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Meet A.K. Fazlul Haq: One of the best-loved leaders of Bengal

Abul Kasem Fazlul Haq, popularly known as A.K. Fazlul Haq, was born on 26th October 1873 and belonged to the Barisal subdivision of the Bakerganj district.

Monday April 28, 2025 8:27 PM, Bhavuk

[A.K. Fazlul Huq (extreme left), Mohammad Ali Jinnah and others in Muslim League Council Meeting in Bombay in the early 1940s. (Photo: Dawn / White Star Archives)]

Introduction

“I am the living history of Bengal and East Pakistan of the last sixty years. I am the last survivor of that band of unselfish and courageous muslims who fought fearlessly against terrific odds in order to secure the rights and prestige of Muslims in this part of the world.”

These were the words uttered by A.K. Fazlul Haq at the Dhaka University Convocation in 1957. (A.K. Zainul Abedin, Memorable Speeches of Sher-e-Bangla, 1978, p.159)

A.K. Fazlul Haq was for sure the living history of Bengal and East Pakistan but was he also endowed with the qualities he claims to have? We shall find out through a journey into his life.

Early Life and Career: The Nationalist Phase

Abul Kasem Fazlul Haq was born on 26th October 1873 and belonged to the Barisal subdivision of the Bakerganj district. Having been trained in law under the watchful eyes of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, he rose from his mofussil roots to come shoulder to shoulder with the elite Bhadraloks. He was closely associated with the Muhammadan Educational Conference and was a witness to the birth of the Muslim League.

A.K. Fazlul Haq gradually joined the ranks of the young nationalist Muslims and was an active participant in the historic signing of the Lucknow pact of 1916 between the moderates and the extremists of the Congress and the Congress and the Muslim League. In 1917, he presided over the joint session of the Congress and the Muslim League.

The same year he was also involved in the formation of the Calcutta Agricultural Association. The Bengal session of the Congress in 1919 was chaired by Fazlul Haq and he was also appointed a member of the Congress inquiry committee on Jallianwala Bagh.

Haq was an ardent advocate of the Khilafat Movement and voted for non-cooperation at the special Congress session of September 1920 at Calcutta. However, he denounced it stating the reason in February 1921 in a letter to Sarat Bose. He wrote that the Khilafat Movement had been fully subverted to the non-cooperation movement and the boycott program which applied to schools and colleges would hurt Muslims the most.

The result was his re-entry in the legislative assembly of Bengal. His performance as a legislator was absolutely spot on as he got a resolution passed against the high salaries remunerated to the British officials. He also moved a bill against the British vacillation of Bengal for Darjeeling during the summers. He was promoted to be a minister(for education) in 1924. His performance as a minister was commendable as he created a fund for deserving Muslim students. He made the foundation of the Islamia College easier and named an Indian, B.M. Sen as the principal of the Presidency College.(Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding The Muslim Mind, Penguin Random House, 1987, p.193)

When Haq realised that his arena was Bengal and not the all-India periphery, he pondered over the Lucknow pact which he had himself helped achieve. He thought that the weightage given to Bengal Muslims was not enough and now the only way this situation could be reversed in their favour was through the system of joint electorates. It is for this reason that he supported joint electorates envisaged in the Nehru Report(1928).

The Tenancy Amendment Bill passed in the Bengal Assembly was opposed tooth and nail by Haq, Nausher Ali, L. Banerji and Naresh Sen Gupta. It was the passage of this bill, which seemed highly pro-zamindar that a break-away faction developed opposing such a law. It led to the formation of Nikhil Praja Party or All Bengal People’s Committee. He went to London for Round Table Conferences in 1930 and 1931 where he categorically stated that ‘you see a Hindu to my right and we work together which clearly shows that Hindus and Muslims can work together anywhere.’ When the communal awards were announced, Haq explicitly rejected them stating that he wouldn’t touch them even with a prong. However, the very next day Haq accused the Bengali bhadralok of communalism and stated that the communal awards are a measure against their tyranny.

The High Noon of Haq in Bengal: Ministry Formation

In 1935, he became the Mayor of Calcutta Corporation. By this time there were power factions within the Nikhil Praja Party which forced him to draw away his own faction which he named as the Krishak Praja Party (KPP).

In June 1936, 120 prominent Hindus including Tagore urged H.M.G. to annul communal awards but Haq was clearly against it because he knew that it was in the large mass of Muslim peasants that his votes resided. Large rallies against the awards were held in Bengal and it was for this very reason that there could be no Congress-Praja Party alliance. The League- KPP alliance couldn’t take place either and as a result all parties contested the elections separately.

In the elections of 1937, KPP got 35 seats, Congress got 52 and was therefore, the largest party. The Muslim League got 40 seats and independent Muslims won 41. The elections were made more interesting when Fazlul Haq threw a challenge at Khwaja Nazimuddin that he could contest from any seat of his choice but would not be able to defeat him. Nazimuddin chose the Patuakhali rural seat for here his position was strong in his opinion but Fazlul Haq defeated him with more than double the votes gained by Nazimuddin.

With the Congress not joining, the KPP formed a government with Muslim League support. While Congress wanted release of freedom fighters first the KPP wanted Zamindari abolition to be their first priority and this non-synchronisation meant that a League – KPP alliance formed a government with Haq as premier. Haq was sworn in as chief minister on April Fool’s day 1937. Though he enthusiastically proclaimed the Labrore resolution he could not be communal with a large Hindu vote-base for his party.

Thus, he started preaching protection and upkeep of Hindu rights in his province. Jinnah wanted Bengal and therefore nominated Bengal Chief Minister Fazlul Haq to the central parliamentary board of the Muslim League but when Huq demurred over the terms forwarded by Jinnah of a KPP-UML coalition and zamindari to be dealt with softly, he was expelled by Jinnah from the central parliamentary board and accused of a breach of Bengal agreement on Haq’s part. Interestingly Haq had neither been consulted before the induction nor before his expulsion and even the Bengal agreement talked about was never agreed to by Haq.

Thus, he was expelled for breaching an agreement he never made! While Haq was secured in his position, he knew that Jinnah’s clamour was on the rise among the Muslims (most of whom constituted his voter base) so it would be best to flow with the tide. He took the Muslim League membership at the Lucknow session of 1937 where he physically embraced Jinnah as well.

The marked turn towards communalism was visible in the measures adopted by Haq’s ministry too. The Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Bill was tabled in September 1937. The Bill proposed to abolish the right of the zamindar to extract salami (or the landlord’s transfer fee) and also his right of pre-emption, thus enabling his tenants freely to subdivide and transfer their holdings. (Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, p.105)

In 1938, the Fazlul Haq ministry altered the rules for recruitment to police so that no less than 50% of the constables would be Muslims. Another legislation passed that year stipulated a 60% reservation for Muslims in all government appointments. In 1939 the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act reconfigured the seats allotted to Hindus in such a way that they were given 3 seats less than required for the absolute majority.

To top it all the BhadraLok supremacy was challenged by the Secondary Education Board Bill tabled by the Haq ministry in 1940 which took away the control of higher education from Calcutta University and vested it in the Board which was to have a greater say of Muslims. The effects of these communal legislations were quite evident by the fact that Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, the Finance minister in Haq’s cabinet resigned at this juncture hurt by the onslaught on the Hindu interests.

Discomfort Vis-a-Vis Jinnah: Haq’s Embarrassing Ouster

The Lahore resolution, a clear pronouncement of a future Pakistan, was moved by Fazlul Haq on 23rd March 1940 at the Muslim League session. However, he was a staunch Bengali at heart and this evinced from him a statement that “I will not let the interests of 33 million Muslims of Bengal to be put under the domination of any outside authority, however eminent it maybe”, a statement clearly hinting at locking horns with Jinnah over Bengal’s autonomy.

In July 1941, he accepted a place on the National Defence council without consulting Jinnah which was offered to him in his capacity as the Bengal Chief Minister and not as a League member. This was bound not to go down well with Jinnah who started his machinations to bring about the downfall of Fazlul Haq.

Jinnah compelled Sinkander Hyat Khan and Saadullah alongside Fazlul Haq to resign from the council but Haq also resigned from the League’s working committee. He was never at ease with Jinnah’s autocratic behaviour and kept asserting Bengal’s autonomy through his speeches and actions. When this was thought to be an intransigence against himself by Jinnah, he used Haq’s rivals in Bengal to oust him. Both Nazimuddin and Hussain Suhrawardy resigned from Haq’s ministry hoping that this would topple the government.

However, Haq claimed the formation of a Progressive Coalition Ministry. It was after a long delay and on obtaining full assurance that Nazimuddin would not be able to form the government that the governor John Herbert called Haq to form the government. The government was weakened by the arrest of Sarat Bose under the Defence of India Rule by the governor.

In Bengal Today, a brief booklet containing four speeches in the assembly by Fazlul Haq, reveals the conspiracies hatched by the governor to deny power to Haq obviously at the instance of the British government which wanted Jinnah to emerge as the “sole spokesman.”

He also tells how the boat policy and rice collection and storage policies were carried out single handedly by the governor in collusion with his friends keeping the elected government in the dark. It was inadequate knowledge and arrangement by the governor that exacerbated the rice shortage which eventually reached famine proportions during Nazimuddin’s government.

The conditions set out by the governor for such a grand coalition of having to restrict itself to 10 ministries and 1 secretary, made sure that the coalition broke off. Haq alleges that even the resignation tendered by him had been already drafted and all he had to do was simply sign it. Seeing no way out, Haq obliged the Governor with his signature on the resignation.

The governor immediately called Nazimuddin to form the government allowing him 14 cabinet members and 4 secretaries. Even Nazimuddin could not control the damage that was creeping into Bengal and as a result the new governor Casey was quick in taking control of the entire affairs dismissing Nazimuddin as the premier of Bengal.

Haq’s political career in undivided India was doomed with this outster. He tried returning to the Muslim League but Jinnah did not need him now. The 1946 elections were an evidence of the waning prowess of Fazlul Haq’s party as the League won 114 seats in the elections, Congress 86 seats (all general) and KPP could muster only three seats out of which two were won by Fazlul Haq himself. With Haq in such a dilapidated condition, he was now left to the munificence of holding on to the crumbs, if any, left from the “high politics of partition”.

Formation of Pakistan: A Twist in the Fortunes

In 1946 Nehru proposed Fazal-ul Haq’s name to be included in the cabinet but Wavell reacted strongly against it. He therefore could not find a place in the cabinet and as a result had to remain a mute spectator in the entire unfolding of partition tragedy.

His dilemma was that he agreed to the idea of Pakistan and himself went to East Pakistan but always wanted the transfer of Calcutta to East Pakistan. However “neither he nor Jinnah could produce magic so mammoth in scale as to alter the demography of this capital city.”( Rajmohan Gandhi, Understanding The Muslim Mind, 1987, p.217)

Moving to Pakistan did alter Haq’s fortunes as he became the advocate-general of East Pakistan. However, East Pakistan felt neglected because of the capital of the country being in West Pakistan and the imposition of Urdu as the only state language by Jinnah over the Bengalis.

A Bengali movement was slowly brewing up in Suhrawardy’s leadership. With Maulana Bhashani Sheikh Mujibur Rahman at the forefront the Awami League was formed. Haq himself established the Krishak Sramik Party(KSP) and joined hands with the Awami League forming a United Front with himself as its leader.

In the elections of 1954 in East Pakistan, the United Front won 223 seats as against the 10 seats won by the Muslim League. Such was the influence of Fazlul Haq in East Pakistan(East Bengal) that the incumbent Chief Minister, Nurul Amin lost to a student candidate of the United Front with even his deposits being forfeited.

Haq once again became the chief minister of East Pakistan but during his visit to Kolkata he was quoted as being desirous of Independence for East Pakistan by The New York Times. Following this statement riots broke out between Bengalis and non-Bengalis and on 30th May 1954 his ministry was dismissed. However, after a brief period when the central rule was withdrawn from East Pakistan, a Haq nominee, Abu Hussain Sarkar became the Chief Minister.

Regaining his ascendant position in the politics of Bengal once again, Fazlul Haq joined Chaudhary Muhammad Ali and helped him become the Prime Minister of Pakistan, securing the post of interior minister for himself. He was also quite instrumental in the framing of a new constitution which gave Bengali the status of a national language alongside Urdu.

Assessing Fazlul Haq

Sir John Anderson, writing to the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow in 1937 had stated that Fazlul Haq was “the most uncertain quantity in Muslim politics, completely devoid of principle and trusted by nobody.”

While his defections based on the want of advantage are too well known and the statement too attests to the same, Haq was despite this a great orator who could swing audiences, a fact accepted even by his lifelong rival, Hussain Suhrawardy. He was deeply rooted to the countryside and never tried to hide or give up his rural belongings.

His connect to the masses especially the peasants was so great that when leaders of various hues reached the Bengal countryside in the 1940s, they found that most of the peasants had heard only Gandhi and Fazlul Haq’s name before. While he rooted strongly for Pakistan, the Bengali patriot in him yearned for Bengal’s autonomy.

He can be perfectly summed up by the following remarks - “Haq’s politics were a curious mix of his own brand of secular nationalism, Bengali patriotism and Muslim populism; he gave priority to one or the other according to circumstance. He was an opportunist who managed to believe in what he was doing at any given time, and his fabled warmth and generosity made him one of the best-loved leaders of Bengal.”

[The writer, Bhavuk, is a PhD candidate at the Centre of Advance Study, Department of History, Aligarh Muslim University, India. He has been awarded the UGC-NET JRF scholarship and is currently working on the Partition of India with special focus on Uttar Pradesh. He has been a regular contributor to Mainstream Weekly, Countercurrents, Rediff.com etc and has a research paper published in the reputed Hindi journal Samyantar.]

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