When Compassion Transcended Politics

Concern for the health of Begum Nusrat Bhutto prompted Indira Gandhi to appeal for help from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, newly discovered documents have revealed. India’s Prime Minister was sufficiently distressed to write to her British counterpart following reports of how cancer victim Nusrat Bhutto was being denied medical treatment abroad.

In her letter from the Prime Minister’s House, New Delhi, dated October 28, 1982, Gandhi told Thatcher, “I do not believe in interfering in the affairs of other countries. However, once in a while there is an issue which moves one.

“I have earlier spoken to you about Benazir Bhutto. Now the news that her mother, Mrs Bhutto is being denied the necessary medical treatment in spite of her serious illness and deteriorating condition, is disturbing. The Bhutto family have not been friends of mine at any time. But in the present circumstances, it seems cruel not to allow Mrs Bhutto to go abroad for medical treatment.

“There is a strong feeling in India, especially amongst our women. Several organisations are approaching me to take up the issue. I have written to President Zia-ul-Haq requesting him to consider this matter on purely humanitarian grounds.”

Thanks to Indira Gandhi’s intervention, Nusrat Bhutto was eventually examined by a government medical board in Islamabad and allowed to travel abroad for treatment of her lung cancer. When she arrived for medical treatment in Paris the following month, Nusrat Bhutto told the media how her late husband had ‘great respect’ for Indira Gandhi and additionally how he wanted ‘lasting friendship’ between India and Pakistan.

Indira Gandhi’s unexpected humanitarian gesture highlights the complex ties between two leading families of South Asia, the Nehru-Gandhis of India and the Bhuttos of Pakistan, and the even more complicated links between their respective countries.

Nusrat Bhutto was the widow of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was overthrown in a military coup in 1977 and hanged two years later following a dubious show trial. Both husband and wife had no reason to cherish ties with India following Pakistan’s disastrous military defeat in the 1971 war between the two countries.

Subsequently, it was Bhutto who launched a programme to acquire nuclear weapons to surpass those developed by India.

Despite their mutual hostilities and simmering rivalries, Indira Gandhi still found time to reach out to Bhutto’s immediate family following his 1979 execution. Her determined efforts to get medical treatment for Nusrat Bhutto is a perfect example of how her human feelings surpassed any resentment for Pakistan’s ruling elite.

After Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s death, Indira Gandhi also reached out to his two sons, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, offering them support and shelter from the vindictive retaliations launched by Pakistan’s military dictator General Zia ul Haq. Both brothers first fled to Afghanistan and then to Europe to evade Zia-authorised hit squads charged with finding and killing them.

While they were still on the run, Murtaza and Shahnawaz were received by Indira Gandhi at her official residence in New Delhi. She offered them all reasonable assistance to help them survive.

Details of that ‘reasonable assistance’ have never been disclosed, but Murtaza, my fellow classmate at Oxford, told me years later it was both generous and large hearted.

These gestures towards the Bhutto family may explain why Murtaza and Shahnawaz’s sister, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, embraced a wide circle of Indian friends and enjoyed her many private trips across the border to Indian destinations.

Indian diplomats have also testified how military clashes between India and Pakistan were reduced when Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister, first between 1988-1990 and then again between 1993 and 1996.

After she was removed from office, Benazir Bhutto made a series of private trips to the Indian city of Ajmer where she offered prayers at the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti. During the first of those trips to Ajmer in 2001, she was offered and accepted ‘Shanni ki angoothi’ (Shanni’s ring), fashioned from a horse shoe, that she wore under her diamond wedding ring.

The Indian family who gifted Benazir the ‘Shanni’ ring explained how her life was in perpetual danger, but if she survived beyond 2010, she would live to a ripe old age. Benazir was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December 2007.

Shyam Bhatia is the author of ‘Goodbye Shahzadi’, a political biography of Benazir Bhutto, and a senior independent journalist based in the UK.