‘Taliban never scared Pak, our federal laws did’

What is it like to rediscover a parent as a grown-up ? "Full of surprises ," admits Song of Blood and Sword author Fatima Bhutto on the day two of The Times of India Literary Carnival. She was surprised when her father's first love, a Greek woman called Della, suspected that there was "somebody else".

And that they broke up only 10 months before Fatima was born. And she was shocked when she learnt that her father's thesis advisor in college was Samuel Huntington. Actor Kabir Bedi brought out more from Fatima in an informal chat at a session aptly called 'Fathers and Daughters'. Did the direct exposure to violence leave her scarred? "Violence, direct or indirect, scars."

Fatima stands for a clean Pakistan, but it's not something she means to achieve by joining politics. Perhaps, an anti-graft movement like Anna Hazare's , prods Bedi. "We have not seen such a movement in Pakistan yet, but there are movements to the contrary like the National Reconciliation Ordinance 'or National Robbers Ordinance' that grants amnesty to the corrupt." When asked if she bought into rumours that her father Murtaza Bhutto was killed because he shaved off Asif Ali Zardari's moustache, she said conspiracy theories were a South Asian speciality. So, why was Murtaza killed? "For pointing out corruption, for being an alternative and when politics revolves around a name (Bhutto), there is no space for two." Fatima isn't complaining only because her father was killed, "but because 3,000 people have been killed in Karachi in encounter killings".

Had her father lived would he have changed Pakistan? "I hope so, maybe, but power corrupts and he, probably, would not have been untouched by it," she says. "But he was a secular man, opposed the brutality of the Zia years when Hudood, (which holds a raped woman, and not the rapist, guilty) blasphemy laws and obscene powers came to be. Taliban never frightened Pakistan , our federal laws did that."

What about the father in Kabir Bedi? He was away during his daughter Pooja's formative years, after divorcing from her mother Protima Bedi, but he sees in her "the same strong, assertive, independent and outspoken streak; I see a lot of Protima in Pooja."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Taliban-never-scared-Pak-our-federal-laws-did/articleshow/10976813.cms