed the international border (IB), as if it was the done thing. He is also on record, considering a nuclear attack if India retaliated to a terror-attack from Pakistani side in 2001.

Now after Bilawal Bhutto’s outburst, Shazia Marri belonging to his Pakistan’s People’s Party (PPP) has ranted likewise. “ If the Modi government will fight, then it will get the answer. The status of a nuclear state given to Pakistan has not been given to remain silent. Pakistan also knows how to answer. If you will keep making allegations against Pakistan again and again, Pakistan cannot keep listening silently, this will not happen,” she said.

Promptly, Shazia Marri has denied the statement, blaming it on the Indian media. But not her party boss Bilawal. Reacting to a lower-level BJP leader in Uttar Pradesh fixing a bounty on his head, he has stood by his earlier statement on Prime Minister Modi, arguing that it was not his claim but that of Indian Muslims.

The fact is also that in the lop-sided evaluation of the West during the ‘AQ Khan saga’, the ‘Soviet occupation of Afghanistan’ needed to be ended and for that they needed Pakistan. It was not until 9/11 attacks that the West came to recognise terrorism as a curse that mankind could ill-afford to grow without paying a price -– as Hillary Clinton said of Pakistan, years later.

Even now, they seem wobbly from time-to-time, when it comes to holding Pakistan accountable on cross-border terrorism against India. Some signals of the same has returned with India’s tough call on buying Russian oil, defying the unilateral western sanctions on Moscow now, at the height of the Ukraine War. Days later, the western reaction to Bilawal Bhutto’s outburst is awaited.

The ‘Indian dogs’

It was again in 1965 that Zulfikhar Bhutto made what is probably the most reprehensible comment that has ever been made in the august UN Security Council (UNSC). When the Indian delegation, led by External Affairs Minister Swaran Singh staged a rare walkout against Bhutto’s unsubstantiated invectives against India, he shouted: “The Indian dogs are leaving.”

But the unanticipated Indian reaction had a chilling effect on the world that the UNSC did not come to discuss Kashmir for a few decades other than in a solitary resolution on the ‘Bangladesh War’ (1971). On the latter occasion, Bhutto dramatized his exit, telling the waiting media men: “I hate this body. I don’t want to see their faces again. I’d rather go back to a destroyed Pakistan.”   However, Pakistan continues to be on the UN and its affiliates.

There is a difference. Zulfikar said it all about India as a nation and Indians as a people. But Bilawal has used Prime Minister Modi’s name individually, and Modi represents India. But the intention is same. The older Bhutto, going around with the sobriquet ‘people’s leader’ did this and more -– the latter nearer home in domestic politics, contexts and situations. Today, his maternal grandson, through slain daughter, Benazir Bhutto, herself a relatively popular prime minister in her time, wants to do precisely what his grandfather had done and outshine him in the department.

People’s leader

Bilawal is seeking to become a ‘people’s leader’ in his time, and is using India as a punch-bag like grandfather, and unlike his mother, and is using the UN forum too as his launching pad for the purpose. According to some observers, Zulfikar is still a popular leader, and more so in these days of economic crisis and political instability, despite a numerically strong government in place.

Bilawal however has to remember how popularity of the kind had the better of his grandfather, who became increasingly arrogant and unbridled –- ending up in the gallows following army coup that overthrew him as Prime Minister, and Gen Zia-ul-Haq as the military administrator, dug out an old murder case against him.

India, incidentally, condemned the kangaroo-court proceedings and verdict that caused the illegal and illegitimate end of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was only 51, and had a lot of politics still left in him. Rather, sticking to the true Indian values and ethos, Indira Gandhi’s India did not hold the past against Zulfikar.

Zulfikar was hanged on 13 August 1973, just on the eve of Pakistan’s Independence Day. Benazir, who was 20 at the time, married controversial businessman Asif Ali Zardari in 1987, and Bilawal was born a year later, in 1988.

That is some history, Bilawal Bhutto, history that you do not seem to remember, but ought to have done so in the larger Indian context at the very least!

The writer is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator. Views are personal.

Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .