Nusrat Bhutto

Early life

Nusrat Ispahani was born on 23 March 1929 in Isfahan, Pahlavi Iran. Her father was a businessman who came from the wealthy Iranian Shia Hariri family in Isfahan. Her mother was from Kurdistan province,Pahlavi Iran. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to British India, where they initially lived in Bombay and then moved to Karachi before the Partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. She grew up with Iranian traditions at her home but adapted to Indian Muslim culture outside.

After emigrating to British India, Nusrat attended the University of Karachi where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Humanities in 1950.

Political life

As first lady from 1973 to 1977, Nusrat Bhutto functioned as a political worker and accompanied her husband on a number of overseas visits. In 1979, after the trial and execution of her husband, she succeeded her husband as leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party as chairman for life. She led the PPP's campaign against General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's regime. Alongside her daughter Benazir Bhutto, she was arrested numerous times and placed under house arrest and in prison in Sihala. Nusrat Bhutto was attacked by police with batons while attending a cricket match at Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, when the crowd began to raise pro Bhutto slogans. In 1982, ill with cancer, she was given permission to leave the country by the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq for medical treatment in London at which point her daughter, Benazir Bhutto, became acting leader of the party, and, by 1984, the party chairman.

After returning to Pakistan in the late 1980s, she served two terms as a Member of Parliament to the National Assembly from the family constituency of Larkana, Sindh. During the administrations of her daughter Benazir, she became a cabinet minister and Senior Federal Minister. In the 1990s, she and Benazir became estranged when Nusrat took the side of her son Murtaza during a family dispute but were later reconciled after Murtaza's murder. She lived the last few years of her life with her daughter's family in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and later suffered from the combined effects of a stroke and Alzheimer's disease.

Personal life, illness and death

Besides her native Persian, Bhutto was fluent in Urdu and Sindhi. Nusrat met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Karachi where they later got married on 8 September 1951. and from March 2024 to the present.

Bhutto was suspected of cancer in 1982, and hence, allowed to leave Pakistan for medical treatment. While she continued her political activities from outside the country, she handed over the reigns of the party to her daughter Benazir. Three years later, her youngest son, Shahnawaz was found dead at Cannes. She withdrew from public life particularly after her son Murtaza's death in 1996, which some suggest coincides with her onset of Alzheimer's disease. At the time of her daughter Benazir's assassination, the disease was so advanced that she could not comprehend the killing.

Bhutto used a ventilator during her last days. She died at the age of 82 in the Iranian Hospital Dubai on 23 October 2011. Her son-in-law, then Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, cut short his official trip to Jordan to escort her body from Dubai to Pakistan. Her grandchildren, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari, and Aseefa Bhutto Zardari came in from London. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani announced a public holiday for the next day, as well as a ten-day mourning period. The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by her husband, announced that it will suspend all political activities for the following 40 days to mourn her death.

Her body was laid to rest at Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in Larkana District the next day. She was buried next to her husband and children in the Bhutto family mausoleum at a ceremony attended by thousands of mourners.

Pakistan International Airlines ran special flights from Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi to Sukkur for those who wanted to attend the funeral.

Notes

References

References

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