Explained: Who is Bilawal Bhutto, Pak minister who targeted Modi at UNSC?
Pakistan Foreign Minister and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has sparked a major controversy with his remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday (December 15).
Zardari’s statement has, expectedly, irked India, prompting a sharp response from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). It has also led to protests by the BJP workers. But who is Zardari? What did he say? And how has India reacted to his statement? How has he courted controversies in the past? Let’s take a look:
Who is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari?
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, 34, is the son of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 2007, and the grandson of another former Pakistan Prime Minister late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Currently serving as the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman, he became the country’s youngest foreign minister (at the age of 33) in April this year.
Born in September 1988, Bilawal has two younger sisters — Bakhtawar and Aseefa. An Oxford graduate and a black belt in Taekwondo, he inherited the reins of the PPP days after his mother’s assassination. Addressing a press conference where he was announced as Benazir Bhutto’s successor, Bilawal had said that his father Asif Ali Zardari would run the PPP till he finishes his study.
Also read: Bilawal Bhutto’s “uncivilised” attack on Modi new low, even for Pakistan: India
BBC said that Bilawal succeeding Benazir to head the PPP was “considered a strategic move to consolidate the party using the Bhutto legacy”. It was then that he added his mother’s surname and Bilawal Zardari became Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “My mother always said democracy is the best revenge”, the 19-year-old had said at the time.
Bilawal was elected to Pakistan’s National Assembly for the first time in 2018. According to analysts, Bhutto is seen as one of the “key architects” who helped in overthrowing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan from the prime ministerial post in April 2022. He has spent his early life outside Pakistan, travelling with his mother who had gone into self-imposed exile in 1999. Bilawal’s first language is English and he speaks Urdu in an Anglicised accent. Since 2010, he has dedicated most of his time to Pakistan. He is also a keen sportsman who enjoys cricket, shooting and horse-riding.
What did Bilawal say?
Referring to PM Modi at the UNSC, Bilawal said that while terrorist Osama Bin Laden was dead, the “butcher of Gujarat” was alive and the Prime Minister of India. Zardari’s remarks came in response to External Minister S. Jaishankar’s earlier comments at the UNSC, where he labelled Pakistan as “the epicentre of global terrorism”. He also criticised the country for harbouring 9/11 terrorist Osama Bin Laden, whose killing by the US special forces in a stealth operation at Pakistan’s Abbottabad, not far from its premier military training academy, had put Islamabad’s deep state on the back foot.
Bilawal said that Modi was banned from entering the US until he became the Prime Minister of India. He also referred to Modi as the “Prime Minister of the RSS”, likening the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS). Calling out the inauguration of a Mahatma Gandhi statue by Union Minister for External Affairs S. Jaishankar and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as ironic, Zardari argued that the RSS did not believe in Gandhi’s ideology, and instead supported “the terrorists that assassinated Gandhi,” referring to his killer, Nathuram Godse.
Also read: Pakistan leader threatens India with ‘nuclear war’ after New Delhi slams Bilawal Bhutto
“[Indians] continue to perpetuate this philosophy. And it’s not just for Pakistan, it’s for the Muslims in India. We’re terrorists whether we’re Muslims in Pakistan and we’re terrorists whether we’re Muslims in India. I’d like to remind the honourable Minister for External Affairs of India that Osama Bin Laden is dead but the butcher of Gujarat lives and is the Prime Minister of India. He was banned from entering [the United States] until he became PM,” Bilawal said.
Speaking about the 2002 Gujarat riots, he said: “I’m not talking about some imaginary past. I’m talking about today. They’re not even attempting to wash the blood of the people of Gujarat off their hands for their election campaigns,” Bilawal said, referring to the release of the men convicted of gang-raping Bilkis Bano and murdering her family, including her three-year-old daughter.
Earlier at the UNSC, a Pakistani journalist was berated by Jaishankar when he asked about the India-Pakistan conflict and the situation in Kashmir. Taking a jibe at Zardari, Jaishankar replied: “You’re asking the wrong Minister when you say ‘how long will we do this’. It is the ministers of Pakistan who will tell you how long Pakistan intends to practise terrorism. At the end of the day, the world is not stupid or forgetful. The world does increasingly call out countries, organisations and people who indulge in terrorism. By taking the debate elsewhere, you’re not going to confuse anybody anymore. So my advice is please clean up your act, please try to be a good neighbour.”
How did India react?
A day later, on Friday (December 16), India’s foreign ministry condemned Bhutto’s remarks, calling them an “uncivilised outburst”. The MEA said in a statement, “These comments are a new low, even for Pakistan. The foreign minister of Pakistan has obviously forgotten this day in 1971, which was a direct result of the genocide unleashed by Pakistani rulers against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus. Unfortunately, Pakistan does not seem to have changed much in the treatment of its minorities. It certainly lacks credentials to cast aspersions at India”.
Bhutto’s “uncivilised outburst” seemed to be a result of Pakistan’s “increasing inability to use terrorists and their proxies”, the MEA added, as per NDTV.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said,” Pakistan is a country that glorifies Osama bin Laden as a martyr, and shelters terrorists, inclduing Lakhvi, Hafiz Saeed, Masood Azhar, Sajid Mir and Dawood Ibrahim. No other country can boast having 126 UN-designated terrorists and 27 UN-designated terrorist entities.” He said the Foreign Minister of Pakistan has obviously forgotten this day in 1971, which was a direct result of the genocide unleashed by Pakistani rulers against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Singh Thakur described the comments as extremely nefarious and shameful. Talking to media outside Parliament on Friday, Thakur said this was the reflection of the pain of the neighbouring country’s defeat at the hands of India in 1971 on this very day. He added that despite all this, the land of Pakistan remains a heaven of terrorism even today.
Watch: Pak minister Bilawal’s ‘butcher of Gujarat’ remark sparks protests
Taking objection to the remarks, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers on Thursday protested outside Pakistan’s embassy in Delhi by raising “Pakistan hay hay” and “Bilawal Bhutto maafi maango” slogans. As per PTI, the saffron party also staged nationwide protests against the controversial statements on Saturday (December 17).
Bilawal’s past controversies
Bilawal has often raked up the Kashmir issue at the UN ever since he assumed the post of Pakistan’s foreign minister. He has been speaking about it much before that. In 2014, Bhutto landed in a soup after he said to his party workers in Punjab’s Multan region in Pakistan that PPP would get back the “entire Kashmir” from India.
“I will take back Kashmir, all of it, and I will not leave behind a single inch of it because, like the other provinces, it belongs to Pakistan,” the scion of the Bhutto family had said, according to a PTI report.
Reacting to the remark, then MEA spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin had said: “We are in the process of looking forward and looking forward does not mean that our borders will be changed. We made it very clear that as far as we are concerned, the integrity and unity of India is non-negotiable”.
Bilawal also courted controversy by backing former prime minister Imran Khan’s Moscow visit earlier this year. Defending Khan, the PPP chairman said there was no possibility that the cricketer-turned-politician would have known about Russia’s plan to invade Ukraine, adding that it was “very unfair to punish Pakistan for such an innocent action”.
Bilawal has also hit headlines for his alleged ‘Urdu gaffes’. He became a favourite of meme makers in March this year after he made a slip of tongue in Urdu. A video went viral where Bilawal allegedly took potshots at the then Imran Khan-led Pakistan government: “Islamabad me kanpen taang rahi hain,” while what he meant was “Islamabad me tangen kanp rahi hain” (Legs are shivering in Islamabad). Soon, memes flooded the internet on this alleged mistake. However, the PPP leader termed the video “fake”, saying it was “PTI propaganda”, according to a report in Geo News.
