THE MEN WHO RULED PAKISTAN
It is common when speaking of the State to talk about institutions and systems. But in Pakistan—indeed, across South Asia—personalities often matter more. Tilak Devasher’s second book, Pakistan: At the Helm, is a byproduct of his first, Pakistan: Courting the Abyss, an ‘analytical collection of anecdotes and vignettes’ that he came across while writing the latter.
Reading about the foibles and failings of Pakistan’s leaders may provoke some mirth, but Devasher writes with rare empathy. This is not a book that subjects the Pakistani leadership to undeserved contempt; rather, it reveals complex human emotions, peculiar weaknesses that bring men ‘to the helm’; and destructive strengths, the obduracy of will that brings them to ruin. The portraits of those who rule Pakistan bring to mind many who have ruled other nations; this anecdotal history is a cautionary tale of great urgency for India as well.
Pakistan: At the Helm adds to the swelling literature on delinquency, power and psychopathology. This is a book about narcissism, delusion and hubris. Jinnah destroys the very instrumentalities that brought him to power, convinced that he alone was the architect of Pakistan; Ayub Khan, suspended as a young officer for ‘visible cowardice under fire’, imagines himself an ‘Asian Charles de Gaulle’; Yahya Khan is the self-confessed ‘part-time president’ whose drunken orgies gave us the adage, “between dusk and dawn, Pakistan was ruled by pimps”; the authoritarianism and megalomania of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who a British diplomat described, nearly a decade before his execution, as “born to be hanged”; down to Pervez Musharraf, ‘rakish’, ‘hot-headed’, and ‘capable of irresponsible action’, who sought to fashion himself as Pakistan’s Kemal Ataturk. Power corrupts; and absolute power makes you ridiculous.
Through the exigencies of personality, Devasher also examines the dynamics of Pakistan’s successive wars with India, and the stereotypes of the ‘Hindu’ who would crumble before superior Muslim will, which provoked strategic debacle after debacle.
There are also portraits of deep and agonising loneliness, and of love. The most moving relate to the most polarising figure, Jinnah, and the two women he loved. It is his wife Ruttie’s last letter, written shortly before her death (possibly suicide), exquisite both in language and sentiment, which is astonishing:
‘Try and remember me as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon… the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it.’
And the devoted Fatima, thrust violently out of national consciousness, rattling around abandoned and alone in a shuttered 24-room mansion for years, dies, possibly murdered, her body discovered nearly a day later. “She left behind a small poodle, a goat and a duck.”
This is a book that will make you laugh out loud from time to time, but reveals deep character, not only among the leaders but also the people who followed them. Z.A. Bhutto, caught consuming alcohol during a public speech, retorts:
“Fine I am drinking sharab... Unlike you sister f…rs, I don’t drink the blood of our people.” This brought the crowd to their feet and they chanted in Punjabi, “Long may our Bhutto live, long may our Bhutto drink.”
At the Helm is a book that you can read with pleasure and amusement, but there is much that is dark here; reminiscent of what Hannah Arendt spoke of as the ‘banality of evil’.
Ajai Sahni is executive director, Institute for Conflict Management
You can read this book with pleasure and amusement, but there is much that is dark here— portraits of deep loneliness