Prologue
THE FIRST WEEK of November 1947.
Late night.
Sardar Patel’s residence, Delhi.
The phone rings.
On the other end is N.M. Buch, regional commissioner of Saurashtra (Kathiawar Agency). The conversation is brief, terse.
As Sardar Patel puts the receiver down, his face is aglow. He looks at K.M. Munshi and conveys what Buch had told him: the Dewan of the decamped Nawab of Junagadh had officially invited the Indian Army to take over this former Princely State. Munshi’s reply was just two sacred words: Jai Somanatha!
The name of the Dewan of the demented Nawab of Junagadh was Shahnawaz Bhutto, a slick and oily opportunist who had inherited a vast ancestral fiefdom in Sindh and had wielded great power in the tribalistic Muslim politics of the region during pre and post partition days. For about two decades, Shahnawaz Bhutto had been a strident champion of Sindh separatism until Jinnah subsumed his ambition within the larger Pakistan project.
The ceding of Junagadh was Shahnawaz Bhutto’s hour of lasting shame. He never recovered from it. His boss, the former Nawab’s cowardly flight to Pakistan, had forced Bhutto to officialise and thereby immortalise his shame, in a letter to Buch.
"Dear Mr. Buch,
After discussion with Mr. Samaldas Gandhi at Rajkot on October 1, Capt. Harvey Jones, senior member of Junagadh State Council, brought certain proposals for the consideration of the Council. The Council were prepared to accept them under protest but before a final decision could be communicated to Mr. Samaldas Gandhi it was thought necessary to ascertain the opinion of the leading members of the public. A meeting was therefore held this evening and the view of the leaders was unanimously expressed that instead of handing over the administration to the Indian Union through the so-called Provisional Government, it should be directly given over to the Indian Union, through the Regional Commissioner at Rajkot.
The Junagadh Government, therefore, has requested that in order to avoid bloodshed, hardship, loss of life and property and to preserve the dynasty, you should be approached to give your assistance to the administration particularly with a view to preserve law and order, which is threatened by aggressive elements from outside. This arrangement is sought pending an honourable settlement of the several issues involved in Junagadh's accession. We have already wired to His Excellency Lord Mountbatten, Mahatmaji, Prime and Deputy Prime Ministers of India, Hon'ble Abdul Kalam Azad and the Governor-General and Prime Minister of Pakistan.
I hope you will kindly respond to this request.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-S. N. Bhutto,
Dewan, Junagadh."
An Asymmetrical History
IN 1979, Indian journalist Tavleen Singh’s former boyfriend—the much-married Salmaan Taseer, published Bhutto: A Political Biography. Written by a self-confessed devotee, it was a naked hagiography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, son of the selfsame Shahnawaz Bhutto.
Today, the Bhutto clan piteously clings to its former grandeur by genuflecting before the Pakistani army and is regarded in some nostalgic circles as one of the country’s political royalty.
In the first chapter of his hagiography, Salmaan Taseer traces the origins of the Bhuttos to their “family tradition” which “has it that the Bhutto clan of Sindh sprang from Rajput migrants, who came from Jaisalmere…some four centuries ago.”
This is as far as Taseer goes in his investigation of the Hindu origins of the Bhuttos. It is entirely consistent with the standard practice of Islamic history writing, which is to disclaim, disavow, distort and desecrate the memory of the pre-Islamic past of infidels who have been wiped out or converted.
True history, on the other hand, tells us that Bhutto is unreservedly a Hindu name—in fact, it is a corruption of the Sanskrit proper noun, Bhurṭṭaka.
The Karnata-Desha Origins of the Bhuttos
A THOROUGH historical study of the origins of the Bhuttos leads us to the Chalukyas of Vatapi. In 543 CE, the dynasty’s founder Pulakeshin I established a compact realm spanning the upper Krishna and Bhima basins.
Under his formidable grandson, Pulakeshin II, this kingdom expanded into a colossal empire encompassing the entirety of Dakshināpatha up to the Narmada. The apex of his reign arrived with his decisive defeat of Uttarāpatheśvara—Harshavardhana of Kanyakubja. This singular triumph crowned Pulakeshin II as the sovereign of arguably the first pan-Indian empire rooted in Kārnata-Desha. It was under his sceptre that Chalukyan power radiated across Bharatavarsha, establishing cadet branches in Lāṭa, Gurjara, Mālava, and Utkala, while forging diplomatic and commercial ties with China and Persia.
After Pulakeshin II departed from the mortal world, Chalukyan sovereignty diffused into three grand imperial branches. The original bloodline retained its ancestral seat at Vatapi, though it would eventually yield paramount power to the ascendant Rashtrakutas. To the east, the Vengi Chalukyas—or Eastern Chalukyas—carved out a kingdom across the fertile deltas of the Godavari and Krishna, establishing a lineage so enduring that it seeded a branch in Odisha as late as the fifteenth century. Finally, the Western Chalukyas of Kalyani—modern Basavakalyana—arose to dominate the Deccan plateau, radiating their imperial suzerainty as far north as Jabalpur at the zenith of their power.
Indeed, few imperial Hindu dynasties match the Chalukyas' six-hundred-year record of uninterrupted sovereignty over vast swathes of Bharatavarsha. It was during the reign of Vikramaditya II that Arab Muslim forces invaded southern Gujarat, only to suffer a catastrophic defeat from which they never recovered. The fateful battle near Navasarika—present-day Navsari—is recorded in resplendent detail in the Navsari Plates of 739 CE. The architect of this monumental triumph over the hated Tājika army was Avanijashraya Pulakeshiraja, governor of the Chalukya branch of Navsari.
The sheer territorial expansion of Chalukyan power inevitably birthed a multitude of regional branches and sub-branches. By the ninth and tenth centuries CE, these lineages flourished across northwestern and central India—ruling variously as autonomous chieftains or as feudatories under paramount powers like the Rashtrakutas and Gurjara-Pratiharas. Over generations, even their dynastic name evolved; the classical Chalukya mutated into Śaulkika, the linguistic precursor to the modern Solanki.
Bhurṭṭaka: The Mūlapuruṣa
AT SOME POINT before the tenth century, a man named Bhurṭṭaka shot to political prominence in northwestern India. Almost nothing is known about him except that he was a Sūryavaṃśa Chalukya. However, over the centuries, his name proved to be more enduring than the man himself as a historical figure. It was affixed to both places and people—i.e., his lineage.
In his Ain-i-Akbari, Abul Fazl mentions that he was born in a place named Bhurtivahan near Bahawalpur. The place name is a corruption of the word Bhurṭṭavāhana, where vāhana means “dwelling,” “abode,” and a “place of habitation.” Thus, the whole word literally means, “the place of the habitation of Bhurṭṭa,” or “the place established by Bhurṭṭa.” This ancient city was under the control of the Dahir kings before it was wrested by the Bhurṭṭas around 900 CE.
Two Inscriptions that Broke the Silence of Three Centuries
IN THE twelfth century, we find a king named Yashoraja or Joharaja, identified as a descendant of Bhurṭṭaka. It is at this point that the recorded history of the Bhurṭṭaka lineage unravels itself in two stone inscriptions. Both inscriptions were notably discovered in the vicinity of Jaisalmer.
The first, known as the Dujasar Kharin Inscription, is dated November 20, 1148 CE. It was discovered in Dujasar, a village about forty kilometres west of Jaisalmer.
The second, known as the Joga Dhandh Inscription, is dated August 2, 1173 CE. It was discovered in Joga, a village about thirteen kilometres southeast of Jaisalmer.
Both inscriptions record the charitable works done by Nayaka Devi, the Pattta-Mahisi—Queen—of Vijayaraja. This distinguished queen merits an independent essay in her honour. This is what the Dujasar Kharin Inscription says about her:
Vijayaraja’s…wife is the Mahārājñī (i.e. queen or chief queen). She is of the Caulukya lineage, born a Bhuṭṭā, the daughter of Yaśorāja of the solar dynasty, and her name is Nāikadevī.
And this is what the Joga Dhandh Inscription says:
Venerable too is [Vijayaraja’s] chief-queen, the renowned Nāyakadevī… Joharāja, who was born of the Caulukya lineage, is illustrious. He is born of the sons of Bhurṭṭaka, pure of soul and fond of giving. His daughter here… is the honourable Nāyakadevī.
Vijayaraja was actually Vijayaraja II, the sixth monarch of the “resplendent Bhāṭṭikas” — i.e., the Bhattis of Jaisalmer. All inscriptions, records and creative literature related to the Bhattis unanimously mention that they were Jadon (Yadava) Rajputs descended from the Chandra-vamsha.
The wording of the two aforementioned Jaisalmer inscriptions clearly shows that the original Sanskrit form, Bhurṭṭaka, had morphed into Bhutta by the twelfth century. Also clear is the fact that the Bhuttas and Bhattis shared centuries-long matrimonial relationship.
It is equally evident that in that period, the Bhuttas had not been converted to Islam. That tragedy began roughly with Ala-ud-din Khalji’s serial devastations of Rajaputra-Desha.
Sandeep Balakrishna
Sandeep Balakrishna
Sandeep Balakrishna
Sandeep Balakrishna
Because an Islamic conversion is all-encompassing, it stands to reason that the Bhuttas underwent change in their very nomenclature and became Bhuttos. This is probably another reason why Salmaan Taseer could trace the ancestry of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to just the preceding four centuries.
Evidence for this name change is also found in the Khyats (bardic chronicles or epics) of Rajasthan and in Punjabi folklore. The Khyats of the sixteenth century extol Rai Jajja Bhutto as the ninth century monarch who famously built the awe-inspiring Devarajapura Fort—modern Derawar Fort in Pakistan. However, older oral traditions mention a certain Rawal Deoraj Bhutta—a nephew of Rai Jajja—and credit him with building that fort.
Consequences of Irreversible Conversion
ROUGHLY FROM THE sixteenth century, many families of the Islamised Bhuttos were transformed into powerful, war-mongering Muslim chiefs who wreaked havoc primarily in the Sindh and Punjab regions of today’s Pakistan.
Lower classes of the converted Bhuttos became renowned for pottery and weaving, and a good number returned to their original profession—farming.
A census mandated by the British Government in the early twentieth century revealed interesting findings:
This is but a sliver of the extent and multipronged nature of the demographic changes that had occurred over half a millennium. The mention of Malwa Jats forming an offshoot of the Paksitani Bhuttos is one major indicator of this change.
In our own time, it is clear that the non-elite classes of the Pakistani Bhuttos remember nothing of their Hindu past. Their fate resembles that of the Indian Mewatis—or Meos—of Haryana and bordering towns of Rajasthan. Descended from a Kshatriya lineage, they had for centuries, been at the vanguard of heroic battles of resistance against the Delhi sultans. Beginning with the twentieth century, almost the whole community has been converted into Islam.
Recent history shows that the Bhutto clan, after India’s partition, has been at the forefront of preaching Jihad against India. Indeed, it was the selfsame Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who infamously declared in his 1965 speech in the United Nations Security Council that Pakistan had vowed to fight a thousand-year war against India. Zia ul Haq transformed Bhutto’s ideological formulation into practical action of bleeding India by a thousand cuts.
It is a profound civilisational travesty and tragedy that an ancient clan of Suryavamsha Kshatriyas who had lived, defended and died for Dharma, has been perverted into bloodthirsty and bigoted warmongers serving the very desert cult that obliterated their ancestral memory.
|| Om Shanti ||
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