By Dipankar De Sarkar, IANS
London : In a last, moving testament from beyond the grave, former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto has given the example India on how a middle-class-led democracy can become an “international economic power” and warned of Pakistan breaking apart.
In a posthumous autobiography excerpted in the Sunday Times, the slain Pakistani leader revealed she worried whether Pakistan could survive the threat of disintegration and cited India as an example of how a nation can forge ahead.
“Democracy cannot be sustained in the absence of a stable and growing middle class. The growth of India into a regional and international economic power occurred – not coincidentally – as its middle class exploded into a huge economic and political force,” she said.
Bhutto said militants had “made many inroads into the very structure of governance” – through supporters and sympathisers – since the overthrow of her government in 1996.
Describing Pakistan as “a tinder-box that could catch fire quickly”, she said: “Sixty years after its creation, the case study of its record with democracy is a sad chronicle of steps forwards and huge steps backwards.”
She said education was “the first key” to building a middle class.
“Good public educational opportunity is the key to the economic and political progress of nations, and it can be so in the Islamic world as well. But in Pakistan $4.5 billion is spent on the military each year – an astounding 1,400 percent more than on education,” Bhutto wrote in her new autobiography, which is to be published by Simon and Schuster Feb 12.
In naming education, Bhutto makes a point that has also been a key element of British policy toward Pakistan, with British ministers insisting that any long-term strategy to counter fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan must help wean away boys and girls from religious seminaries that crop up in places where state schools do not exist.
“Militant madrassas did not flourish there because Pakistani citizens suddenly became more religiously orthodox than ever before in our history. The militants took advantage of parents from low-income social classes who wanted a better life for their children,” Bhutto said.
“If parents are so poor that they cannot educate, house, clothe, feed and provide healthcare for their children and the state fails to provide such basic human needs through public services, they will seek an alternative. The militant madrassas have become, over time, an alternative government for millions of Pakistanis.
“These political and military training camps invest little time and resources in primary education. Rather, they manipulate religion to brainwash children into becoming soldiers of an irregular army. They teach hatred and violence. They breed terrorists, not scientists. They undermine the very concept of national identity and rule of law,” Bhutto said.
She revealed that as many as 20,000 new madrassas had been built in Pakistan alone since she was ousted from power.