Last week, the veteran political analyst Najam Sethi claimed that the jailed Pakistani politician Imran Khan was utilising contents from the book From Dictatorship to Democracy (FDTD) to construct his political strategy. The book, by the American political scientist Gene Sharpe, was first published in 1993. 

In the 2000s and early 2010s, FDTD became popular among social and political activists, especially those opposed to authoritarian regimes. In FDTD, Sharpe provides ways to understand authoritarianism and discusses tactics that can effectively deal with it. 

Khan’s regime was ousted in 2022 through a No Confidence Vote in the parliament. He was then arrested a year later on various charges of corruption. Khan has never been much of a reader. But, according to Sethi, Khan’s new-found ‘anti-establishment’ rhetoric and strategy clearly seem to be stemming from Sharpe’s book. However, Sethi also added that Khan might not have read the book himself but it seems he has been receiving pointers from it sent to him by a group of people in London. 

Whatever the case may be, a political leader utilising a book to draw strategies/inspiration from is nothing unique as such. There are quite a few examples in this respect — even though, unlike Khan, these examples are of leaders who were voracious readers. The former Pakistani prime minister Z.A. Bhutto was one such leader. He had a massive library. Bhutto always took out time to read, even during his years as the country’s president and then PM.

He would enter his library at midnight and read till 4am. Many years ago, when I was in college in the mid/late 1980s, the owner of one of the oldest bookstores in Karachi, Thomas & Thomas, told me that political and history books that the store used to receive would first reach Bhutto’s library before being placed on the store’s shelves. 

Across history, politicians and statesmen have often found inspiration and political strategies in books. However, the age of ‘leader-readers’ now seems to be at an end

Bhutto was also the proud owner of one of the world’s largest collections of books on Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous French military officer and statesman. In an early 1970s interview with the Italian journalist Orianna Fallaci, Bhutto constantly compared himself with Napoleon. In 1979, an article published in India Times recalled how often Bhutto did this. The writer of the piece wrote, “It was obvious Bhutto aspired to model himself on the lines of the brilliant Frenchman.”

But, of course, “the brilliant Frenchman” has remained a divisive figure in history. The ‘child of the French Revolution’, a staunch Republican and military genius came to power through a military coup, introduced economic, social and political reforms, but did so as a dictator and then as a self-declared emperor, before dying a lonely death in exile. Bhutto was hanged in 1979 by the Ziaul Haq dictatorship. 

The 19th century US president Abraham Lincoln was a voracious reader too. According to Jonathan White, a professor of American Studies, the book that helped shape Lincoln’s iconoclastic views on slavery was The Columbian Orator. It was first published in 1797 and is a collection of political essays, poems and dialogues by historical figures. This book went on to inspire some prominent anti-slavery activists in the US. It became a favourite of Lincoln’s too. As president, Lincoln abolished slavery in the US after delivering a crushing military defeat to states that had refused to end slavery and had seceded.  

Some other renowned readers include the former British prime minister Winston Churchill; the founder of the modern Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal; and Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. One of Churchill’s most cherished books was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by the British spy T.E. Lawrence. 

Lawrence, more widely known as Lawrence of Arabia, had helped organise Arab tribes during the first world war and to persuade them to side with British forces against the pro-German Ottoman armies. In the book, Lawrence gives a detailed account of how he went about doing this. Incidentally, in 1939, Churchill became a ‘wartime leader’, leading England during the second world war as PM. 

Kemal was a busy reader as well. He was enthralled by the book Social Contract, by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. First published in 1762, this book inspired widespread social and political reforms in France, especially during and after the French Revolution. The revolution was largely anti-clerical and anti-monarchy, as was the republic that Kemal was aspiring to form and eventually did.

Communist statesmen such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were voracious readers as well. In 2016, the British historian Geoffrey Roberts described Stalin as a “bloody tyrant and a bookworm.” Roberts wrote: “Stalin was a brute but an intellectual.” Roberts then added, “Books helped insulate Stalin from the inhumane realities accompanying his violent pursuit of utopia.”

In the 1990s, it was a book that shaped former US president Bill Clinton’s Balkans policy. A civil war erupted in the erstwhile Yugoslavia and the country shattered. The shattering produced different nation-states, formed on the basis of ethnicity. These states at once went to war with each other, committing horrific atrocities, especially against Bosnian Muslims. 

Clinton refused to heed the advice of those who urged him to intervene. The book that convinced Clinton not to intervene was R.D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts. Kaplan had posited that a long history of mistrust and outright hatred among all ethnic groups against each other in the Balkans can never be resolved. And that any intervention would be largely futile. However, as the Balkan War intensified and dreadful images of massacres began to circulate on TV screens, Clinton finally ordered a US military intervention.

The former US president Barack Obama was (and still is) a keen reader of books. In 2008, when Obama was campaigning to become president, he was once seen getting off a plane holding Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World. Obama’s opponents (in populist media outlets) asked why he was reading a book “by a Muslim writer about American decline?” Of course, these were the usual nut-jobs shooting off. 

More interesting though is how Doris Goodwin’s Team of Rivals — a book about Lincoln’s cabinet — inspired Obama to include people in his first-term cabinet who had opposed or challenged his presidential nomination. This included Hilary Clinton, who he had defeated in the 2008 Democratic Party primaries. Obama appointed her as Secretary of State. 

The age of the leader-readers might be coming to an end — especially in a world in which many heads of state and government spend more time watching populist TV channels and hearing YouTubers spout wild conspiracy theories. After all, most of these leaders are populists, and populists often view intellectual pursuits such as reading as ‘elitist.’

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 24th, 2024