Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (died on 5 December 1963) was a Bengali statesman of British India in the first half of the 20th century. He served as the last Prime Minister of Bengal during the British Raj and following the independence of Pakistan in 1947, he became a leading populist statesman of East Pakistan and served as Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Born into a prominent Bengali Muslim family of Midnapore, Suhrawardy was educated at Oxford, and joined the Swaraj Party of Chittaranjan Das upon returning to India in 1921. He became the Mayor of Calcutta, the largest city in British India, during the 1930s, and later, as a member of the All-India Muslim League, assumed the premiership of Bengal in the mid-1940s.

Suhrawardy became prime minister and pledged to resolve the energy crises, address economic disparities between East and West Pakistan, and strengthen the armed forces. His initiatives included supply side economic policies, planning nuclear power and energy and reorganizing and reforming the Pakistani military. In foreign policy, he pioneered a strategic partnership with the United States.

Faced with pressure from the bureaucracy and business community over his policies in aid distribution, nationalization and opposition to the one unit scheme, he was forced to resign on 10 October 1957, under threat of dismissal by President Iskandar Mirza. He was banned from public life by the military junta of General Ayub Khan. Huseyn Shaheed  Suhrawardy died in 1963 in Beirut, Lebanon after suffering a massive heart attack.