![Zulfikar] Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan | Library of Congress](https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/pnp/gtfy/00400/00457v.jpg)
*FRONTLINE*
Volume 24 – Issue 1 : 02-15, 2007
*INDIA’S NATIONAL MAGAZINE*
from the publishers of *THE HINDU*
by A.G. Noorani
ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO was one of those persons who, however talented, were
inherently incapable of being truthful.
He was treacherous to India, his country of birth, and simultaneously to
Pakistan, the country of adoption.
In India, he pursued cases to establish that he was an Indian citizen,
whose properties could not be declared evacuee property, while pursuing,
around the same period, claims for compensation in Pakistan as its citizen
who had lost properties in India.
*Ayub Khan’s Diaries have two entries of March 3 and June 30, 1967. One
of them reads thus: “Certain documents from India came into my hands,
stating that Mr. Bhutto had been, till 1958, claiming that he was an Indian
citizen and that he was staying in Karachi only temporarily. I have asked
for further confirmation. It just shows how unscrupulous and soulless this
man is.”
The second entry reads: “An awkward question was asked in the National
Assembly. Up to the time he became a Minister in 1958, Bhutto had been
declaring before the Indian courts that he was an Indian citizen residing
in Karachi. The object was to get some compensation for the property left
by his parents in India. In fact, he was selling his soul for about one
lakh fifty thousand rupees.
*All this was not known to us till recently when the matter was
discussed in the Indian Parliament and came out in that press.”
The official report of the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha on November 19,
1965 (Vol. LIV; No.12) and court records establish the charge
incontestably. Mahavir Tyagi, the Minister for Rehabilitation, said: “Shri
Z.A. Bhutto, Minister for External Affairs, in Pakistan was a resident of
Bombay along with his parents at the time of Partition and owned properties
there.
He was declared as an evacuee on 6th July, 1949 by the Deputy Custodian
and his properties were taken over as evacuee property. Shri Bhutto
contested the declaration order in various proceedings taken by him before
the Custodian, Custodian General, Bombay and Punjab High Court and
ultimately before the Supreme Court of India for 9 years.
While on the one hand he was contesting the decision that he was an
evacuee and disowned any connection with Pakistan, its nationality or
domicile, on the other hand he had filed an application in Pakistan as an
evacuee, claiming payment of a court deposit lying with the High Court,
Bombay.
However, in November 1958, the year in which he became a Minister in
Pakistan and took oath of secrecy there, on a petition made by Shri Z.A.
Bhutto that he had then settled in Pakistan and that his appeal be
dismissed as withdrawn, the Supreme Court granted the prayer and passed an
order accordingly.
“Extracts from his various petitions and statements recorded in the
course of proceedings are contained in the statement which I place on the
Table of the House (See Appendix XLIV, Annexure No. 19).”
Those documents reveal a lot. He gave the details to the Deputy Custodian
of Evacuee Property on oath on July 27, 1949 and to the Custodian on
November 17, 1951: “After passing the Senior Cambridge examination, the
applicant on or about 8th September 1947, left for the United States of
America from Bombay where he had been permanently residing.
The applicant further says that when he so left for abroad on 8th
September, 1947, he did so on an Indian passport.”
On July 27, 1949, he had said earlier, also on oath: “I do not know when
my mother or sisters left Bombay. I made applications to several
universities from 1945 onwards. My father received replies from them. I
returned to Karachi after 10 years. My education was in Bombay. I am not
residing in Karachi.”
In his appeal to the Custodian-General on January 30, 1956, he described
himself as temporarily residing in Karachi. “The applicant was sui juris
and had attained majority and merely because the applicant’s parents
resided inKarachi and his marriage took place there, it did not follow
therefrom that the applicant’s home was also in Karachi.”
He added in his appeal: “That the learned Custodian failed to appreciate
that the applicant went to the United States of America as an Indian
national on an Indian passport and continued to be an Indian national at
the relevant time.
That the learned Custodian erred in holding without any evidence on
record that the applicant after obtaining majority has at any relevant time
accepted Karachi as his domicile.”
On September 11, 1957, he filed an appeal in the Supreme Court of India
praying that all the proceedings against him as evacuee be quashed. He
became in 1957 a member of Pakistan’s delegation to the United Nations
General Assembly, which commences its session in September every year. He
became a member of Ayub Khan’s Cabinet as Minister of Commerce in 1958. He
withdrew his appeal in the Supreme Court stating “that the petitioner is,
however, now settled in Karachi and does not propose to prosecute appeal
No. 489 of 1957 pending in this honourable court any further”. That was on
August 13, 1958. The Court allowed the withdrawal on November 3, 1958. He
had become a member of Ayub Khan’s Cabinet three weeks earlier.
*Before that he wrote an obsequious letter to President Iskandar Mirza
in April 1958 from Geneva, where he had Pakistan’s delegation to the
Conference on the Law of the Sea. He wrote: “When the history of our
country is written by objective historians, your name will be placed even
before that of Mr. Jinnah. I say this because I mean to, and not because
you are the President of my country” (emphasis added, throughout).
*Meanwhile in Pakistan, Bhutto was pursuing his claims under the
Registration of Claims Act, 1955. He filed them in 1956. He owned the
Astoria Hotel at Churchgate in Bombay and the proceeds of a bungalow, `My
Nest,’ at Worli which his father, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto had sold.
He was Dewan of Junagadh, which acceded to Pakistan in August 1947. In
November 1947, Sir Shah Nawaz settled down in Karachi.
In the claim that he filed, Bhutto assessed the value of the Astoria
Hotel in Bombay at Rs.12 lakh and that of the house at Rs.1,40,000. The
Claims Officer, however, verified the first claim for Rs.3,93,952; as to
the second, he held that he was entitled to securities of the value of
Rs.1,40,000.
Bhutto appealed to the Deputy Claims Commissioner who, by his order dated
October 6, 1956, raised the value of the hotel for purposes of compensation
to Rs.9,97,991. This enhancement of nearly Rs.6 lakh did not satisfy
Bhutto. He went in revision to the Claims Commissioner, who, applying the
revised compensation formula approved by the government (40 times the gross
annual rental in 1946), assessed the capital value of the property at
Rs.44,30,400.
This final order was passed on September 18, 1957 – exactly one week
after Bhutto submitted his appeal to the Supreme Court of India claiming as
an Indian citizen the same property against which he was simultaneously
claiming compensation in Pakistan as a Pakistani citizen.