Sher-e-Bangla: A point of reference

ABUL Kashem Fazlul Huq lived what many would consider a rich, fulfilling life. Born on October 26, 1873, he breathed his last in Dhaka on April 27, 1962. It is said that the last four years of his life were spent in physical agony, and yet, Sher-e-Bangla, as he has come to be known in history, was one of the pre-eminent Bengali politicians whose entire life was given over to the service of his people.
By the time the All-India Muslim League met in Lahore in 1940 to ask for the creation of Pakistan, Huq was already a well-known figure within undivided India's political circles. But it was certainly that conference in Lahore which cemented his reputation as the Tiger of Bengal.
Abul Hashim, himself one of the foremost Muslim politicians in pre-partition times, records in his slim work, In Retrospect, the manner in which Huq made his way to the podium in Lahore on March 23, 1940.
He made his entry into the venue of the Muslim League conference even as Mohammad Ali Jinnah was busy exhorting his party about the need to demand Pakistan. Observing Huq, all League representatives cheerfully welcomed him as Sher-e-Bangla.
Huq obviously relished the moment. He slowed his walk to the dais, bowed left and then right as he acknowledged the cheers, and finally found his place beside Jinnah. The future founder of Pakistan told the assembled delegates: "The tiger has now been caged." Moments later, Fazlul Huq moved the resolution for Pakistan.
Huq left the Muslim League in 1942 and after that, till the division of India, engaged in various political permutations and combinations, notable among which was his forging a coalition in Bengal with Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. It was a coalition that eventually did not work.
In 1947, Huq moved to East Bengal, the eastern province of the newly created state of Pakistan. With politics increasingly becoming hostage in the hands of the ruling Muslim League, Sher-e-Bangla found himself adopting, more and more, anti-establishment and therefore popular causes.
In 1954, it was the combined force of his personality and those of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and Moulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (symbolised by the Jukto Front) that forced the Muslim League out of power through elections in East Bengal.
As chief minister of East Bengal, Huq expected to redraw the frontiers of politics vis-à-vis relations between his province and the four provinces constituting West Pakistan. In the event, he failed. Soon after his government took over, an unhappy West Pakistani ruling clique instigated riots at Adamjee jute mills in Narayanganj.
And then Huq made a trip to West Bengal, met his old friend Bidhan Chandra Roy and waxed eloquent about the historical ties between the two parts of old Bengal. The Pakistani administration painted his remarks as a conspiracy to break up Pakistan. On May 31, 1954, barely two months into ascending office, the Fazlul Huq ministry was dismissed under Section 92(a).
But a political comeback was what would define Huq's career within slightly more than a year. In August 1955, the man who had been accused of treason in May 1954, was inducted into the cabinet of Prime Minister Chaudhri Mohammad Ali as Pakistan's interior minister. That was a remarkable turn of fortune for Sher-e-Bangla.
Fortune came his way again when, on March 24, 1956, a day after the Pakistan constituent assembly adopted a constitution for the country, Huq took over as governor of East Pakistan. Here, too, something of history was made, since Huq was the first Bengali to be governor of his own people. His predecessors had been either British colonialists or West Pakistanis.
A.K. Fazlul Huq was removed from the office of governor on April 1, 1958. That effectively was the end of his career in politics. Age was finally catching up with him. In the four years left to him of life, he would be witness to the first military takeover of Pakistan in October 1958 and the suppression of democratic politics in the country.
Sher-e-Bangla remains a pivotal point of reference in the politics of not only Bangladesh but of pre-1947 India as well.