Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - Early Life

Early Life

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto came from a prominent Sindhi landowning family (see Bhutto family), born to Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto and Khursheed Begum née Lakhi Bai in his parent's residence near Larkana. His mother converted from Hinduism to Islam before her marriage. Bhutto's father was a prominent political figure in the Indian colonial government. He was their third child – their first one, Sikandar Ali, died from pneumonia at age seven in 1914 and the second child, Imdad Ali, died of cirrhosis at the age of 39 in 1953. His father was the prime minister of Junagadh State, and enjoyed an influential relationship with the officials of the British Raj. As a young boy, Bhutto moved to Worli Seaface in Bombay (now Mumbai) to study at the Cathedral and John Connon School. During this period, he also became a student activist in the social movement and nationalist league, the Pakistan Movement. In 1943, his marriage was arranged with Shireen Amir Begum (died 19 January 2003 in Karachi). He later left her, however, in order to remarry. In 1947, Bhutto was admitted to the University of Southern California to study political science.

In 1949, as college sophomore, Bhutto transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. (honours) degree in Political science in 1950. Here, Bhutto would become interested in the theories of socialism, delivering a series of lectures on the feasibility of socialism in Islamic countries. During this time, Bhutto's father, Sir Shahnawaz, played a controversial role in the affairs of the state of Junagadh (now in Gujarat). Coming to power in a palace coup as the dewan, he secured the accession of the state to Pakistan, which was ultimately negated by Indian intervention in December 1947. In June 1950, Bhutto travelled to the United Kingdom to study law at Christ Church— a constituent college of the University of Oxford— and received an LLB, followed by another advanced LLM degree in Law and M.Sc. (honours) degree in Political science. Upon finishing his studies, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in the year 1953 (the same school at which Muhammad Ali Jinnah studied law).

Bhutto married his second wife, the Iranian-Kurdish Begum Nusrat Ispahani, in Karachi on 8 September 1951. Their first child, his daughter Benazir, was born in 1953. She was followed by Murtaza in 1954, a second daughter, Sanam, in 1957, and the youngest child, Shahnawaz Bhutto, in 1958. He accepted the post of lecturer at the Sindh Muslim College, from where he was also awarded an honorary doctorate —honoris causa— in law by the then college President, Hassanally Rahman before establishing himself in a legal practice in Karachi. He also took over the management of his family's estate and business interests after his father's death.