Pakistan, July 19 -- There are moments in a nation's story when private grief becomes woven into public history. For Imtiaz Rafi Butt, born on 22 September 1948, that intertwining began before he was old enough to understand loss. His father, the industrialist and early Pakistan Movement supporter Rafi Butt, died in a plane crash at the young age of 39 when his son was just two months old. What began as a private void soon became a national reckoning, as the search for identity evolved into the rediscovery of a historical legacy.

Rafi Butt had been among the rare Muslim industrialists of pre-partition India. His closeness to Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his unreserved commitment to the political and economic aspirations of the emerging Muslim...