Muhammad Habibur Rahman
Muhammad Habibur Rahman was a Chief Justice of Bangladesh Supreme Court in 1995. He was the Chief Adviser of the 1996 caretaker government which oversaw the Seventh parliamentary elections in Bangladesh. He was a faculty member at the Department of Law, University of Rajshahi and University of Dhaka. Besides, being a language activist, advocate of the Bengali language, he wrote extensively and published eight books on the subject. He played a significant role to implement Bengali in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He wrote Jathashabdo, the first thesaurus in the Bengali language.
Habibur Rahman was awarded Bangla Academy Literary Award in 1984 and Ekushey Padak in 2007 by the Government of Bangladesh. He served as a Fellow of Bangla Academy, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh and Worcester College, Oxford.
Early life and education
Habibur Rahman was born on 3 December 1928 to a Bengali family of Muslim Bishwases in the village of Dayarampur in Jangipur subdivision, Murshidabad district, Bengal Presidency. His father Maulavi Zahiruddin Bishwas was a lawyer associated with the Anjuman and later the All-India [Muslim League]'s Pakistan Movement. During the Second World War, his father was a regional leader of the National United Front and was briefly arrested in December 1947, being kept in Berhampore Prison. After the Partition of Bengal in 1947, the family eventually migrated to Nawabganj and later to Rajshahi. Habibur Rahman's mother Gul Habiba belonged to a Bengali Muslim family from Shyampur in Shibganj subdivision, where her son spent much of his childhood.Habibur Rahman graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Dacca in 1949. He completed his Master of Arts in 1951. After that, Habibur Rahman completed a B.A. in modern history from the University of Oxford. During his student life, he was an activist in the Bengali language movement.