Begum Nusrat Bhutto

Begum Nusrat Bhutto was born on 23rd March 1929, former first lady of Pakistan, widow of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and mother of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairperson Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, who was also a former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Nusrat Ispahani is a Iranian from Kurdistan Province, Iran by heritage and daughter of a wealthy Iranian businessman who settled in Karachi, British India before its partition. Nusrat met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi where they got married. That was to be Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 2nd marriage.

As first lady from 1973-1977, Nusrat Bhutto functioned as a political hostess and accompanied her husband on a number of overseas visits. In 1979, after the trial and execution of her husband, she and her daughters were imprisoned and put under house arrest by the new regime of Zia-ul-Haq. However, due to health concerns she was later permitted to leave the country for London, where she was later joined by her daughters Benazir and Sanam. She became leader of the People’s Party of Pakistan during her London exile and although she was chairman of the party for life, her daughter Benazir Bhutto later replaced her in the post.

After returning to Pakistan in the late 1980s, she served several terms as an MP to the National Assembly from the family constituency of Larkana in Sindh. Also, during the administrations of her daughter Benazir, she became a cabinet minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

She outlived three of her children Murtaza, Benazir and Shahnawaz Bhutto. Of the immediate family, only Sanam Bhutto, daughter of Nusrat and Z. A. Bhutto remains. She suffered from the combined effects of a stroke and Alzheimer’s Disease. She passed away on October 23, 2011. Begum Nusrat Bhutto was 82 years old at the time of her death.

A Tribute to Begum Nusrat Bhutto
By Wajid Shamsul Hasan. March 24, 2007

Unaware of what horrendous things are happening to Quaid and her martyred husband ZAB’s Pakistan, Begum Nusrat Bhutto’s (March 23 is her 78th birthday) gaze is stuck on the horizon. One cannot read her mind. Though she appears overly blank but her once beautiful mien still retaining its noble grace—is full of tales that catalogue not only her eventful and yet tragic life and a catalogue of crimes and follies of undemocratic rulers that have scarred the pristine face of her country.

March 23 is a landmark day in the life of Pakistani nation—if at all a people fractured and divided by its rulers—can still be described as a nation. It is, indeed, a historic coincidence that in the year 1929 on March 23 Isphanis of Karachi were gifted by Allah, the Most Generous, with a daughter—Nusrat Khanum—who was chosen by destiny to be the great woman behind a colossus of man that her husband Zulfikar Ali Bhutto grew to be.

An Iranian Kurd by origin tracing her ancestry to the legendary Islamic hero, statesman and a great soldier Salahuddin Ayubi—Nusrat Bhutto was surfeit with compassion, grit, dauntless determination and courage from the days of her childhood. And her dynamism, love and care for humanity blossomed her into a young lady who would strive, seek and not yield at a challenging time when loads and loads of trains packed with refugees from India were pouring into Karachi in the aftermath of partition of the sub-continent.

As a self-less member of the Women’s National Guard she rendered herself day and night into the relief operation of the millions of the uprooted refugees, feeding them, providing them shelter and succour when Karachi—nay entire Pakistan—had no resources, no infra-structure, no proper administrative set up, no houses, no medicare—for the teeming thousands except of course a generous and hospitable heart and determined relief operators like Nusrat Khanum. At that hour of crisis though physically frail, she stood tall among the tallest of ladies that had plunged themselves in one of the biggest relief work ever undertaken. She showed rare qualities of leadership and selfless service that inspired others and strengthened young nation’s will to survive despite the odds—a fact recognized and acknowledged by both Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah and Begum Liaquat Ali Khan. Quaid too was proud of such Herculean services that Nusrat Khanum and the like had left no stone unturned to render to the afflicted people. Looking at their gigantic performance he had remarked that no odds, no challenges, no difficulties could overawe a nation that had youth like Nusrat in the field.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto was born with a silver spoon in her mouth to a wealthy and culturally rich Iranian businessman whose ancestors had settled in Karachi and had a vast network of roaring business across the sub-continent at the time of partition. And being a lady of sterling qualities of both head and heart as she was, she found her match in Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi. It was love at first sight that landed them in a wed-lock and a marriage that lasted to ZAB’s martyrdom and her uncompromising devotion to him to this day.

Her marriage to ZAB was also a great turning point in his life. Though himself a highly qualified and richly endowed scion of an illustrious parentage and heritage, stability at home provided to him by Begum Nusrat Bhutto, enabled him to harness his energies and knowledge in the service of the nation onto pastures new to the last drop of his blood—a promise that he had made in writing to Pakistan’s founder the Quaid when he was still a student. While he made his mark as Pakistan’s representative to the UN as a young lawyer, his wife stood behind as a rock, through thick and thin, hell and high water—to see him travel rapidly in the realms of one success after the other. He was no doubt a great man in the making and the woman behind him was Begum Nusrat Bhutto.

When he became youngest member of Ayub Khan’s cabinet—a position that he held—handling successfully different important portfolios—until he resigned as Foreign Minister, his capable wife Begum Bhutto acquitted admirably well the responsibilities of bringing up their four children—Benazir, Murtaza, Sanam and Shahnawaz and also the role of playing a perfect hostess. She also lent support to her husband socially, looking after his swelling number of admirers and followers. Since good bearing was in their blood and top priority fixed for them by their father was acquisition of high quality education, it fell on the shoulders of Begum Bhutto to bring the children in such a manner that it should do Bhutto heritage a proud.

Despite the fact that as the wife of Pakistan’s most ever dynamic foreign minister she had to travel with him far and wide and play hostess at various functions by him, she did not allow any strain on her responsibilities as a perfect mother. Her total devotion in bringing up their children is perhaps the reason that all of their off-springs were highly educated.

The true strength and greatness of character—that she had in her blood by virtue of her ancestral lineage with the great Kurd—Salahuddin Ayubi—manifested itself when her husband broke away with President Ayub Khan for his surrendering to India at Tashkent followed by his resignation as foreign minister and formation of Pakistan’s People’s Party as harbinger of change and empowerment of the people. Once he was opposed to Ayub Khan, the military dictator unleashed the state hounds on him, incarcerated him and persecuted him to no ends. Begum Bhutto kept alighted the flame of her husband’s struggle for democracy and unshackling of the masses, braced to face the dictatorial batons, worst harassment and intimidations keeping the masses march onward until their victory.

Begum Bhutto, however, gave her best when Bhutto Sahib’s elected government was removed on July 5, 1977 by General Ziaul Haq’s coup in the dark of the night in the bleakest hour in the nation’s life. She not only lead the people and kept ignited their democratic aspirations when her husband was incarcerated facing a concocted murder charge. Though she was not alone this time as her equally talented and gifted daughter Benazir Bhutto was with her, she nominated by Bhutto Sahib as the party chairperson in his absence, kept the party flag high in defiance of a ruthless martial law and state oppression to the extent that she received a head injury in the baton charge by Zia’s thugs. And this head wound—having not allowed its proper and timely treatment– had an everlasting injurious effect on her to the extent that it has gradually disabled her. Despite that she has shown tremendous forbearance and tenacity. Assassination of her youngest son by Zia’s hired killers—Shahnawz Bhutto—did have a devastating effect on her followed by Murtaza Bhutto’s in the prime of his life. The head wound that did not overwhelm her not-withstanding constant persecution, character-assassination and life in exile, did finally lead to incurable consequences.

The revenge of the Pakistani people as manifested in the electoral victory of Pakistan People’s Party under her daughter Benazir Bhutto’s leadership in late 1988 and in 1993 despite the worst possible manipulations and rigging by the successive unrepresentative rulers and the highest number of votes PPP received in the overly flawed 2002 polls—are the fruits of the selfless devotion of Bhuttos to the people and the overwhelming confidence they enjoy among the masses.

Twice Begum Bhutto was elected member of the National Assembly, remained a senior minister and also a constant source of inspiration for her daughter former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, masses and PPP workers especially. She has done proud to the country by representing Pakistan at various international forums and her contribution as the Chairperson of the Red Crescent had gone a long way in improving the country’s image. She has also received various international awards for her immense contribution to the greatest good of the largest number especially workers, women and children.

Begum Nusrat Bhutto had always been a fighter. She fought the battle for the empowerment of the people in the streets against dictatorship. She fought for their rights in the apex courts. And even today she is fighting a battle with life under the constant care of her loving daughter Benazir Bhutto and her grand children so that she could see the fulfillment of the democratic dream of the Quaid and her martyred husband who walked to the gallows head high so that his people do not have to bow to oppression and dictatorship. May Allah, the Most Compassionate, give her strength and long life to see the end of the journey with the early return of democracy and blossoming of a civil society that ensures equality to all—irrespective of caste, creed or color.

Interview of Begum Nusrat Bhutto

I am afraid and fearing for Pakistan’s future: Nusrat Bhutto

Nusrat Bhutto, chairman of the outlawed Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and wife of the executed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto arrived in Paris seriously ill with cancer. Looking frail but decidedly determined. In her first interview to an Indian periodical since her husband’s execution, she speaks about conditions in Pakistan, her years in solitary confinement and the future of the PPP. This interview was conducted in early 1980’s.

Paris, for years a haven for dethroned kings and South American dictators, ousted African presidents and prime ministers hardly noticed the stealthy arrival of Nusrat Bhutto. chairman of the outlawed Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and wife of Pakistan’s executed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

French television, which graphically recorded events like the spectacular entry in a hijacked aircraft of deposed Iranian president Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, Mujahedin chief Masood Rajavi and the wandering Kampuchean leader Prince Norodom Sihanouk, seemed to have missed Nusrat Bhutto completely.

The 53-year-old indomitable woman, whose spirit and fire is apparently unbroken by the execution of her husband or long years spent in detention under General Zia-ul-Haq’s martial law regime, had decided to quietly check into a gracious Parisian hotel. After her media splash in Munich, her first interview in France appeared in an obscure French daily.

Gravely ill with cancer of the left lung, Nusrat Bhutto, after an 83-day dispute with Pakistani authorities over whether she required hospitalisation abroad is now optimistic that West European doctors can cure her. Besides treatment, her German doctors had prescribed prolonged rest.

This is what she set out to do in Paris as she checked into a suite in one of its most elegant hotels – the Plaza Athenee – on the Avenue Montaigne which is chock-full of glittering fashion houses.

Tending to her meticulously was her younger sister. A bright and energetic woman. Behjat fusses over the frail and angular Nusrat. She bristles: “Nusrat is just four years older than me: but look what they have done to my sister.”

In a lengthy interview to Correspondent Ramesh Chandran – her first to an Indian periodical since her husband’s execution – Nusrat Bhutto, swaddled in woollens and a stylish bottle green scarf, showed flashes of anger when she referred to the “martial law authorities” (whom she kept calling “they”) and their reneging on vows to hold elections. But there was little bitterness.

She speaks lucidly and with a daunting precision for dates. Her illness causes her to pause frequently and only once during the interview, when she referred to her final moments with her late husband, did she seem close to losing her composure. What emerged is a resolute. lough-as-nails individual. She frequently takes recourse to her PPP slogan: “Democracy our policy. All power to the people.”

She speaks about conditions inside Pakistan with little inhibition, but shows no analytical appetite for issues loaded with political implications – Pak-US relations. Pakistan’s nuclear programme and lie recent Indo-Pak initiative. Ever since Nusrat and Behjat moved into the Athenee, French echoes in its tasteful foyer along with the hushed cadences of mellifluous Urdu and Sindhi, spoken by handsome Pakistanis. Watching the proceedings from a polite distance are two French Secret Servicemen sporting tell-tale dark glasses. Excerpts.

Q. Your doctors seem optimistic about curing you. Are you planning to return to Pakistan after your treatment ?
A. Yes, I have to go back to Pakistan. But we want to have another test in four or five months to see how effective the medicines and my treatment have been. Then the doctors will tell me what to do next. Right now I feel a little better.

Q. There has been some speculation about what finally convinced the Pakistani authorities to let you go abroad – the worsening of your physical condition or increasingly strident international pressure.
A. It wasn’t just one thing. There was pressure building up inside Pakistan. The Pakistan Medical Association had seen my report. and were agitated that the processing of my application to go abroad for treatment was taking so long.

Then there were sympathizers and well-wishers both at home and abroad. And Mrs. Gandhi’s letter to Zia. She was the only head of state who openly suggested I should be allowed to go abroad to have access to better medical facilities.

Q. According to reports in the international press, there seems to have been an immense crowd of well-wishers at the airport to see you off.
A. I don’t know how many there were. It was a wave of humanity, and I was sort of getting squashed in the crowds and I did faint since I couldn’t get enough air. This happens due to my illness.

Q. You have been under detention during years of martial rule. Did you spend most of the time under house arrest or in prison?
A. You mean in the last five and a half years? Well out of this period, four years I have been under detention, both in prison and under house arrest. I have been moved all over Pakistan, under house arrest in Lahore, in Tihala Jail, the Karachi Central Jail…

Q. What were the conditions like in prison?
A. Inevitably, in the first few days, they would treat us badly. We were kept in second class cells. Then gradually they would relax certain conditions, by which you could get your own food, beds, clothes. But their cruelty took other forms.

None of our friends or our relations were allowed to come and see us, like other prisoners were entitled to. They wouldn’t go according to the jail manual. They said under martial law, jail manuals don’t count.

Q. Did you ever spend time with other criminals?
A. In Karachi Central Jail – on March 7, 1981 to be precise – I was kept in a ‘C’ Class prison for four days. Mind you: this is being done to a Member of the National Assembly and head of the Pakistan People’s Party. There were 35 other women prisoners who were singers, dancers, kidnappers, prostitutes…

Q. What was the hardest part in all these years of incarceration you have had to endure?
A. More than anything else, it was solitary confinement. You weren’t allowed to see a single human being. The term ‘house arrest’ exists only in name. You were completely alone in solitary confinement. Their method was to take over our house and then convert it into a jail.

They would issue this proclamation: “Now you are going to be under detention in sub-jail, 70 Clifton” (the Bhutto residence). They would then impose all the rules of a normal jail like bringing their own locks, opening and closing the gates at a certain hour. They refused permission for anybody to come and see us. We would then request them to grant us at least the facilities available to common criminals. This they consistently refused to do.

Q. The 1982 Amnesty International Report makes disturbing reading. It alleges several thousand political prisoners inside Pakistan. Many of them are flogged; there is systematic use of torture and a few have died as a result. Pakistani officials have denied all this.
A. The Amnesty report is entirely true. Political prisoners have been tortured. I repeat: political prisoners have been tortured and some have died. They have been flogged so severely that they have been maimed.

When Zia orders hogging, it is not to punish someone for his crime, but to maim him. Often the victim’s kidney’s have been ruptured, spinal cords broken and they are carried away on stretchers after the beatings. For punishments, Islam, sets out conditions: thin canes have to be used, the skin of the person should not turn red and get cracked due to the flogging. If that happens, the floggers ought to be flogged. What is now happening in Zia’s Pakistan is flogging to maim.

Q. Your daughter Benazir – how did she face up to all this ?
A. Benazir spent an entire year in solitary confinement. During this time the martial law authorities wouldn’t let even her lawyer see her, nor any of her friends or party colleagues. Besides the loneliness in prison, it can be unbearably hot – as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Once when some close friends took some cold water for her, the jail superintendent returned it. Under any sort of rules, this should not have been allowed to happen.

Q. After the crackdown on the political parties following the hijacking last year, the Opposition seems to have no sense of purpose or cohesion. It seems to have been unable to find an issue to rouse the people to back demands for return to civilian rule. It seems to have been unable to generate the kind of mass upsurge that brought down Ayub Khan.
A. At that time there was no martial law in the country. Ayub Khan had martial law for only three and a half months. General Zia has ruled under martial law regulations for more than five and a half years. Since he is hated and is unpopular in the country, Zia knows full well what will happen if tomorrow there is no martial law…

Q. Well, what will happen if tomorrow there is no martial law ? If there are elections will the PPP win?
A. The PPP is the only party in Pakistan which can be called a national party, and if there are elections tomorrow, we will win easily, even if I have to say it.

Q. Prior to his US visit in the last fortnight, President Zia promised in interviews to the American medic that elections will be scheduled in 1984 in Pakistan.
A. No, he wouldn’t. He will never hold elections under the rules of the Constitution. By 1984, if he thinks that the PPP is going to disintegrate. Zia is sadly mistaken. For the last five and a half years he has caught to destroy our party, but has not got any-where. He has conjured up court cases against our senior leaders. Some of them are told if they left the party, their problems will be solved. Others are lured with the posts of chief ministerships. He brazenly says he is using the carrot and stick treatment.

Q. The Pakistan President had some other interesting things to say too. He declared that elections in Pakistan are an anathema and create a crisis; and that a little while ago politics in Pakistan meant violence, character assassination, polarisation…
A. Rubbish. Absolute rubbish. These are empty phrases by which he is defending himself and his martial law. If the situation continues, if we don’t have elections and a democratic structure, Pakistan may break into pieces – then there will be no Pakistan. It is essential and vitally important that we have a Constitution. I am afraid and fearing for Pakistan’s future. It will be a great tragedy if some such calamity occurs.

Q. Regarding Pak-US relations: Having been the mainstay of the US defensive strategy in South Asia, ever since Soviet troops moved into Afghanistan, do you think the large infusions of military and economic assistance have helped prop up the martial law regime?
A. Well, the present US Administration says that the American assistance is meant for the people of Pakistan, not for General Zia. We accept this argument.

Q. Do you have plans to go to Washington? There was some talk of an invitation from President Reagan.
A. There was no invitation. I don’t know who started this rumour. But I have taken a visa for the United States. If I need a second opinion from American doctors, I may go there, and not necessarily to Washington.

Q. Going back a few years to your husband’s trial – it was widely condemned as a travesty. Do you think a highly coordinated international campaign could have probably saved his life?
A. There was considerable international pressure. Leaders from various countries of the world had made appeals. But more appeals could not have helped; it would not have made the slightest difference, for Zia’s mind was already made up.

Q. Were you allowed to see him on the last day before his execution?
A. Yes. On the last day, they took me and my daughter Benazir to see him in Tihala.

Q. How was he then? What did he talk about?
A. He was very brave. He talked about a great many things. I knew it was his last day. The jail superintendent knew it too. But I couldn’t bear to tell him. When he saw me and Benazir, he asked the superintendent: “So my wife and daughter have come together. Is this my last day?” The superintendent replied, “Yes, it is.” “Have you got your orders? ” he asked. The superintendent replied: “Yes, it is on my table.” By then it didn’t seem to affect him.

He was very calm. He made light of the situation. He said, “Okay, get me a barber. I’ll have a nice shave, look clean and trim.” I don’t know how he could have remained completely under control till the very end. For me, it was terrible… He said it was not the fault of these people. The jail was packed with policemen. We couldn’t move since the corridors were so crowded. We couldn’t hug him or kiss him. Yes. he was very calm and brave.

Q. Bhutto was known to be an incorrigible India-baiter. He despised Indians, didn’t he?
A. On the contrary. He wanted lasting friendship with India. He wanted India and Pakistan to live in peace. Otherwise he would not have gone to Simla. And the treaty would not have been termed a success then. He admired Indians.

Q. What did he think of Mrs. Gandhi?
A. He had great respect for Mrs Gandhi. And his admiration for Jawaharlal Nehru was well-known. As you know, Shahnawaz Bhutto knew Mrs. Gandhi’s grandfather and grandmother closely. Besides all this, he was born and brought up in India.

Q. During all these years of detention, you have remained out of touch with your sons Murtaza and Shahnawaz. Have you met them since leaving Pakistan?
A. You may not believe this, but I am yet to get a phone call from either of them enquiring after their mummy who is seriously unwell. I have no information of their whereabouts. But I have been reliably informed that they have left Kabul.

Q. What do you and your-party think of Al Zulfikar’s style of functioning?
A. My sons are not young boys anymore. They are grown up. They know what they are doing. As far as I and the Pakistan People’s Party are concerned, we believe completely in democracy and democratic methods.

Q. When you heard that Mrs. Gandhi had written to General Zia requesting your release to go abroad for treatment, what was your reaction?
A. I was so happy. I thought: how lucky-Indians are! They not only have a democratic-minded leader but also a system. I wrote to her from Karachi, thanking her.

Q. You have seen your husband hanged, your family fragmented, spent years under detention, and you are now very ill. Where do you find solace under moments of stress?
A. From the people of Pakistan, I get all the solace. They have given me such great support. I don’t get any encouragement and hope from any other sources.

They give me hope for the future. Because they are a good people, a brave people. And I have seen how much they have suffered. I have seen youngsters with their toe-nails pulled off, leenaged boys who have been so lashed that they are unable to walk. They are indeed a brave people … Their encouragement is what makes me fight on.