Huseyn Suhrawardy

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (8 September 1892 – 5 December 1963) was a Pakistani politician and statesman who served as the fifth prime minister of Pakistan from 1956 to 1957 and before that as the prime minister of Bengal from 1946 to 1947. In Pakistan he is regarded as a patron of separate homeland for South Asian Muslims, for which he is revered as one of the leading founding statesmen of Pakistan; and also as the pioneer of the Bengali civil rights movement in Bangladesh.

Born in 1892 at Midnapore, Bengal, Suhrawardy was a scion of one of Bengal's most prominent Muslim families, the Suhrawardys. He studied law at the University of Oxford, and joined the independence movement during the 1920s as a trade union leader in Calcutta, initially associated with the Swaraj Party. He joined the All-India Muslim League and became one of the leaders of its Bengal branch. Suhrawardy was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1937 and led the Muslim League to decisively win the 1946 provincial general election in Bengal, serving as the last prime minister of Bengal until the partition of India. His premiership was notable for his proposal to create a separate and united Bengal — supported by the Muslim League but opposed by the Indian National Congress — and failing to prevent the Great Calcutta Killings. In 1947, the Bengal Assembly voted to partition the province. Suhrawardy briefly remained in India after partition to attend to his ailing father and manage his family's property. He eventually moved to Pakistan and divided his time between Karachi (Pakistan's federal capital) and Dhaka (capital of East Pakistan).

In Dhaka, Suhrawardy emerged as the leader of the Bengali-dominated Awami League which became the principal opposition party to the Pakistan Muslim League. In 1956, the Awami League formed a coalition government with the Republican Party to unseat the Muslim League. Suhrawardy became prime minister in the coalition government, forging stronger ties with the United States by leading Pakistan's diplomacy in SEATO and CENTO. He also became the first Pakistani premier to travel to Communist China. His pro-US foreign policy caused a split in the Awami League in East Pakistan, with Maulana Bhashani forming the break-away pro-Maoist National Awami Party. Suhrawardy's premiership lasted for a year. His central cabinet included figures like Feroz Khan Noon as foreign minister and Abul Mansur Ahmad as trade minister. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was considered Suhrawardy's chief political protégé.

Suhrawardy was premier under Pakistan's first republican constitution and also the mastermind of The Direct Action Day of 16 August 1946. The Noakhali riots also saw the genocide of Bengali Hindus during which Suhrawardy tried to keep the news of the atrocities from the media and for either planning the massacre or failing to take action to stop it. During the 1958 military coup, Suhrawardy was arrested by the military government, due to which he missed the wedding of his niece, Salma Sobhan, Pakistan's first woman barrister. He founded the National Democratic Front in 1962 as a political alliance to oppose the military regime of Ayub Khan but died one year later in Beirut due to a heart attack. After his death, the Awami League veered towards Bengali nationalism and launched the 6-point movement, ultimately leading to a civil war in East Pakistan and secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971.

Suhrawardy is also remembered for his role as the Minister for Civil Supply during the Bengal famine of 1943. In India's West Bengal, he is seen as the Butcher of Bengal and mastermind behind the Direct Action Day; directly responsible for the 1946 Calcutta killings. Suhrawardy's only daughter Begum Akhtar Sulaiman was a social worker and activist in Pakistan; his son, Rashid Suhrawardy, from his second marriage to Vera Alexandrovna Tiscenko Calder, was a British actor known for his role in the film Jinnah. His brother Hasan Shaheed Suhrawardy was a diplomat, writer and art-critic. Many places in South Asia bear his name, including an avenue in Islamabad, a large park near his mausoleum in Dhaka, and streets, dormitories and memorials across Bangladesh. The Suhrawardy family home in Kolkata has been leased as a Library and Information Centre to the Bangladesh High Commission in India by the city's waqf board.