Philosopher Jawaid Bhutto laid to rest in ancestral burial ground

HYDERABAD: Amid elegies sung by pall-bearers, the 64-year old intellectual and philosopher Jawaid Bhutto, who was shot dead in Washington DC on March 2, was laid to rest in a graveyard in Shikarpur district on Sunday. His funeral prayers were offered earlier at Faisal Mosque in Bath Island, Karachi, on Saturday night.

Writers, poets, intellectuals and civil society activists, including men and women, attended the burial rites at Chirangi graveyard which is the ancestral burial place of Bhutto. His wife Nafisa Hoodbhoy, who arrived in Pakistan along with his body on Saturday, also attended the rare burial event in which women also went to the graveyard.

“Jawaid can’t die,” she expressed this conviction in her brief comments in the graveyard. “He is as alive in my heart as he was before his death.” She regarded her husband as a truthful and courageous person who wanted justice for all.

“I was drawn towards him due to the truthfulness of his heart,” said Hoodbhoy, who first met Bhutto when she was a journalist working for daily Dawn. “Jawaid’s marriage to me was the luckiest thing to happen to me in my life.”

She said that the couple, who spent over 18 years in the United States of America, had planned on returning to Pakistan and that they had almost completed the preparations. “But then this incident happened.” According to her, the man who killed her husband was a convicted murderer who was released from prison due to his mental health condition.

She told that the local police did not inform the neighbourhood about his past criminal record. “We should have been informed who was living below our apartment.” Recalling the incident, Hoodbhoy said that she had sent her husband to bring things from the car parked on the road when he was shot from behind. “His death is like a bad dream from which you can’t wake up.”

Pakistani philosopher Jawaid Bhutto murdered in US
Pervez Mari, a contemporary, informed that Bhutto received his early education from Shikarpur and Sukkur. He became affiliated with the Maoist party during his college days in Sukkur. He later got enrolled in Bolan Medical College in Quetta during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government but discontinued his medical studies in less than two years and started studying philosophy at University of Karachi.

After completing his doctorate from Sofia University, Bulgaria, he started teaching philosophy as a lecturer at Sindh University. Bhutto came in the limelight when he started struggle to get justice for his sister Fouzia Bhutto who was killed by former Pakistan Peoples Party MPA Rahim Bux Jamali when she was a student of Nawabshah Medical College.

“We weren’t expecting Jawaid’s sudden death,” said Zahid Mangi. “He always supported Sindhi and Balochi movements for their rights.”

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