Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: Evening

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan. Explore interesting quotes on evening.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: 82   quotes 3   likes

“It is even more dangerous to be pro-West. One disagreement in defence of a national cause, and out goes that civilian leader by a coup d'etat. He gets replaced by a tin-pot military dictator who would not dare to disagree about anything, including the vital national interests of his country.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 69.
Context: in Western estimation it is preferable to be a communist leader of a communist state, than to be a non-communist leader of a non-communist state having friendly relations with communist states. The anomaly does not cease here. It is even more dangerous to be pro-West. One disagreement in defence of a national cause, and out goes that civilian leader by a coup d'etat. He gets replaced by a tin-pot military dictator who would not dare to disagree about anything, including the vital national interests of his country.

Country

“So I must proceed with patience, by reforms, measures that will gradually lead to socialism—nationalizing when possible, refraining from it when necessary, respecting the foreign capital of which we have need. I must take my time, be a surgeon who doesn’t plunge his knife too deeply into the fabric of society. This is a very sick society, and if it’s not to die under the knife, you have to oper­ ate with caution, waiting slowly for a wound to heal, for a reform to be consolidated. We’ve been asleep for so many centuries, we can’t violently wake ourselves up with an earthquake. Besides, even Lenin, in the beginning, stooped to compromises.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Patience , Time , Waiting

“Mrs. Gandhi has only one dream: to take over the whole sub­ continent, to subjugate us. She’d like a confederation so as to make Pakistan disappear from the face of the earth, and that’s why she says we’re brothers, and so forth. We’re not brothers. We never have been. Our religions go too deep into our souls, into our ways of life. Our cultures are different, our attitudes are different. From the day they’re born, to the day they die, a Hindu and a Muslim are subject to laws and customs that have no points of contact. Even their ways of eating and drinking are different. They’re two strong and irrecon­ cilable faiths. It’s shown by the fact that neither of the two has ever succeeded in reaching a compromise with the other, a modus vivendi. Only dictatorial monarchies, foreign invasions, from the Mongols to the British, have succeeded in holding us together by a kind of Pax Romana. We’ve never arrived at a harmonious relationship.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Soul , Faith , Religion , Drink

“Politically the Mukti Bahini count for nothing, lacking as they do any ideological preparation, any indoctrination, any discipline. Then socially speaking, they’re a disturbance—they only know how to fire in the air, frighten people, steal, yell Joi Bangla. And you can’t run a country by yelling Joi Bangla. The Bengali Maoists, on the other hand … well, they certainly don’t represent a very refined productat most they’ve read half of Mao’s little red book. But they’re an articulate force and don’t let themselves be used by the Indians, and I don’t even think they’re against the unity of Pakistan. They’ll end up having the upper hand.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Reading , Country , People , Joy

“Tikka Khan was a soldier doing a soldier’s job. He went to East Pakistan with precise orders and came back by precise orders. He did what he was ordered to do, though he wasn’t always in agree­ ment, and I picked him because I know he’ll follow my orders with the same discipline. And he won’t try to stick his nose in politics. I can’t destroy the whole army, and anyway his bad reputation for the events in Dacca is exaggerated. There’s only one man really respon­sible for those events—Yahya Khan. Both he and his advisers were so drunk with power and corruption they’d even forgotten the honor of the army. They thought of nothing but acquiring beautiful cars, building beautiful homes, making friends with bankers, and sending money abroad. Yahya Khan wasn’t interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else. What can you say of a leader who starts drinking as soon as he wakes up and doesn’t stop until he goes to bed? You’ve no idea how painful it was to deal with him. He was really Jack the Ripper.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Money , Home , Pain , Drink

“According to what I’ve been able to find out so far, there must have been something like fifty thousand. Mind you, too many. Even if the action was morally justified. I’m not trying to minimize things; I’m trying to bring them back to reality—there’s quite a dif­ference between fifty thousand and three million.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Reality

“Oh, Mrs. Gandhi is wrong about her father! Nehru instead was a great politician—she should have half her father’s talent! Look, even though he was against the principle of Pakistan, I’ve always admired that man. When I was young I was actually enthralled by him. Only later did I understand that he was a spellbinder with many faults, vain, ruthless, and that he didn’t have the class of a Stalin or a Churchhill or a Mao Tse-tung.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972

Understanding