A. K. Fazlul Huq

Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq (26 October 1873 – 27 April 1962), known as Sher-e-Bangla, the Tiger of Bengal, was a Bengali lawyer and statesman, the first prime minister of Bengal (1937–1943) and the mover of the Lahore Resolution of 1940.¹ He held the unusual distinction of serving simultaneously as president of the All India Muslim League and general secretary of the Indian National Congress.¹

He was born on 26 October 1873 at his maternal family home at Saturia in Backergunge District, to a Bengali Muslim family of Qadis; his father Qazi Muhammad Wajid was a lawyer of the Barisal bar.¹ Trained in law, he rose through the Bengal Legislative Council, to which he was first elected from Dhaka in 1913, and served as Bengal's education minister and as mayor of Calcutta.¹

As prime minister of Bengal he led a populist coalition whose government enacted debt-relief and tenancy legislation for Bengal's tenant farmers, and in March 1940 he presented the Lahore Resolution calling for sovereign states in the Muslim-majority regions of India.¹ After partition he was advocate general of East Bengal, then chief minister of East Bengal in 1954 — a government the centre dismissed within weeks — home minister of Pakistan (1955–1956) and governor of East Pakistan (1956–1958).¹ He founded colleges and hostels for Bengali Muslim students and contributed to the founding of Dhaka University.¹ No article text names a school for him; the English article frames him only as born to a Bengali Muslim family, and Wikidata gives Islam only.¹²

He died at Dacca on 27 April 1962 and is buried with Khawaja Nazimuddin and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy in the Mausoleum of Three Leaders in Dhaka.¹

{¹} {³} {⁴} {²}