DNA
New Delhi, Dec 29: “The Gandhis and the Bhuttos share the same kind of tragic legacy: Both families have been targeted for standing up for principles. Both families have made the supreme sacrifice.’’
These were prophetic words from Benazir Bhutto, who herself has become a part of this tragic denouement. The former Pakistan PM made these remarks to reporters in 1991 when she came to New Delhi to attend the funeral of former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.
At that news conference, Benazir said that Sonia Gandhi should not enter active politics as she needed to look after her two children, Rahul and Priyanka.
“But you are in politics despite what happened to your father, and your children are very young, so what is wrong with Sonia Gandhi doing the same?” was a question thrown at her.
Benazir explained that even if something happened to her, her mother and brother were there to look after her family, while the Gandhis had no one. She was referring to the fact that Rajiv’s brother Sanjay had died some years before him.
Benazir was a popular figure in India having visited the country several times. She came initially as a shy gawky teenager, accompanying her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to India for the Shimla agreement, signed between the then PM Indira Gandhi and her father.
Benazir and Rajiv Gandhi had excellent rapport when both first met as Prime Minister’s of their respective nations. Rajiv and Sonia had gone to Islamabad for a summit with Benazir in 1989.
But things turned sour soon after and the promise of the first meeting between two young leaders did not go on to produce any tangible results.
On a personal level, they shared a marvellous chemistry. Benazir was shaken by Rajiv’s tragic assassination by a suicide bomber. Ironically, a suicide bomber also got her.
Oxbridge friends remember ‘Pinky’
London: In her later years the world saw her as a brave politician, a clever and eloquent diplomatic, a glamorous and demure woman and a devoted mother to her three children, but her friends from her Oxford University days remember a very different Benazir Bhutto.
“She wasn’t someone who was buried away in a library. She used to go socialising, she had a lot of friends,” said Victoria Schofield, writer and Benazir’s closest friend from Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. “It was her friendships from Oxford that she thought back to in later life, because it was a very happy period for her,” added Schofield, author of a book on the trial and execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
After obtaining her early education in Pakistan from an English governess and Catholic nuns, at the age of 16, Benazir was sent to study politics at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachussetts. Coming from a wealthy and powerful family, it was here that she faced the first hardships of her young life — having to walk to school for the first time in her life. It was cold and Benazir admitted that life was difficult without a chauffeur.
‘Pinky’, as Benazir was called by family and friends, was a thoroughly Westernised teenager, living a life of ‘idyllic ease’. She dressed in clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue and enjoyed the lifestyle of any “spoiled daughter of a wealthy foreign potentate”.
From Radcliffe Benazir went across the Atlantic to study international law and politics at Oxford. At her alma mater she was known for throwing the best parties which were always well attended and liberally supplied with alcohol — although she later denied this. Her friends recall that she loved to dance at these events — something that her detractors would certainly find scandalous.
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