Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) L.K. Advani, and Benazir Bhutto had an extraordinary bond because Sindh was the duo birthplace.
"When she first met me at former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's funeral, along with Nawaz Sharif for the first time, she asked me whether she could speak to me in Sindhi."
She spoke to him in both Sindhi and English. And since then, we've kept in touch through the exchange of books and letters, as stated by L.K. Advani said at the launch of Benazir Bhutto's political biography, "Goodbye Shahzadi: A Political Biography of Benzair Bhutto," on Wednesday evening at the India International Centre in the capital.
Advani reminisced, "My personal interactions with her were very informal. She was different from the image she had built for herself in India and Pakistan."The BJP leader claimed that while in Pakistan, his family went to Bhutto's ancestral home in Larkana for a special reception.
Advani said that Benzair was a clever woman. "Once my daughter Pratibha told her a joke and she took a print of the joke back to Pakistan with her," Advani said.
Advani stated, The last time I spoke to her was in October 2007 after her convoy was attacked and she had a narrow escape," Advani said. And the next time, it was her husband Asif Zardari, whom he met, after her assassination, to condole the death. "That was the first time, I saw Zardari."
On December 27, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi while conducting an election campaign. Recalling her political beliefs, Advani said Benazir had always believed that, in contrast to Pakistan, India's apolitical army made significant contributions to the country's democracy. The BJP mainstay expressed her regret that Pakistan did not have democracy.
She claimed that the Election Commission's independence and India's free and fair electoral process were made possible by the country's guarantee of constitutional independence found in the Indian Constitution. But Advani waved and smiled, sidestepping the question of whether Pakistan was prepared for another female leader.
Written by senior London-based journalist Shyam Bhatia, a close friend of the late PPP chief from her Oxford days, the biography is based on a series of taped interviews that the author recorded over more than two decades, totaling about 100 hours.
The biography's publishers, Roli Books, claim that only 27 hours of tape were used for the book, which covers nearly every stage of her life, including her years in Oxford, her years as Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter, her marriage, her connection to India, the nuclear game, and her periods of power and exile. Up until the day of her passing. Merely a few weeks prior to her passing, Bhatia recorded their final interview, as per reports.
