Muhammad Shahidullah

Muhammad Shahidullah was born on 10 July 1885 at Peyara Village of 24 Parganas, West bengal, India. He was a writer, educationist, philologist and linguist. He is a celebrated philologist and regarded as a national pride of Bangladesh for of his many glorious contributions to Bengali Heritage, language, culture, national identity, educational, religious, political and social reconstruction. He discovered the root of Bengali language and terminology. Acquiring eloquence in 18 classical languages Muhammad Shahidullah was an example of endless effort and scholarship. He picked up quite a few languages in his school life viz. Urdu and Persian to maintain family tradition, Bengali, English and Sanskrit at school to fulfill academic requirement and Hindi and Udiya from neighbours in Howrah.

Shahidullah broke away from family tradition of Khadim (Warden) to Pir Gorachand shrine and studied language instead. In 1899 he passed school examination where he offered Sanskrit at third language. Self-taught other languages including Perisan, Urdu, Hindi and Oriya.

Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani

Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani

Also known as Maulana Bhashani was popular Ismalic Scholar and political leader. He remained rural-based politicians renowned for selflessness and solidarity with the oppressed. His long political tenure spanned the British colonial India, Pakistan and Bangladesh periods. Maulana Bhashani is popularly known with the honorary title Mazlum Jananeta (Leader of the Oppressed) for his lifelong stance for the poor suffered by establishment. He gained nationwide mass popularity among peasants and helped to build East Pakistan Peasant Association. Owing to his leaning to the left, often dubbed Islamic Socialism, he is also called 'The Red Maulana'. An alumnus of Deoband and participant of the Khilafat Movement protesting the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire he led the Muslims of Assam in a successful campaign during the Sylhet in 1947. Referendum, through which Sylhet chose to become part of the Pakistan national project. He was the founder and President of the Pakistan Awami Muslim League which later became Awami League. Her played a very critical role in the 1969 movement which eventually led to the collapse of the Ayub regime and the release of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and other co-accused in the Agartala conspiracy case against Pakistani leaders, effectively led to the electoral sweep by erstwhile opponent Mujibur Rahman. The Awami League without any viable opposition in East Pakistan won 160 of the 162 seats in the province and thus gained the majority in Pakistan national assembly.

Bhashani was born in 1880 at Dhangara village in Sirajganj, Bangladesh. He was the son of Sharafat Ali Khan

A.K. Fazlul Huq

A.K. Fazlul Huq

Full Name: Abul Kasem Fazlul Hauq.

A.K. Fazlul Huq was born on 26 October 1873 at Jhalokati, Bangladesh. He was a lawyer, legislator and statesman in 20th century. He was a major political figure in British India and later Pakistan (East Pakistan now Bangladesh). He was one of the most reputed lawyers in the High Court of Calcutta and High Court of Dhaka. He was an alumni of the University of Calcutta. He worked in the regional civil service and began his political career in Eastern Bengal and Assam in 1906. He was first elected to the Bengal Legislative Council from Dhaka in 1913; and served on the council for 21 years until 1934. He was a member of the Central Legislative Assembly for 2 years, between 1934 and 1936. For ten years between 1937 and 1947, he was an elected member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, where he was Prime Minister and Leader of the House for 6 years. He was later elected to East Bengal Legislative Assembly, where he was Chief Minister for 2 months; and to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, where he was home Minister for one year in 1950. Huq boycotted titles and knighthood granted by the British Government. He is popularly known with the title of Sher-e-Bangla (Tiger of Bengal). He was notable for his English oratory during speeches to the Bengali legislature. Huq courted the votes of the Bengali middle classes and rural communities. He pushed for land reform and curbing the influence of Zamidars. Huq was considered a leftist and social democrat on the political spectrum. His ministries were marked by intense factional infighting. In 1940, Huq had one of his most notable political achievements, when he presented the Lahore Resolution. During the Second World War, Huq joined the Viceroy of India's defense council and supported Allied war efforts. Under pressure from the Governor of Bengal during the Quit India movement and after the withdrawal of the Hindu Mahasabha from his cabinet, Huq resigned from the post of premier in March 1943. In the Dominion of Pakistan, Huq worked for five years as East Bengal's attorney general and participated in the Bengali Language movement. He was elected as chief minister, served as federal minister and was a provincial governor in 1950. He became secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League in 1913. In 1929, he founded the All Bengal Tenants Association, which evolved into a political platform, including as a part of the post-partition United Front. Huq held important political offices in the subcontinent, including Present of the All India Muslim League.

Satyendra Nath Bose

SN Bose

Full Name: Satyendra Nath Bose.

Scientist

SN Bose was born on 1 January 1894 at Kolkata, India. He was a physicist from Bengal specializing in theoretical physics. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920th, providing the foundation for Bose-Einestein statistics and the theory of the Bose-Einstein condensate. A fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 by the Government of India.

The class of particles that obey Bose-Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after Bose by Paul Dirac. A self-taught scholar and a polymath, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature and music. He served on many research and development committees in sovereign India. He passed his entrance examination in 1909 from the Hindu College and stood fifth in order of merit. He next joined the intermediate science course at the Presidency College, Calcutta.

Prafulla Chandra Ray

Prafulla Chandra Ray

Prafulla Chandra Ray was a Bengali chemist, educator and entrepreneur. He was born on 02 August 1861 at Raruli, Khulna, Bangladesh. his father Harish Chandra Ray was a land proprietor. Up to the age of nine, Prafulla Chandra studied in a school in his village. In 1870 his family migrated to Calcutta and Ray and his elder brother were admitted to Hare School. In 1874, while Ray was in the fourth standard, he suffered from a severe attack of dysentery, which hampered his health throughout his life. Due to the severity of the attack, Ray had to postpone his studies for a couple of years and return to his ancestral home in the village. However, Ray himself considered this disruption in his studies as it allowed him to read much more widely than what would have been possible within the constraints of school curricula. He read Lethbridge's 'Selections from Modern English Literature' and Golsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. After recovering from his illness, Ray returned to Calcutta and took admission in Albert School. 

In 1879 he passed the Entrance Examination and took admission into the Metropolitan Institution, which was established by Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. At that time the Metropolitan Institution had no science classes or laboratories and Ray attended lectures on physics and chemistry in the Presidency College as an external student. Here he was specially attracted by the chemistry courses of Professor Alexander Pedler. While studying for his Bachelor of Arts examination, he was awarded for Gilchrist Prize Scholarships after an all-India competitive examination. Prafulla Chandra proceeded to Britain and enrolled in the B.Sc. of University of Edinburgh where he studied physics, chemistry and biology amongst other subjects. But Ray did not confine his studies to only natural sciences. He also developed a strong interest in history and read books Rousselet's L'lnde des Rajas, Lanoye's L'lnde contemporaine, Revue dex deux moneds. He also read Fawcett's book on political economy and Essays on Indian Finance. 

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the founding Father of People's Republic of Bangladesh. He is popularly known under the title of "Bangabandhu" (Friend of Bengal). He served as the first President of Bangladesh.
He was born on 17 March 1920 at Tungipara, Gopalganj, Bangladesh.
He is considered to be the driving force behind the independence of Bangladesh. He became a leading figure in and eventually the leader of Awami League, founded in 1949 as East Pakistan based political party in Pakistan. Mujib is credited as an important figure in effort to gain politician autonomy for East Pakistan and later as the central figure behind the Bangladesh Liberation Movement and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. Thus, he is regarded Father of the Nation  of Bangladesh (Jatir Janak in Bangla). An advocate of socialism Mujib rose the ranks of the Awami League and East Pakistani politics as a charismatic and forceful orator. He become popular for his opposition to the ethnic and institutional discrimination of Bangalis in Pakistan, who compromised the majority of the atate's population. At the heightening of sectional tensions, he outlined a six-point autonomy plan and was jailed by the regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan for treason. Mujib led the Awami League to win the first democratic election of Pakistan in 1970. Despite gaining a majority, the League was not invited by the ruling military junta to form a government. As civil disobedience erupted across East pakistan, Mujib Indirectly announced independence of Bangladesh during a landmark speech on 7 March 1971. On 26 March 1971, the Pakistan Army responded to the mass protest with Operation Searchlight, in which Prime Minister-elect Mujib was arrested and flown to solitary confinement in west Pakistan, while Bengali civilians, students, intellectuals, politicians and military defectors were murdered as part of the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. after Bangladesh's liberation, Mujib was released from Pakistani custody and returned to Dhaka in January 1972. Sheikh Mujib became the Prime Minister of Bangladesh under a parliamentary system adopted by the new country. his government enacted a constitution proclaiming socialism and secular democracy. The Awami League won a huge mandate in the country's first general election in 1973. However, Mujib faced challenges of rampant unemployment, poverty and corruption. In 1975, he and most of his family were assassinated by renegade army officers during a coup. A martial law government was subsequently established. In a 2004 BBC poll, Mujib was voted the Greatest Bengali of All Time. 

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen is a Noble Laureat. His full name is Amarta Kumar Sen. He was awarded Noble Prize for his contribution of economics in 1998. He is also a philosopher. He taught and worked in India, United Kingdom and the United States since 1972. He has made contribution to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines and index of measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries. He is currently Professor of Thomas W. Lamont University at Havard University. He is a member of faculty of Harvard Law School. He is Fellow of Trinity College of Cambridge. He was awarded Bharat Ratna in 1999 for his work in welfare economics. Sen was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for most valuable contribution to Political Science.
He was born in a Bengali Baidya family in Santniketan in West Bengal, India, on the campus on Rabindranath Tagore's Viswa-Bharati University on house of his grandfather Kshiti Mohan Sen. Rabindranath Tagore gave Amartya Sen his name, Amartya which means "immortal". Sen's family was from Wari and Manikganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Sen's father name was Ashutosh Sen was a Professor of Chemistry of University of Dhaka, who moved with his family to West Bengal in 1945 and worked at various government institutions, including the West Bengal Public Service Commission and the Union Public Service Commission. Sen's mother Amita Sen was the daoghter of Kshiti Mohan Sen, a well-known scholar of ancient and medieval India and close associate of Rabindranath Tagore. He served as the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University for some years. Sen began his high-school education at St Gregory's School in Dhaka in 1940. From fall 1941, Sen studied at Patha Bhavana, Santiniketan. The school had many progressive features: at the school, any focus on examinations or competitive testing was deeply frowned upon. In addition, the school stressed cultural diversity, and embraced influences from the rest of the world. In 1951, he went to Presidency College, Kolkata, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with first class, with a minor in Mathematics, as a graduating, as a graduating student of the University of Calcutta. While at Presidency, Sen was diagnosed with oral cancer and given a 15% chance of living five years. With radiation treatment, he survived, and in 1953 he moved to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a second Bachelor of Arts in Pure Economics in 1955 with a first class, topping the list as well. He was elected President of the Cambridge Majlis. While Sen was officially PhD student at Cambridge, he was offered the position of Professor and Head of the Department of Economics of newly created Jadavpur University, Calcutta and he became the youngest chairmen to head the Department of Economics. He served in that position, starting the new Economics Department, during 1956 to 1958.
Meanwhile, Sen was elected to a Prize Fellowship at Trinity College, which gave him four years of freedom to do anything he liked; he made the radical decision to study Philosophy.