In moments of extreme frustration at things that won’t work or won’t improve in India, I have argued with friends that what India needs is a few years with a dictator who is carved from the same mold as Hitler or Saddam Hussein!

But as I read Benazir Bhutto’s “Daughter of the East” I am not sure anymore. What she writes about the unsanitary conditions in prisons and inhumane treatment of prisoners is disturbing enough but the efforts by the military regime to keep Pakistan away from democracy and the extent to which it could go to achieve that objective simply chills one’s marrow. I have read what Hitler did in Germany and it appalled me. Still, he came from a different culture. But when I read accounts of what the Zia regime did in Pakistan I was simply horror-struck because these people were part of India before partition. Somehow that made the danger very real, the horror more chilling. If it can happen in Pakistan, can it also happen in India?

Give me a democracy that is broken in few places any time, at least people can make an effort to improve it. I am not saying there are no political murders or tortures for those who dare to raise their voice in a democracy. But not on such a grand scale and not so blatantly! As I turn through the pages, I again and again thank God that India never had to go through a dictator phase. Touch wood!

I also console myself saying that maybe the media wasn’t so powerful then as it is today. I have written in one of my previous blogs about how the media has lately been showing tendency to blow tiny matters out of proportion but somehow I think I will tolerate that over any one sided propaganda by state sponsored media.

I could never understand how most countries preferred to look away while Hitler sent so many Jews to their death and got away with it. I also don’t understand how Zia could get away with Bhutto’s execution despite there being so many appeals for clemency from so many world leaders. I wonder what Amnesty International achieved by compiling reports on torture of political prisoners – including women prisoners. It seems very logical to keep your hands off internal affairs of another country but is it ethical when it’s a question of loss of human life and dignity?