Gilgit-Baltistan is no ordinary land. It has long stood at the crossroads of civilisations, where the world’s mightiest mountain ranges converge in breathtaking silence. Marco Polo crossed its ancient passes in wonder; Lord Curzon read its horizons with the eyes of empire. The explorers of the nineteenth century left it not merely mapped, but mythologised—naming it the Gateway to India, the place Where Three Empires Meet, and the Cockpit of Asia. Gilgit-Baltistan, in every sense, is a key that opens several doors at once.

It was Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who understood this truth with rare clarity. Among his earliest acts in power was a visit to the Northern Areas in 1972—a journey that was not ceremonial, but transformative. He renamed the Resident as Commissioner and the Political Agent as Deputy Commissioner, dismantling the colonial architecture of governance. The feudal order of Jagirdars, Meers, and Rajas was abolished, sweeping away centuries of inherited inequality. On 3 July 1975, the Northern Areas Council Legal Framework Order was enacted—the first codified legal framework in the region’s modern history—while the Princely State of Hunza was dissolved and integrated into Gilgit-Baltistan. Knowing that political rights alone cannot sustain a people, he also ensured subsidised wheat and flour reached the poorest households in the region. These reforms did not merely alter governance; they restored dignity to a people who had long remained on the margins of the state.

When Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was martyred, Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto carried the torch forward. In 1994, her government replaced the Northern Areas Council with the........

© The Nation