Abul Mansur Ahmad (, ; born Ahmad Ali Farazi, 3 September 1898 – 18 March 1979) was a Bangladeshi politician, lawyer, journalist, and writer.
Ahmad began as an Indian National Congress worker in Bengal. He participated in the Khilafat Movement in his early youth. A strong advocate of peasant rights, disappointed by the Congress's negligence to Muslim peasants, like many other Muslim Congress workers of Bengal, he left the Congress and founded the Praja Samity (later the Krishak-Praja Samity), a peasant welfare organisation and its political arm the Krishak-Praja Party (KPP). He became a major organiser of the KPP in the greater Mymensingh district region. As the KPP president A K Fazlul Huq took office as the first prime minister of Bengal, after the 1937 provincial elections, Ahmad became one of his closest confidantes. Disheartened by KPP's failure in the government, he inclined towards the thriving Muslim League and the Pakistan Movement in the early 1940s. He realised that Pakistan is inevitable and urged the KPP workers to join the Muslim League, fearing a feudal elite and clergy domination in its leadership.
Ahmad was dismayed by the Muslim League government in East Pakistan. He joined the Awami Muslim League (later the Awami League), a dissident offshoot of the Muslim League. He proposed the Jukta Front coalition for the 1954 provincial elections and also authored its 21-points election manifesto. The Jukta Front won a landslide victory in the election and he was elected to the legislative assembly. He was a major critic of the Pakistan Constitution assembly debate in 1956. He served as the Minister of Commerce and Industry in the Suhrawardy cabinet of the central Government of Pakistan, also occasionally serving as the acting prime minister.
Ahmad was an author of stories, novels, and political satires. He also wrote extensively on politics, culture, and history. He argued that despite sharing the same Bengali language, Muslims of Bengal, primarily in East Bengal (often referred by him as 'Muslim Bengal'), had developed and cultivated a distinct Perso-Arabic-influenced Bengali Muslim culture in parallel to the Hindu culture cultivated by the Hindus of Bengal. In his writings, he used the East Bengal dialect of Bengali and the Perso-Arabic words used by the Muslims of Bengal, for which he suffered discrimination on occasions. He saw Pakistan as an opportunity for flourishing East Bengal's culture. As a member of the East Pakistan Renaissance Society, he provided a vision for East Bengal's literary ideal.
As a journalist and politician, Ahmad observed and was involved in many crucial political events of Bengal and India at large. At different stages of his career, he was a confidante to many leading political figures of Bengal, including A K Fazlul Huq, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. He was an important intermediary in many political arbitrations. His magnum opus Amar Dekha Rajneetir Panchash Bachhar (Fifty Years of Politics As I Saw It) (1969) is a first-hand chronicle and a critique of the politics of Bengal spanning his career.
He was awarded the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1960 and the Independence Day Award in 1979 by the Government of Bangladesh.
Early life and education Ahmad was born Ahmad Ali Farazi on 3 September 1898, at Dhanikhola, a village in the Mymensingh district of Bengal Province in British India (now in Bangladesh), to Abdur Rahim Farazi and Mir Jahan Begum. Before Ahmad's birth, Mymensingh used to be an important centre of the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya, an early nineteenth-century anti-British movement led by Sayyid Ahmad Shahid and Shah Ismail Dehlvi. Both the paternal and maternal sides of his family had strong Ahl-i Hadith connections and were among the earliest four families in the region to subscribe to the cause, thus earning the title Farazi. Frequented by the local Wahhabi leaders, his paternal home served as the preaching centre of Wahhabism in that area. His paternal grandfather's brother Ashek Ullah was among the few who volunteered from Bengal to fight against the Sikhs, led by Barelvi, in the North-West Frontier Province (now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan)—also said to have taken part in the infamous Battle of Balakot.
Ahmad developed resentment against the landowners (zamindars) early in his childhood. In Bengal zamindars were predominantly Hindu at that time. He regarded the treatment of Muslim peasants not only by the zamindars but the Hindu community in general as discriminatory.
After his early schooling at nearby schools, in 1913 Ahmad moved to the Mymensingh town (also called Nasirabad), his district headquarter, for further studies. There he entered the Mrityunjay School, from where he matriculated in 1917, securing first division and a scholarship, and moved to Dhaka, the principal town in East Bengal, for further studies. He entered Jagannath College and found residence at a house in old Dhaka in an arrangement called . Inspired by the professor of Logic, Umesh Chandra Bhattacharya, he began studying philosophical texts of John Stuart Mill, Ramendra Sundar Tribedi, Hiren Dutta, Brajen Seal, Annie Besant, etc. He took the Intermediate exam from there in 1919. Then he completed Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Dhaka College in 1921. After a pause in studies, due to his political activism, he entered Ripon College (later renamed to Surendranath College) in Kolkata, capital of the Bengal province, in 1926 to study Law and passed the BL examination in 1929.
British India
While a student at Dhaka College, in 1920 Ahmad attended the Khilafat Conference, attended by the all-India Khilafat leaders, held in Dhaka, as a volunteer. As the Khilafat Movement and the Non-cooperation Movement joined forces later that year, Ahmad got involved in it. Inspired by the 'back to village' policy of the movement, he and a few of his friends left Dhaka and returned to his village in Mymensingh. They established a village co-operative, a free 'national' high school and a weaving school. He served as the headmaster of the high school and his friend Abul Kalam Shamsuddin, who joined him from Kolkata, became its assistant headmaster. However, within a year the movement lost momentum as the leader of the movement, Mohandas Gandhi, terminated Non-cooperation after the Chauri Chaura incident. Ahmad left his village and returned to Mymensingh town and took job at a national high school.
Ahmad visited Kolkata in mid-1922 to attend a provincial Khilafat Committee conference and also to find a job in a newspaper. Advised by his friend Shamsuddin, who had returned to Kolkata and was editing the Moslem Jagat, he started publishing articles in the 'Muslim newspapers', mainly in the Sultan and the Mohammadi, and frequenting their offices. Shamsuddin's Moslem Jagat published his long serial treatise Diarchy in Civilisation, criticising the Government of India Act 1919. He caught the attention of Maniruzzaman Islamabadi, owner of the Sultan. Islamabadi offered him a job as assistant editor in his newspaper. Ahmad left Mymensingh and settled in Kolkata to work for the Sultan.
As Ahmad joined Sultan, Chittaranjan Das brought about the Bengal Pact, a scheme for increasing Muslim representation in the public employments by reserving quotas for them. As a result, communal Hindu political and intellectual leaders lampooned Das in speeches and newspaper articles. Ahmad wrote articles in Sultan in defence of the pact. As Islamabadi, a strong supporter of Das and his Swaraj Party, feared that opponents of the pact may oppose it in the 1924 Congress provincial conference in Sirajganj, he sent Ahmad to Sirajganj prior to the conference charged with building support for the pact.
Ahmad joined Maulana Akram Khan's Mohammadi in 1924. In 1926 he was sacked from the Mohammadi. He began editing a new weekly called Khadem.
The Krishak-Praja Party
Ahmad joined the Congress movement under Subhas Chandra Bose. However, frustrated with the Congress's negligence to the peasant cause, particularly after Chittaranjan Das's death in 1925, he left the Congress and joined the Praja Samity, founded in 1929 by Maulana Akram Khan and others. He returned to Mymensingh in 1929 to organise the Praja Samity and practice law there until 1938. The Praja Samity eventually became a major political force in Mymensingh, with Ahmad as a leading organiser. It secured 64 out of the 72 seats in the district's Local Board elections. As contention arose among the senior and youth leadership about choosing the succeeding president, Ahmad sided with the youth faction, supporting A K Fazlul Huq. In 1936 A K Fazlul Huq was elected president of Praja Samity and the organisation was renamed to Krishak-Praja Samity.
The Krishak-Praja Samity's political wing the Krishak-Praja Party (KPP) set out to participate in the 1937 Bengal Legislative Assembly elections. Ahmad drafted the party's 14-point election manifesto. The two other major competitors in the election, the Congress and the Muslim League had organisation all over India, while the KPP was a provincial party. A delegation, with Ahmad as a member, was charged with forging an electoral alliance between the KPP and the Muslim League prior to the election. The delegation met with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the president of the All-India Muslim League, several times in Kolkata. However, the alliance was unsuccessful as Jinnah refused to accept KPP's demand for abolishing landownership without compensation. He viewed that peasants will benefit only through a strong Muslim unity and personally advised Ahmad: 'take it from me without Muslim solidarity you will never be able to do any good to them (peasants)'.
None of the major parties, the Muslim League, the Congress, and the KPP, won a majority in the election. The KPP sought a coalition with the Congress; the Congress also initially agreed. The Congress election manifesto promised to release the political prisoners. As the governor of the province, appointed by the British government, held right to veto cabinet decisions, the Congress was resolved to resign from the cabinet had he vetoed on this issue. During the negotiations, Ahmad insisted that the cabinet mustn't resign on that occasion as he feared in that case the cabinet would be resigning without fulfilling any KPP commitments to the interest of peasants. Congress refused to compromise on this and the coalition couldn't happen. As a result, the KPP took office in coalition with the Muslim League, dominated by feudal elites and rich merchants. Though the KPP leader Huq became the prime minister, in the face of Muslim League intrigues, KPP became a minority in the cabinet. With the KPP minister Syed Nausher Ali's resignation within a few months of taking office, the cabinet became bereft of KPP ministers except prime minister Huq.
Ahmad returned to Kolkata in 1938 as the editor of the Krishak, KPP's mouthpiece newspaper. In the cabinet, prime minister Huq was cornered by the Muslim League ministers and the governor. Though his cabinet took many popular measures, like the Bengal Tenancy (Amendment) Act (1938), Money Lenders' Act (1938), reformation of the education system, etc., it couldn't benefit the peasants as expected. Relationship between Huq and the KPP became strained and the party became divided. Huq was also not in good terms with the central Muslim League leadership, including with Jinnah. Ahmad left the Krishak in July 1941 over a discontent with one of its directors and joined the Navayug, patronised by Huq. Huq, who had realised that Bengal's interest was being harmed by the central Muslim League leadership and was seeking a way out of it, gave Ahmad the express mission to support him in the process through Navayug. Huq instituted a new cabinet called the Progressive Coalition on 10 December 1941. Huq eventually resigned from the Muslim League.
The Muslim League and the Pakistan Movement