Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury

Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury CIE (29 December 1863 – 17 April 1929) was Nawab of Dhanbari in Tangail, East Bengal, and the first Muslim minister of united Bengal, holding the education portfolio until his death. ^{1 2} His name is attached above all to the University of Dhaka: he demanded it with Khwaja Salimullah in 1911 and piloted the Dhaka University Bill through the Imperial Legislative Assembly before the university opened in 1921. ²

He was born into a zamindar family. The English article gives his birthplace as Dhanbari, Tangail, where his father Janab Ali Chowdhury was zamindar; Banglapedia instead says he was born at the house of his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Muhammad Ali Khan Chowdhury, a zamindar of Natore, and both places are recorded here as the sources give them. ^{1 2} Some 250 years before his birth his ancestor Shah Syed Khuda Bokhs had settled at Dhanbari. ¹

He was taught Arabic, Persian and Bengali by a tutor in childhood, went to Rajshahi Collegiate School and then graduated from St Xavier's College, Calcutta, and was proficient in English and Urdu as well. ^{1 2}

He began public life as an honorary magistrate of Mymensingh, soon gave up the post, and became a municipal commissioner of Mymensingh town and a member of its district board. ² Legislative memberships followed in sequence: the Eastern Bengal and Assam Legislative Council (1906–1911), the Bengal Legislative Council (1912–1916) and the Imperial Legislative Council of India (1916–1920); in 1921 he was returned to the reformed Bengal Legislative Council and sat in its first ministry (1921–1923); he was appointed a minister again in March 1925 for a short period, and in the same year became a member of the Governor's Executive Council, an office he held to his last day, entrusted with the departments of immigration, delimitation, Hajj administration, forestry, agriculture, industry, excise and registration, and serving also as vice-president of the Bengal Legislative Council. ²

His public offices included vice-president of the All-India Muslim League, president of the Central National Muhammadan Association, honorary secretary of the Provincial Muslim League of Eastern Bengal and Assam and later of Bengal, president of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, trustee of the Aligarh MAO College, and member of the Calcutta University Senate, the Dhaka University Committee and the governing body of Presidency College. ²

He represented the Muslims of Eastern Bengal in the Simla Deputation of 1906, played an important part in holding the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference and in the foundation of the All-India Muslim League at Dhaka in 1906, and worked throughout his public life for the extension of Muslim representation in the provincial and central legislative councils. ² In 1917 he resigned the presidency of the Bengal Presidency Muslim League in protest at the Lucknow Pact of 1916, believing the accord had jeopardised the interests of Bengal's Muslims — a majority made a minority in the communal distribution of seats — to safeguard those of Muslims in other provinces. ² He held the title of Nawab of Dhanbari from 1911, succeeding Syed Jonab Ali Chowdhury, until his death, when his son Altaf Ali Chowdhury succeeded him. ¹

On 29 August 1911, at a ceremony of farewell to Lanchet Heir and reception of Charles Bailey, Chowdhury and Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah demanded the establishment of a university in Dhaka. ¹ On 31 January 1912 a committee of nineteen members including both men met Viceroy Lord Hardinge and explained that Muslims had suffered from the reunification of Bengal; a thirteen-member Nathan Committee was formed with Chowdhury as a member, and he joined its six sub-committees. ¹ The First World War derailed the plan; Chowdhury renewed the proposal in the council in 1917, the Dhaka University Act was passed in 1920 and classes started in 1921, and it was Chowdhury who piloted the bill in the Imperial Legislative Assembly and then helped frame the university's rules and sustain it through its difficult formative years. ^{2 1}

He gave the university 16,000 taka for scholarships and mortgaged part of his zamindari to give a further 35,000 taka; in all he helped 38 educational institutions with land and money, and in 1910 he established the Nawab Institute high school at Dhanbari. ¹ Earlier, in 1906, he had donated 35,000 taka for a Muhammadan Hall for the Muslim students of Dhaka College, and by his efforts hostels were established for students at Dhaka, Calcutta and Mymensingh; in 1922 he gave a fund of 16,000 taka for scholarships to students of Islamic Studies and other departments of the University of Dhaka. ² As the first Muslim minister of united Bengal he was given the education office because of his role in promoting education and held it until his death, and on 9 June 2003 the university syndicate named its senate building the Syed Nawab Ali Chowdhury Building. ¹

He engaged in literary and cultural activities from 1895 to 1904. In 1895 the newspapers Mihir and Shudhakar combined as Mihir-Shudhakar, of which he was owner and, as the weekly Mihir-o-Sudhakar, editor and proprietor; he bought a press and installed it at his house in Calcutta, helped financially the Islam Pracharak (1891) and the Pracharak (1899), and gave monetary assistance to several poor writers for the publication of their books. ^{1 2} He contributed to the work of Muhammad Shahidullah, Reazuddin Ahmed al-Mashhadi and the poet Md. Mozammel Haque, and these writers dedicated some of their writings to him. ¹

His own books are Eid ul Azha (1890), Vernacular Education in Bengal (1900), Maulud Sharif (1903), Primary Education in Rural Areas (1906), and a work of 1920 on some moral and religious teachings of Imam al-Ghazali. ^{1 2}

The British government conferred on him the titles of Khan Bahadur in 1906, Nawab in 1911, CIE in 1918 and Nawab Bahadur in 1924. ² On 8 April 1929, nine days before his death, he had a waqfnama registered with the government for the maintenance of the members of his family and for charity. ²

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Banglapedia presents him as a leading figure in almost all the great social, political, educational, religious and cultural movements of Bengal, stresses his work for Muslim representation, and records his resignation over the Lucknow Pact as a defence of Bengal Muslims' interests. ² Neither source names a school for him: the English article's infobox records no religion and Banglapedia names none, so the faith field in his data record remains unknown with that absence stated in the note. ^{1 2}

His sons included Altaf Ali Chowdhury and Syed Hasan Ali Chowdhury, who became a minister of the East Pakistan government and a member of the second Bangladesh parliament; his grandson Muhammad Ali Bogra became the third prime minister of Pakistan. ¹ He died on 17 April 1929 at Eden Castle, Darjeeling, and his body was taken to his village home at Dhanbari and buried there. ^{1 2}

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