page_title: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
section_title: Pakistan Peoples Party
hierarchical_section_title: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto / Pakistan Peoples Party
caption_attribution_description: English: Founding Fathers of Pakistan Peoples Party! At the residence of Dr Mubashir Hassan. The pioneers of the party were progressives and socialists – they included J A Rahim, Dr Mubashir Hasan, Ghulam Mustafa Khar, Basit Jahangir, Kamal Azfar, Rafi Raza, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, Hayat Sherpao and Meraj Muhammad Khan.
context_page_description: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a Pakistani barrister and politician who served as the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that as the fourth President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. He was also the founder of the Pakistan People's Party and served as its chairman until his execution in 1979.
  Born in modern-day Sindh and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Oxford, Bhutto trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, before entering politics as one of President Iskander Mirza's cabinet members, and was assigned several ministries during President Ayub Khan's military rule from 1958. Appointed Foreign Minister in 1963, Bhutto was a proponent of Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir, leading to war with India in 1965. After the Tashkent Agreement ended hostilities, Bhutto fell out with Ayub Khan and was sacked from government.
  Bhutto founded the PPP in 1967 on a socialist platform, and contested general elections held by President Yahya Khan in 1970.
context_section_description: Following his resignation as foreign minister, large crowds gathered to listen to Bhutto's speech upon his arrival in Lahore on 21 June 1967. Tapping a wave of anger against Ayub, Bhutto traveled across Pakistan to deliver political speeches. In October 1966 Bhutto made explicit the beliefs of his new party, "Islam is our faith, democracy is our policy, socialism is our economy. All power to the people." On 30 November 1967, at the Lahore residence of Mubashir Hassan, a gathering that included Bhutto, Bengali communist J. A. Rahim and Basit Jehangir Sheikh founded the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), establishing a strong base in Punjab, Sindh and amongst the Muhajirs.
  Mubashir Hassan, an engineering professor at UET Lahore, was the main brain and hidden hand behind the success and the rise of Bhutto. Under Hassan's guidance and Bhutto's leadership, the PPP became a part of the pro-democracy movement involving diverse political parties from all across Pakistan. The PPP activists staged large protests and strikes in different parts of the country, increasing pressure on Ayub to resign. Dr. Hassan and Bhutto's arrest on 12 November 1969, sparked greater political unrest. After his release, Bhutto, joined by key leaders of PPP, attended the Round Table Conference called by Ayub Khan in Rawalpindi, but refused to accept Ayub's continuation in office and the East-Pakistani politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Six point movement for regional autonomy.
  Following Ayub's resignation, his successor, General Yahya Khan promised to hold parliamentary elections on 7 December 1970. Under Bhutto's leadership the democratic socialists, leftists, and marxist-communists gathered and united into one party platform for the first time in Pakistan's history. The Socialist-Communist bloc, under Bhutto's leadership, intensified its support in Muhajir and poor farming communities in West Pakistan, working through educating people to cast their vote for their better future. Gathering and uniting the scattered socialist-communist groups in one single center was considered Bhutto's greatest political achievement and as a result, Bhutto's party and other leftists won a large number of seats from constituencies in West-Pakistan. However, Sheikh Mujib's Awami League won an absolute majority in the legislature, receiving more than twice as many votes as Bhutto's PPP. Bhutto strongly refused to accept an Awami League government and infamously threatened to "break the legs" of any elected PPP member who dared to attend the inaugural session of the National Assembly. Capitalizing on West Pakistani fears of East Pakistani separatism, Bhutto demanded that Sheikh Mujib form a coalition with the PPP. And at some stage proposed "edhar hum, udhar tum", meaning he should govern the West and Mujib should Govern the East. President Yahya postponed the meeting of the national assembly which fueled a popular movement in East Pakistan. Amidst popular outrage in East Pakistan, on 7 March 1971, Sheikh Mujib called the Bengalis to join the struggle for "Bangladesh". According to historical references and a report published by leading Pakistani newspaper The Nation, "Mujib no longer believed in Pakistan and is determined to make Bangladesh". Many also believed that Bhutto wanted power in the West even at the expense of separation of the East. However, Mujib still kept doors open for some sort of settlement in his speech of 7 March. Yahya started a negotiating conference in Dhaka presumably to reach a settlement between Bhutto and Mujib. The discussion was being expected to be "fruitful" until the president left for West Pakistan on the evening of March 25. On that night of March 25, 1971, the army initiated the "Operation Searchlight", which had been planned by the military junta of Yahya Khan to suppress political activities. Mujib was arrested and imprisoned in West Pakistan.
  Bhutto stayed in Dhaka on the night of 25 March and commented that Pakistan had been saved by the army before leaving on the 26th. While supportive of the army's actions and working to rally internatio
caption: At the Lahore residence of Mubashir Hassan, On 30 November 1967
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