Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is a towering figure of the twentieth century. He commanded the allegiance of millions of people inside Pakistan, across the Muslim world and in the Third World as a hero of the people. His leadership gave pride to his followers, to his Nation and to oppressed people everywhere.

Quaid e Awam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was born on January 5, 1928 in Larkana at Al Murtaza to Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto and Lady Khursheed Bhutto. He was their first son born in the shadow of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation of Moenjodaro close to Sehwan Sharif renowned for Lal Shahbaz Qalandar's shrine where his Mother offered prayers. The Greek conqueror Alexander the Great had passed through Sehwan centuries earlier. Now was born another conqueror, he who would conquer the hearts of a Nation through supreme qualities of leadership, vision, intellectual breadth, charisma, dauntlessness, bravery, boldness and a program for political redemption of an exploited people.

Half a century later this great leader was murdered at the age of fifty at the hands of petty pygmies and cowards who feared him in life and then feared him from his grave. The brutal murder of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto stained the land with blood, divided and polarised the society, led to political turmoil and chaos with tens of thousands repeatedly arrested, whip lashed, hanged, shot at, tortured. It led to repeated movements against the military dictatorship with young men burning themselves alive in protest and others facing the hangmen's noose shouting Long Live Bhutto. Never was such courage demonstrated or so strong a resistance witnessed in the annals of modern history.  

That assassination of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the hands of a military dictator, who seized power in the middle of the night like a thief, set into motion a series of events which culminated in growing threats to the Muslim world.

Today the Muslim world is in crisis. This crisis can be directly linked to the assassination Pakistan's Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a moderniser. In the true spirit of Islam, he came to liberate people from backwardness, illiteracy and poverty. He believed that a people and a country progressed and prospered under scientific political rules. Having studied in the best Universities of the West, he was convinced that the progress of the seething mass of humanity living in bondage, fear and despair lay in the path of enlightenment, in the path of moderation and in the path lit by social progress.

It was to build a modern state that he gave the country an Islamic, Federal, Democratic, Egalitarian and unanimous Constitution. This Constitution of 1973 called military intervention an act of treason. It guaranteed full autonomy to the provinces and protected the human rights of every citizen by introducing habeas corpus for the first time in the history of Pakistan.

Quaid e Awam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto built the foundations of education and industrialisation in the country. By modernising labour laws, he gave labour a greater incentive to work and contribute to the welfare of the country. He liberated the small farmers and peasants from the repression and cruelty of big landlords and banished the jagirdari and sardari system declaring that all citizens are born equal and must live with equal rights.

Quaid e Awam built the Steel Mill, the Karakorum Highway, the Kamra Aeronautical Complex, the Ship building industry, the Nuclear Program and the Simla Agreement which stopped India and Pakistan going to war. More importantly he rebuilt the honour and respect of a Nation that had disintegrated under a previous military rule. He brought back 90,000 prisoners of war with honour from Indian military camps and without threatened military trials. He won back territory lost in the 1971 war and saved Pakistan from the threat of Indian General Manekshaw that residual Pakistan would be broken up too.

However, Quaid e Awam's government was destabilised through a Mullah Military Alliance in 1977. The agenda of progress and modernity was overthrown and replaced with a brutal military dictatorship. That military dictatorship recruited and trained members of the Muslim Brotherhood from all over the world to fight against the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. While supporting the right of the Afghan people to live in freedom was correct, the decision to recruit members of the Muslim brotherhood was wrong. The result was that the Kalashnikov and drug culture spread in Pakistan, the enlightened forces were considered the enemy and every step was made to keep them out of the corridors of power.

The Taliban, the terrorist groups and the new war against terror are the direct result of the overthrow of the modernizing government of Quaid e Awam and its replacement by a clique of military officers that cynically used the name of religion to promote their own illegal stay in power.

Today as the people of Pakistan pay tribute to a great leader who gave great respect to Pakistan and honour to its people, who lived and died like a hero with courage, determination and devotion to his principles it is important that  the new generation of our country read and learn about this giant of giants whose imprints in the politics of Pakistan lives on.

It is by reverting to the Constitutional framework of the Quaid e Awam that we can move forward in the twenty first century as a successful Federation with a vibrant economy and a growing middle class. It is a system of fair laws and the majesty of justice that comes as a breath of pure air liberating men and women, peasants and labourers, young and old without discrimination on race, religion or gender. It is so that we can reconstruct our lives to live in dignity and honour, with peace and with progress.

Quaid e Awam was murdered but his memory lives on in the monuments he built. It lives on in his ideas. And it lives on in the hearts of all men and women who believe that humanity can only progress when there is tolerance, freedom, dignity and equal opportunity for all.

Quaid e Awam was the youngest Federal Cabinet member in the history of Pakistan at the age of 29. He set up a Gas and Mineral Development Corporation in 1961 and Pakistan's first Oil refinery in 1962 at Karachi.  In fact Quaid e Awam discovered oil in Pakistan and presented it to an astonished Parliament which was impressed with this notable achievement.

Bhutto emerged on the world stage as Leader of the Pakistan Delegation to the UN in 1959.  Bhutto made indelible imprints on world community by his inimitable oratorical skills in United Nation's General Assembly and the Security Council. He had the vision to build a strategic relationship with China at a time when it was isolated. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto believed in an independent Foreign Policy. His opposition to the Tashkent accord between India and Pakistan led to his resignation from the government. 

He was a firm believer in economic self reliance and political independence expounded in his famous book "Myth of Independence".  Bhutto's finest hour came in the reconstruction of Pakistan after the traumatic dismemberment of Pakistan upon the fall of Dhaka on 16th December, 1971. He successfully put the derailed nation back  on the track by rebuilding national institutions. 

Quaid e Awam built the most modern schools, colleges, universities, professional colleges, vocational training institutes including Quaid-e-Azam University, Allama Iqbal Open University, Chandka Medical College and many others. He built hospitals to take care of the sick and poor. He introduced peaceful nuclear energy to help treat cancer setting up the first cancer treating institutes in the four provinces of Pakistan. He built roads in the tribal areas and the Northern areas knowing how poor and oppressed people in the distant areas of Pakistan were. Internationally, using his experience as Foreign Minister, He hosted the Islamic Summit Conference in Lahore. It was at this conference that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was recognised as the authentic voice of the Muslims. He advocated closer relations with the Muslim countries arguing for a common economic bloc with banking and other financial institutions long before regional blocs became identified as the economic way forward. When Syria was attacked, the Quaid sent his fighter planes to defend the Golan heights declaring that the armies of Pakistan were the armies of Islam.

However, this renaissance of Muslim unity and progress of Pakistan, the second largest Muslim country in the world, was soon to descend into darkness with the treachery of ambitious Generals who sacrificed the fate of an Ummah and a people to their lust for power, patronage and self enrichment.

Taking advantage of the elections called in 1977, which the PPP won easily with a large majority, the conspirators joined hands with General Ziaul Haq who destabilised the PPP government to please his foreign masters who feared Bhutto's capacity of uniting the Third World countries and were alienated from him for developing Pakistan's nuclear capacity. 

Martial Law was imposed upon  the country on 5th July, 1977. Seeing the popularity of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Generals decided to postpone elections and arrested Quaid e Awam. On 18th March, 1978, the great Quaid, in a travesty of justice, was sentenced to death in a politically motivated murder trial by a full bench of the Lahore High Court presided over by a sworn opponent. It was astonishing that although there was no law that provided the death sentence for conspiracy to murder, the death sentence was pronounced.

Recently one of the hanging judges from the Supreme Court confessed that the death sentence was given wrongly because the sentencing judges were "angry" with the defence lawyer. He also confessed that the judges were frightened of the military. He implied that the sentence was given to please the military. General Zia had announced before the sentence that Bhutto would be hanged.

However, no one can hang truth or beauty. By signing the death sentence, the conspirators hanged themselves and were forever condemned at the bar of history. Today no one takes their name other than to curse them for the savage injustice they meted out.The majority of original Court was for acquittal but was whittled down to a 4-3 verdict by the retirement of two judges.   Despite appeals of clemency from several world leaders, Bhutto was executed on 4th April, 1979. As nature wept with man, a huge hail storm fell upon the desert sands of Sindh as the great Quaid e Awam's body returned to its eternal resting place.

The falling of hail storms was a sign from the heavens, as though they were weeping themselves, as hailstorms do not fall in the desert lands and specially when the heat of the summer begins in April. Bhutto's first martyrdom anniversary fell on the day that Jesus Christ was crucified which many saw as yet another sign from the heavens. His killers faced one strange death after another. General Zia who did not allow Bhutto's family to bury him and see him for a last time, died in a plane crash that burnt his body so his family could not see it. One judge died on the toilet seat on his daughter's wedding day. Another judge's dead body was attacked by bees and abandoned to rot in the mid day sun. The man who arrested the Quaid e Awam crashed to death during a March Past parade when his parachute refused to open. There were many other such incidents which cannot be explained by reason as the consequences of a most unreasonable act against one of the most beloved of leaders for whose life so many millions prayed.

The great leader of downtrodden masses was killed at the age of fifty. Those who witnessed the most tragic night in history of Pakistan said that the Quaid bravely walked to the gallows and when he was brought down his face was shining with light, luminescent like the moon. 

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto earned everlasting fame in the pantheon of  leaders from the Third World in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism.  He had the privilege of interacting with many of those leaders who played a great role in the epic struggle  for national independence in the 20th Century including Mao Tse Tung, Soekarno, Chou-en  Lai, Nehru and Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Bhutto's foundation  of the  PPP in 1967 was a setback  for the reactionary  forces in a country long dominated by the Right.  The  slogan of "Food, Shelter and Clothing" shifted the focus of Pakistan politics from theological to economic issues.  This focus has never shifted back. His was a period of macro economic stability and economic growth. Quaid e Awam's governance laid the foundations for a professional and middle class to emerge bridging the gap between the very rich and the very poor. Quaid e Awam was a poet and a revolutionary who dedicated his life to the oppressed, suppressed masses, who waged a war against poverty and for human dignity, who stood by the poor and lived and died for them. A man born in mansions and dressed in silks found solace, satisfaction and meaning to life, for himself and all his followers, by dedicating it to the shoeless, shirtless masses who are the true masters of a free nation.

To redress the balance of power, Quaid e Awam created the new institution of the Senate of Pakistan in which the provinces had equal representation. He turned Balauchistan from an agency into a province and gave it its own Balauchistan High Court so that the people did not have to trek to Karachi to get justice. He created the Council of Common Interest to give the provinces greater weight in the federal dispensation. He also created the  Council of Islamic Ideology so that the definition of Islamic laws could be discussed with the best Islamic intellectuals and taken out of the hands of those who wished to achieve political ends by exploiting the name of religion to gain power. At the same time the Bhutto Constitution reiterated  the basic principle of equality:  "from each according to his ability to each according to his work". 

Finally, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had the courage of his conviction to decide to lay down his life rather than compromise or seek appeasement.  The last chapter of his life is a glorious example of  martyrdom for the cause of resurrection of democracy. 
 
Although his life and career were cruelly terminated, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's name will forever shine in history as the proud son of a proud motherland who contributed to the liberation of the Third World from exploitation, discrimination and oppression. He gave hope, respect, dignity, honour to his Nation and to the Muslim Ummah because he believed in the Rule of Law, in a basic framework with which a Nation must live. He believed in freedom and in emancipation. Today more than ever, the principles for which Quaid e Awam lived and died are needed to save Pakistan and the Muslim world from a dangerous scenario where cruel dictators demean the nation by destroying institutions and plunging society into chaos, anarchy, violence, death and destruction.