Kamal Hossain (born 20 April 1937), better known as Dr. Kamal, is a founding leader, lawyer and politician of Bangladesh. He is known as the "Father of the Bangladeshi Constitution" and regarded as an icon of secular democracy in the Indian subcontinent. Hossain currently heads his own law firm in Dhaka. He retired from political activities and from the post of president of Gano Forum in October 2023.
Hossain studied in the United States at the University of Notre Dame and in the United Kingdom at the University of Oxford. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in Lincoln's Inn in 1959. Hossain enrolled as an advocate in the High Court of East Pakistan. He worked on cases with prominent Pakistani lawyers early in his legal career, including with former Prime Minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. Hossain often worked on missing persons cases during the regime of military ruler Ayub Khan. Between 1961 and 1968, he taught law at Dhaka University. Hossain was the lawyer for the Awami League and its leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the Agartala Conspiracy Case. He was elected as the Vice Chairman of the Pakistan Bar Council in 1970 before the breakup of Pakistan. In 1971, he was part of the Awami League's negotiation team for the transfer of power after the 1970 general election. Hossain was imprisoned in West Pakistan with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman during the war of independence that transformed East Pakistan into Bangladesh.
Hossain served in Bangladesh's first post-independence government from 1972 to 1975 as Law Minister and chairman of the drafting committee in the Constituent Assembly. Hossain led the process which produced the 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh. Under Hossain's leadership of the drafting committee, Bangladesh became the first constitutionally secular state in South Asia. He then served as Foreign Minister, and led Bangladesh to join the United Nations in 1974. As Energy Minister, Hossain later enacted the Bangladesh Petroleum Act. Hossain's legal reforms were emulated in India and China, including in India's 42nd constitutional amendment and during the reform and opening up of China in energy law. Some of his reforms in Bangladesh were repealed by the military presidency of the late Major Ziaur Rahman in 1977. Secularism was reinstated in Bangladesh's constitution by the Supreme Court in 2010.
Hossain survived the 1975 Bangladesh coup while on a tour of Yugoslavia. He became based in Oxford University during the late 1970s as a visiting research fellow. In 1981, he ran as an opposition candidate for president against Abdus Sattar. Hossain fell out with Awami League president Sheikh Hasina during the 1990s, and formed the Gono Forum (People's Forum) party. Hossain has often worked with the United Nations and the Commonwealth of Nations. He was also considered as a candidate for the post of UN Secretary General.
Described by journalist Mizanur Rahman Khan as the "conscience of the nation", Hossain was compared to Adlai Stevenson by The New York Times in 1981. Hossain has been a leading lawyer in the field of human rights, energy law, corporate law and international arbitration. He served on the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal and as UN Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan. Hossain has been a member of tribunals dealing with maritime disputes between Malaysia and Singapore and Guyana and Suriname. He was a two-term member of the UN Compensation Commission. He is a former vice-president of the International Law Association, former president of the Bangladesh Supreme Court Bar Association; and chairman of the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST) and the South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS).
Early life Kamal Hossain's family belongs to one of the zamindar families of Shayestabad in Barisal. The family claims descent from Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam. His paternal grandfather, Syed Sadat Hossain, was the son-in-law of Mir Muazzam Hussain, the Nawab of Shayestabad. The area of Shaestabad was home to several Bengali zamindars. Hossain's father, Ahmed Hossain, was an early Bengali Muslim physician and MBBS holder in Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India. The elder Hossain was a relative of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the third Prime Minister of Bengal and fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan.
Kamal Hossain was born on 20 April 1937 in Calcutta. His family moved to Dhaka, East Bengal in 1949 after the partition of British India. Hossain attended St. Gregory's High School, where his classmates included the future academic Anisuzzaman. He received a two-year scholarship at the University of Notre Dame when he was aged 16, obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from Notre Dame, and later pursued a master's degree from the University of Michigan. Hossain's American classmates included Richard V. Allen, future national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan. In the U.S., he joined the Pakistan Students Association with fellow Bengalis Nurul Islam and Golam Wahed Choudhury. Hossain was a member of the association's leadership committee, which was led by Munir Ahmed Khan.
He has cited Justice Fazal Akbar as an inspiration to study law. Hossain moved to England from the U.S. in 1958, traveling to London by ship. In England, he met future professor Rehman Sobhan. In 1959, Hossain received a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from the University of Oxford and enrolled as a barrister in Lincoln's Inn. He also enrolled as an advocate in the High Court of East Pakistan. Hossain received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in international law from Oxford in 1964, with his dissertation "State Sovereignty and the United Nations Charter".
East Pakistan Hossain began his practice at Orr, Dignam and Co. which was one of the last remaining British law firms to continue practicing after the partition of India. Hossain was interviewed in Athens and offered a job at the company's Dhaka office; the firm had offices in Dhaka and Chittagong with an Irish solicitor and British barristers.Philippe Sands, Nico Schrijver and Sharif Bhuiyan, 'An Interview with Kamal Hossain' in International Law and Developing Countries. Essays in Honour of Kamal Hossain (UPL Books 2017) 12-13https://khchronicles.substack.com/p/orr-dignam-and-cohttps://www.dhakatribune.com/opinion/op-ed/371619/orr-dignam-and-co He invited to join the firm by lawyer Abul Ahmad. At Original, Hossain worked with two Englishmen and Justice Mohammad Hossain. Hossain was at Original from 1959 to 1962, when he came into frequent contact with barrister and former prime minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. Pakistan had come under military rule after a 1958 coup, and Hossain has recounted that he and Suhrawardy often zigzagged their car through Dhaka's streets to confuse (and evade) Pakistani-intelligence vehicles. Through Suhrawardy, Hossain came into contact with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He has said that Rahman predicted the collapse of Ayub Khan's regime in 10 years (which it did, in 1969).
Hossain defended Maulana Bhashani in a habeas corpus case. He was a lawyer for the English Rally brothers, who owned businesses in the Port of Narayanganj, and worked on a case for Chandranath Films. In 1963, Hossain began independent practice as a barrister. He represented The Daily Ittefaq, one of East Pakistan's largest Bengali-language newspapers, when it was banned by the Pakistani government. East Pakistan Chief Justice Badruddin Ahmed Siddiky told Hossain's lead counsel Mahmud Ali Kasuri to give the floor to Hossain during the Ittefaq case, and Kasuri obliged. The verdict favored Hossain and Kasuri.
He joined Dhaka University's Department of International Relations as a part-time lecturer in 1961, and later taught international law. Hossain's academic work at the university continued until 1969, and he was a staunch supporter of the six point movement.
During the Agartala Conspiracy Case, Hossain prepared the writ petition and worked on the case with Queen's Counsel Thomas William. In 1967, 1968 and 1969, he was elected vice-chairman of the East Pakistan Bar Council (now the Bangladesh Bar Council). Hossain was elected the last vice-chairman of the All-Pakistan Bar Council in 1969. In 1969 and 1970, he was involved in the round-table conferences between the government of Pakistan and major opposition parties led by the Awami League and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Kamal Hossain was the Awami League's chief political negotiator. After the 1970 Pakistani general election, Sheikh Mujib vacated one of his seats in Dacca and allowed Hossain to be elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan from that seat. Hossain was considered one of Mujib's closest confidantes, along with Tajuddin Ahmad. Between January and March 1971, Hossain negotiated with Pakistan's Law Minister Alvin Robert Cornelius and the Pakistan Peoples Party's lawyer Abdul Hafeez Pirzada over the transfer of power.
Bangladeshi political career
Hossain was imprisoned in West Pakistan's Central Prison Haripur during the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence. He was released on 28 December 1971. After his release, he accompanied Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to London and New Delhi, followed by a triumphant homecoming in an independent Bangladesh on 10 January 1972.
Hossain was appointed the first law minister of the newly formed country. One of his chief responsibilities was to frame a constitution. He was chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee in the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh. He was 35 years of age at the time, making him one of the youngest constitution drafters in the world. Hossain was credited with leading the successful completion of the constitution's drafting process. The Constitution of Bangladesh was approved on 4 November 1972 and came into force on 16 December 1972. The constitution included a bill of rights and professed parliamentary government (scrapped in 1975 and restored in 1991).
However, the constitution also included references to socialism, including language such as "realise through the democratic process a socialist society". On socialism, Hossain said "socialism was very much within the democratic framework and not socialism in the sense of communism. That, again, I think, is something that in the context of our historical experience from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was the big issue in those days". According to Hossain, the Awami League supported social democracy inspired by the politics of the British Labour Party. He recounted that socialism was an important political current in South Asia, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. For example, the Indian constitution also includes references to socialism. The government of post-1971 leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto embarked on nationalization in Pakistan. The Dominion of Ceylon was proclaimed as the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972.
Hossain served as a Member of Parliament from Dhaka in the Jatiyo Sangshad. He became the Foreign Minister of Bangladesh in 1973. Hossain secured Bangladesh's admission to the United Nations in 1974. The U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Hossain "another student of mine".
Hossain was a signatory to the Delhi Agreement between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The agreement sought to normalize relations in the subcontinent after the 1971 conflict. In the agreement, Pakistan pledged to release interned Bengali families in exchange for the return of PoWs held by India and Bangladesh. On dealing with neighboring India, Hossain has said "I had a great equation with Mrs Indira Gandhi and her foreign minister Swaran Singh. We discussed the knotty issue of land boundary with so much ease".