Bhutto

Bhutto (Sindhi: ڀُٽو; Urdu: Nastaliq|بھٹو) is a Sindhi samat tribe settled in Sindh, Pakistan.

Bhutto is a vast tribe that has been settled in Sindh for over two centuries. The Bhutto family specifically, is of Rajput origin, and traces its migration to Sindh from Jaiselmere in India under Setho Khan Bhutto in the fifteenth century A.D. Pir Baksh Bhutto founded and settled the ancestral home of the Bhutto family in the village of Garhi Pir Baksh Bhutto. Doda Khan Bhutto, was the head of the family during the reign of the Talpur Dynasty and then during Charles Napier's rule of Sindh and worked to acquire large tracts of land. He is largely responsible for the vast landownership of the Bhutto family, and was described by the British as "the best and most enterprising zamindar in the whole of sindh". Doda Khan had three sons: Khuda Baksh Bhutto (the eldest), Ameer Bakhsh Bhutto and Illahi Bakhsh Bhutto (the youngest). He divided his land up into four parts, one for each son and one for himself. In his will, however, he left his own share of the land with his youngest son, Illahi Baksh Bhutto. Illahi Baksh Bhutto went on to become an Honorary Magistrate of Larkana. He died at the young age of 28, under mysterious circumstances. Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto was Khuda Baksh Bhutto's grandson.

Illahi Baksh's eldest son, Sardar Wahid Baksh Bhutto was head of the Bhutto tribe and was made Sardar by people of the Bhutto tribe nationwide. During the early 20th century the Government of India was increasingly democratized and this allowed influential natives to participate in Government. Shahnawaz Bhutto first entered politics on a District Board level in Larkana and then on a provincial level in the Bombay Council, where he was appointed by British officials. Sardar Wahid Baksh Bhutto, on the other hand, was the first member of the family to be democratically elected to government, when in 1927 he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly of India, securing the highest number of votes in Sindh, with Abdullah Haroon in second place. He continued to be elected to the Legislative Assembly until his death in 1933, which many suspected was due to poisoning by political opponents and those who saw him as a threat to their own advancement in politics.

From 1935 to 1946, Wahid Baksh's younger brother Nabi Baksh Bhutto was elected to the Legislative Assembly. This seat was then contested by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971.

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