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Not to be confused with the cricket ground in Dhaka Sher-e-Bangla Cricket Stadium

Sher-e-Bangla Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq আবুল কাশেম ফজলুল হক ابوالقاسم فضل الحق
Prime Minister of Bengal
In office 1 April 1937 – 29 March 1943
Governor‑General	The Marquess of Linlithgow
Governor	John Arthur Herbert
Preceded by	Post created
Succeeded by	Khawaja Nazimuddin
Chief Minister of East Bengal
In office 1954–1955
Governors‑General	Ghulam Muhammad Iskander Mirza
Succeeded by	Abu Hussain Sarkar
Governor of East Pakistan
In office 1956–1956
President	Iskander Mirza
Succeeded by	Sultanuddin Ahmad
Personal details
Born	Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq (1873-10-26)26 October 1873 Bakerganj, British Raj (now Jhalokati, Bangladesh)
Died	27 April 1962(1962-04-27) (aged 88) Dacca, East Pakistan (now Dhaka, Bangladesh)
Citizenship	British Raj (1873–1947) Dominion of Pakistan (1947–1956) Pakistan (1956–1962)
Political party	Indian National Congress All India Muslim League Agriculturalist Tenant Party Workers and Agriculturalists Party
Children	A. K. Faezul Huq
Alma mater	Calcutta University

Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq (Bengali: আবুল কাশেম ফজলুল হক; Urdu: ابوالقاسم فضل الحق;; 26 October 1873—27 April 1962); popular with the title Sher-e-Bangla (Lion of Bengal), was a leading Bengali statesman in the early 20th century. He was one of the pioneering democrats of the Indian subcontinent. Huq was a prominent figure in the Indian Independence Movement, including the Pakistan Movement. He is noted for representing and empowering the Bengali middle class and peasantry through the Krishak Praja Party. He played a key role in drafting the Lahore Resolution. In East Pakistan, he was closely aligned with Bengali nationalist interests.

Huq held many high political offices during his six decade long political career, including President of the All India Muslim League (1916-1921), General Secretary of the Indian National Congress (1916-1918), Education Minister of the Bengal Presidency (1924), Mayor of Calcutta (1935), Prime Minister of Bengal (1937-1943), Chief Minister of East Bengal (1954), Home Minister of Pakistan (1955), Governor of East Pakistan (1956-1958) and Food and Agricultural Minister of Pakistan (1960).

Huq is considered a forerunning independence leader of Pakistan and Bangladesh and admired in India for his moderate and secular politics. He established the Bengali Academy. Huq died in Dacca, East Pakistan on 27 April 1962. He was fluent in Bengali, English and Hindustani, and had a working knowledge of Arabic and Persian.

Early life and career

The Calcutta High Court, where Huq practiced law for over 40 years

Huq was born into an upper middle class Bengali Muslim family in Bakergunge Division, Bengal Presidency, British India in 1873. He was the son of Kazi Mohammad Wazed, a reputed civil and criminal lawyer of the Barisal Bar, and Sayedunnessa Khatun. His paternal grandfather Kazi Akram Ali was a Mukhtar and a scholar of Arabic and Persian. Initially home schooled, he attended the Barisal District School, where he passed the FA Examination in 1890.

He moved to Calcutta, the capital of British India, for his higher education. He achieved a Bachelor's degree with triple honors in Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics from Presidency College in 1894. He then obtained a Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Calcutta in 1896. Six months before his final exam, a Hindu friend teased Huq that Muslims were weak in math. Huq challenged his friend and passed the final exam with distinction. He obtained his Bachelor in Law from the University Law College in Calcutta in 1897 and started practice as a junior of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee. He moved his practice to Barisal after the death of his father and lectured at the Raj Chandra College. He then joined the Bengal Judicial Service as a Deputy Magistrate. He later resigned from the judicial service to join public life in Bengal and enrolled in the Calcutta High Court under the tutelage of Sir Mukherjee. He was also influenced by Aswini Kumar Dutta and Prafulla Chandra Roy.

Politics in the British Raj

Muslim League and the Congress

Huq is regarded as one of the four founders of the All India Muslim League. He was a prominent delegate in the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference hosted by Sir Khwaja Salimullah in Dacca on 30 December 1906, which laid the foundation of the Muslim League. Huq played an important role in building the League as a pan-British India platform for Muslims. He served as President of the All India Muslim League from 1916 to 1921.

East Pakistan

The Dominion of Pakistan in 1947, with East Bengal as its eastern wing

East Bengal was the most populous province in the new Pakistani federation led by Governor General Muhammad Ali Jinnah in 1947, with Dacca was the provincial capital. While the state of Pakistan was created as a homeland for Muslims of the former British Raj, East Bengal was also Pakistan's most cosmopolitan province, with significant communities of Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Ismailis and Indian Muslim immigrants, within a Bengali Muslim majority. In 1950, land reform was accomplished in East Bengal with the abolishment of the permanent settlement and the feudal zamindari system . The successful Bengali Language Movement in 1952 challenged the attempt to declare West Pakistan's Urdu language as the sole official state language. The One Unit scheme renamed the province as East Pakistan in 1955. The Awami League emerged as the political voice of the Bengali-speaking population, with its leader H. S. Suhrawardy becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1956. He was ousted after only a year in office due to tensions with West Pakistan's establishment and bureaucracy. The 1956 Constitution ended dominion status with Queen Elizabeth as the last monarch of the country. Dissatisfaction with the central government increased over economic and cultural issues in the next decade. Prominent Bengali leaders like A. K. Fazlul Huq and Maulana Bhashani signaled the idea of an independent East Pakistan as early as the late 1950s.

Students during the Bengali Language Movement

The first Pakistani military coup ushered the dictatorship of Ayub Khan. In 1962, Dacca was designated as the legislative capital of Pakistan in an appeasement of growing Bengali political nationalism. Khan's government also constructed the Kaptai Dam which controversially displaced the Chakma population from their indigenous homeland in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

According to senior international bureaucrats in the World Bank, Pakistan applied extensive economic discrimination against the eastern wing, including higher government spending on West Pakistan, financial transfers from East to West and the use of the East's foreign exchange surpluses to finance the West's imports. This was despite the fact that East Pakistan generated 70% of Pakistan's export earnings with jute and tea. East Pakistani intellectuals crafted the Six Points which called for greater regional autonomy, free trade and economic independence. The Six Points were championed by Awami League President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1966, leading to his arrest by the government of President Field Marshal Ayub Khan on charges of treason. Rahman was released during the 1969 popular uprising which ousted President Khan from power.

Ethnic and linguistic discrimination was abound in Pakistan's civil and military services, in which Bengalis were hugely under-represented. In Pakistan's central government, only 15% of offices were occupied by East Pakistanis. The rise of cultural nationalism in East Pakistan led to years of civil disobedience. Pakistan imposed bans on Bengali Hindu-authored music in state media, including the works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Bengali protests forged a distinct political and cultural identity in East Pakistan. In 1970, a massive cyclone devastated the coast of East Pakistan killing up to half a million people. The central government was criticized for its poor response and hampering international relief efforts.

During the formation of the All India Muslim League in Dacca on 30 December 1906, Huq participated in the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference as an associate of the meeting's host Sir Khwaja Salimullah. Huq is one one of the founding figures of the Muslim League.

Sir Salimullah and Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury promoted Huq to enter politics. He was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council from Dacca Division in 1913. From 1916 to 1921, he served as President of the All India Muslim League. Huq played an instrumental role in forming the Lucknow Pact between the AIML and the Indian National Congress in 1916. He served as General Secretary of the Indian National Congress from 1916 to 1918.

He was a member of the Congress's Punjab Inquiry Committee, along with Motilal Nehru and Chittaranjan Das, in investigating the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Huq joined the Khilafat movement led by a civil disobedience campaign of the Congress. But he differed with Congress leaders over its boycott campaign covering British-style education. He felt the boycott would adversely affect the education opportunities of Bengali Muslims. He subsequently resigned from the Congress.

Leader of the Bengal Presidency

Huq in his trademark Fez cap.

In Bengal, he began publishing a newspaper, titled the Daily Nabajug, with Kazi Nazrul Islam and Muzaffar Ahmed in 1920. The British colonial government shut down the newspaper and confiscated its properties within a few years due to its outspoken anti-colonialist stance. In 1924, the Bengal government appointed him as Education Minister, during which several reforms where enacted in the presidency.

By the 1930s, Huq evolved his political strategy of empowering the middle class and farming community of Bengal. He established the Calcutta Agriculturalist Association. Huq's objective was to displace the feudal zamindar elite in Bengal, who employed millions of Bengali peasants under oppressive land policies of the permanent settlement. He formed the Bengal Praja Party (Bengal Tenants Party) in 1929 with Sir Abdur Rahim. It later transformed into the Krishak Praja Party (Farmers and Tenants Party) in 1935. The K. P. P. launched a mass movement demanding peasant rights, including making tenant farmers as land owners and abolishing the zamindari system. The K. P. P. became hugely popular among Bengali middle classes, who were enfranchised by the Government of India Act 1935.

In 1935, the Muslim community nominated Huq as Mayor of Calcutta, the largest city and commercial capital of British India. Huq won the election on a K. P. P. platform with the support from the Congress.

Huq (third from left) with members of the All India Muslim League's Working Committee in Lahore, 1940

During the Indian provincial elections, 1937, the K. P. P. clashed with the Muslim League, which enjoyed the support of zamindars, and the Hindu-dominated Congress Party. It came in third, winning 36 seats, compared to 54 seats won by the Congress and 37 seats won by the Muslim League. Huq defeated Bengal Muslim League President Sir Khawaja Nazimuddin in his Patuakhali constituency. He secured the support of the Congress, the Europeans (25 seats) and the Independent Scheduled Castes (23 seats) to form government. He was sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Bengal.

Lahore Resolution and Partition

Huq developed numerous differences with Muslim League President Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the 1930s, but continued to play an important role in the League's pan-Indian programme. As Prime Minister, Huq played a leading role in the drafting the Lahore Resolution in 1940, which called for independent states in Bengal and northwest India.

As Prime Minister, Huq played a leading role in the drafting the Lahore Resolution in 1940.

Huq entered the hall when Muhammad Ali Jinnah was addressing the Muslim League session. The audience erupted in spontaneous applause.

Now that the tiger has arrived, the lamb must retire.

— Muhammad Ali Jinnah, All India Muslim League Session, Lahore, 1940

The wording of the resolution was later changed and interpreted as a demand for a single Muslim state called Pakistan.

During Huq's government, the Bengal famine of 1943 occurred during World War II. Calcutta and Chittagong were bombed by Japanese air raids. Huq faced attacks by the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. His party was resoundingly defeated in the Indian provincial elections, 1946, under the growing atmosphere of communal mistrust across British India. Huq moved to Dacca after the Partition of British India in 1947, where he continued his law practice in the Dacca High Court.

Leader of East Pakistan

Given his role in the All India Muslim League during the early 1900s and presenting the Lahore Resolution in 1940, Huq is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Pakistan. At the time of the independence of Pakistan, Huq was the preeminent popularly elected statesman in the new country, in comparison to the non-elected Governor Generals of Pakistan. Huq represented a different strand of politics in Pakistan. He continued to lead the social democratic K. P. P. in East Bengal, the most populous province in the new federation. He was tied with Bengali political, social, cultural and nationalist interests. He strongly supported and participated in the Bengali Language Movement in 1952.

In 1954, Huq formed an alliance with the Awami League (led by H. S. Suhrawardy and Maulana Bhashani), the Democratic Party and the Nizam-e-Islam. It was known as the United Front. The coalition resoundingly defeated the Muslim League during the 1954 provincial election, securing 223 seats in the 300-member Legislative Assembly of East Bengal. Huq became Chief Minister in the United Front government in East Bengal. He was congratulated by King Saud of Saudi Arabia, who sent a royal plane to Dacca to bring Huq to Karachi for a personal meeting when Saud visited. He was also congratulated by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (his former political secretary).

His cabinet included rising stars of the Bengali political scene, including Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (Commerce and Industries Minister).

As Chief Minister, one of Huq's first steps was to establish the Bengali Academy in Dacca. During a visit to Calcutta six months after taking office, The New York Times reported that Huq made Bengali nationalist remarks. They were considered by the Pakistani Government as treason and Governor General Ghulam Muhammad dismissed the provincial government on charges of inciting secession. The succeeding Governor General Iskander Mirza and Prime Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali invited Huq to join the central cabinet as Home Minister of Pakistan in 1955. In 1956, Huq was appointed as the Governor of East Pakistan under the first Constitution of Pakistan.

He was removed as Governor when the country was placed under martial law during the 1958 Pakistani coup d'état led by General Ayub Khan.

Huq briefly joined Ayub Khan's cabinet in 1960 as Food and Agriculture Minister, but later retired from all active politics.