Only seven or eight months remained before the subcontinent became independent.
Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a prominent Sindhi landowner and politician, travelled to the princely state of Junagadh with his wife and daughter to take up government responsibilities. He left his young son, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in Bombay to continue his studies and look after the family’s large property holdings.
After British India was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947, India’s military occupation of Junagadh became a separate chapter of history. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who later became Pakistan’s foreign minister, president and prime minister, was studying abroad when the Indian government took over the family’s property in Bombay, declaring it “evacuee property”, a legal term for property left behind by owners who had moved to Pakistan.
