Ahmed, Maudud

Maudud Ahmed

Ahmed, Maudud (1940–2021) a Bangladeshi politician, jurist, accomplished parliamentarian and author. He was born on 24 May, 1940 in a noble Muslim family of Companyganj upazila in Noakhali District of the then British India’s Bengal Presidency (now Bangladesh). His father Maulana Mumtaz Uddin Ahmed was a Sufi Islamic saint and mother Begum Ambia Khatun was a housewife. Maudud Ahmed was the fourth of six children of his parents. He graduated with honors from the Department of Political Science Dhaka University and completed his Bar-at-Law degree from Lincoln’s Inn, UK. Besides legal profession and writing and teaching in foreign universities, he was mainly a political personality.

While studying in higher secondary level at Dhaka College, Maudud Ahmed was the Entertainment Secretary of the Student Union of the college. During his studies at Dhaka University, he joined the Chhatra Shakti, the student organization of Khilafat-Rabbani Party founded by Abul Hashim.

After completing Bar-at-Law in UK Maudud Ahmed returned to the then East Pakistan in the 1960s. He was an active supporter of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s six-point programme (1966) in 1966. Later in 1968, he was one of the members of the action committee formed for the release of Bangabandhu from the agartala conspiracy case. He stayed with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as a lawyer and political secretary. He was with him in two roundtable meetings with Ayub Khan.

In 1971, Barrister Maudud Ahmed played a role in building the foreign relations department of the mujibnagar government during the Liberation War. At that time, he regularly published an English bulletin called Bangladesh to create public opinion abroad in favour of the war of liberation.

Barrister Maudud Ahmed switched to different political parties and joint governments under various regimes coming to power after 1975. He served in the Ministries of Industries, Planning, Power, Water Resources, Flood Control, Rail and Road Communications, Telegraph and Telephone and Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs under General Zia, Ershad’s military and Begam Khaleda Zia’s BNP governments.

Mauded was an advisor and minister in President Ziaur Rahman’s government 1977-79. In 1979, after being elected Member of Parliament for the first time, he became the Deputy Prime Minister. When he was elected a Member of Parliament in the 1986 elections during the Ershad regime, he was appointed Minister for Information. He later became Deputy Prime Minister in 1986 and Prime Minister in 1988. In 1989, Ershad government appointed him Vice President. When Awami League came to power in 1996, he joined the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). In 2001, he was re-elected a Member of Parliament on the nomination of BNP.

Barrister Maudud Ahmed wrote several books on the political history and political developments in Bangladesh, Some of the books authored by him are Bangladesh: Constitutional Quest for Autonomy (1976), Bangladesh: Era of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1983), Democracy and the Challenge of Development – A Study of Politics and Military Interventions in Bangladesh (1995), South Asia Crisis of Development: The Case of Bangladesh (2002), Bangladesh: A Study of the Democratic Regimes (2012) and Bangladesh: Emergency and the Aftermath 2007-2008 (2014).

Besides writing books, Barrister Maudud Ahmed had been a Fellow and Visiting Professor at Harvard University and George Washington University in the United States, Oxford University in the United Kingdom and Heidelberg University in Germany. In personal life, he was married to Hasna Jasimuddin, daughter of Pallikabi Jasimuddin. He was the father of three children. He died on 16 March, 2021. [Govinda Chakraborty]