Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy was a Pakistani statesman of Bengali origin, and was among the Founding Fathers of modern-day Pakistan. He was elected as the fifth Prime minister of Pakistan and served from 1956 to 1957. Suhrawardy belongs to the Suhrawardia family. He was born on 8th September 1892, in a town of Midnapore, currently West Bengal. His father, Sir Zahid Suhrawardy, was a well-known judge of the Calcutta High Court. He completed his B.S. in Mathematics in 1910, from St. Xavier’s College. He got admission in University of Calcutta, from where he did his Masters in Arabic language and won a scholarship for higher studies abroad. He then, went to the United Kingdom to join St Catherine’s College, Oxford University, from where he completed M.A.B.C.L. and Bar-at-Law degrees with distinction. After that he started practice at Calcutta High Court. In 1920, he married Begum Niaz Fatima, daughter of Sir Abdur Rahim, at that time Home Minister of the Bengal Province of British India. He was blessed with two children from this marriage; Ahmed Shahab Suhrawardy and Begum Akhtar Sulaiman. Ahmed Suhrawardy died from pneumonia, in 1940, when he was a student in London. Suhrawardy’s first wife, Begum Niaz Fatima, died in 1932; he afterward married Vera Alexandrovna Tiscenko Calder, who, after her marriage converted to Islam and changed her name to Begum Noor Jehan. He had one child, Rashid Suhrawardy, from her.
Suhrwardy entered lively politics in Bengal, from the dais of Swaraj Part. He played a significant part in the preparation of the Bengal Pact in 1923. At the age of 31, in 1924, he became the Deputy Mayor of the Calcutta Corporation, and the Deputy Leader of the Swaraj Party in the Provincial Assembly. He severed himself from the Swaraj Party and joined Muslim League. He became as Minister of Labour, and Minister of Civil Supplies. In 1946’s elections, he became the head of a Muslim League government in Bengal. After the independence Pakistan, Suhrawardy was elected as a Member of the first Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in 1949. He afterward became Minister for Law, during the power of second Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, in December 1954, and after one year, in 1955 he was appointed the Leader of the Opposition to a coalition Government. He was chosen to head a coalition government of Pakistan, as a Prime Minister in 1956. His early assignments were to tackle the energy troubles, to eliminate economical disparity, and to create a huge military. He took interest to re- construct and improves the military forces, to accelerate the defense framework, to formulate the schedule of nuclear power against India, and to advance supply-side economics strategies.
Suhrawardy was the leading Prime Minister to visit China to advance the Sino-Pak relations and Pakistan-U.S’s long associated ties were the torch bearer of his foreign policy. In spite his accomplishments, he was compelled to resign under menace of dismissal by the President Iskander Mirza, after his not able to control the economic disparity, to start One Unit Program, and to check the control of business domination in politics. Suhrawardy resigned from his position on 10th October 1957. He died because of a chronic heart attack in Beirut, Lebanon, on 5th December 1963; his grave is in Dhaka. Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s reign in office was short, as it was discontinued by President Iskander Mirza. It is thought that Mirza opposed Suhrawardy’s appointment as prime minister, but uninterestedly accepted his name when the political facts facing him left no other alternative on the table.
Begum Ikramullah, Suhrawardy’s cousin and a highly admired woman in her own right, exhibits many affairs both in individual and government of his life, in Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. Her disclosure assists to comprehend the trouble of Pakistani politics in the instant aftershocks of independence.
Mirza and Suhrawardy may have had some bitterness between them before, but after Suhrawardy’s appointment as prime minister, the two men were friends with each others. Suhrawardy was an expert politician and Jinnah wanted him to join the Muslim League and lead it in Bengal province of the pre-partition India. He lived up to Jinnah’s assumption. He was one of the active politicians, he pleased all. He never took monetary profits from politics. Rather than he practiced law for his livelihood. He took up his legal practice again. The courts of Karachi and Lahore were ordered not to record him as a lawyer. It was the court of Sahiwal that enrolled Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy as a lawyer. Suhrawardy was compelled to resign as Prime Minister, people liked him and still people remember him and he can never be forgotten. Huseyn Suhrawardy the architect was the man who struggled his way to bring Bengal on the map of Pakistan In order to achieve this objective he tried and got a resolution passed by the Legislators’ Convention. As Chief Minister of United Bengal, he supported and served Muslims during the riots to such a large extent that Hindus in Bengal hated him. For the entire duration of Pakistan Movement, he had been the Secretary-General of Muslim League Bengal and a powerful member of the Party.