Sir Abdur Rahim, (7 September 1867 – 19 October 1952), sometimes spelled Abdul Rahim, was a judge and politician in British India and later in Pakistan, and a leading member of the All-India Muslim League. He was President of the Nikhil Banga Praja Samiti from 1929 to 1934 and of the Central Legislative Assembly of India from 1935 to 1945.
Life
Rahim was born into a highly educated family of Bengal, the son of Mawlawi Abdur Rab, who was a Zamindar in the province's Midnapore district.A History of the Freedom Movement: 1906–1936 (Renaissance Publishing House, 1984) p. 408Eminent Mussalmans (Neeraj Publishing House, 1981) p. 465 Educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and in England at the Inns of Court,Eminent Mussalmans, p. 250 he became a barrister of the Calcutta High Court in 1890, and later became a founding and influential member of the Muslim League.S. M. Ikram, Indian Muslims and Partition of India (Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 1992) p. 308-310Sir Abdur Rahim at rajyasabha.gov.in
Beyond his profession, Rahim was active in the world of education and became a member of the Senate and the Syndicate of the University of Madras.A History of the Freedom Movement: 1906–1936, p. 409 He was one of those who successfully promoted the foundation of the Maulana Azad College.
On 20 July 1908, Rahim was appointed a Judge of the High Court of Judicature at Madras,London Gazette, Issue 28161 of 24 July 1908, p. 5420 and in September 1912 (with Lord Islington, Lord Ronaldshay, Herbert Fisher, and others) as a member of the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India of 1912–1915.London Gazette, Issue 28642 of 6 September 1912, p. 6631
Rahim went on to become Chief Justice of the High Court of Madras and Tagore Professor of Law in the University of Calcutta.Salahuddin Ahmed, Bangladesh Past and Present (APH Publishing, 2004), p. 86 In the 1919 Birthday Honours, he was knighted.
While he was still a judge of the High Court of Madras, Rahim gave a series of lectures at the University of Calcutta which were later published under the title The Principles of Muhammadan Jurisprudence according to the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali Schools. This work considers some recent European books on philosophy and law and compares the Islamic and European principles of jurisprudence, combining classical and modern learning.M. Hamidullah, Emergence of Islam, extract at muslim-canada.org
Entering politics, he became a member of the Bengal Province Executive Council and served as the province's Administrator of Justice and Allied Subjects from 1921 to 1925.
In the 1925 Birthday Honours, Rahim was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI).The Calcutta Review ser. 3, v. 15, 1925 (University of Calcutta, 1925) p. 396
In December 1925 and January 1926, Rahim chaired the 17th session of the All-India Muslim League at Aligarh, when he said –
In 1926, he presided over the All-India Mohammadan Educational Conference and argued for the use of the Urdu language among all Indian Muslims. The Hindu leaders became hostile to Rahim, and when in 1927 the Governor of Bengal offered him a place in the Provincial government, the Hindus refused to work with him.
Also in 1926, he formed a political party called the Bengal Muslim Party.Ramananda Chatterjee, ed., The Modern Review vol. 39, Jan–June 1926 (Prabasi Press, 1926) p. 601 The Modern Review commented: For any Muslim, and particularly for Sir Abdur Rahim, to form such a party cannot surprise anybody. But what is amusing is that he has felt it necessary to camouflage it as something other than what it is. For the party speaks in the opening paragraph of its manifesto in the most liberal and nonsectarian tones.
In 1928, Rahim was the president of the Bengal Muslim Conference which opposed the Nehru Report, and in 1930 of the Bengal Muslim Conference which opposed the proposals of the Simon Commission.
From 1929 to 1934, he was President of the Nikhil Banga Praja Samiti, or All Bengal Tenant Association.Praja Party at banglapedia
In 1931, he was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly of India, and while Mohammad Ali Jinnah was overseas for the Round Table Conferences, Rahim led the Independent Party. On 24 January 1935, he was elected as the assembly's president, which effectively ended his public involvement in partisan politics, but he retained strong views on the interests of Muslim Indians. He served as president of the Central Legislative Assembly from 1935 until 1945.
A member of the Indian Military College Committee, Rahim was sometimes skeptical of British policy. He was also opposed to recruiting men from outside India into the Indian Army, such as the Gurkhas, which he described as "absolutely an anti-Indian policy".Gautam Sharma, Nationalisation of the Indian Army, 1885–1947 (Allied Publishers, 1996) p. 138
In June 1939, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, wrote to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Zetland, after sounding out Rahim on Muslim attitudes towards the proposed Federation of India –
In October 1939, with Sir Abdullah Haroon, Rahim visited Allama Mashriqi, leader of the Khaksars, shortly after his release from jail.Chronology of the Khaksar Tehrik and its Leader, Allama Mashriqi at allama-mashriqi.8m.com
In 1946, Rahim donated his collection of 333 Arabic books, mostly on religion, to the Imperial Library (now the National Library of India), where they are known as the Sir Abdur Rahim Collection.Gift Collections at nationallibrary.gov.in
After moving to Pakistan in 1947, he settled in Karachi, where he died of pneumonia in 1952.Muhammad Mojlum Khan, The Muslim Heritage of Bengal: The Lives, Thoughts and Achievements of Great Muslim Scholars, Writers and Reformers of Bangladesh and West Bengal, Kube Publishing Ltd (2013), p. 279
His daughter Begum Niaz Fatima married the barrister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (1892–1963), who later became the fifth Prime Minister of Pakistan, while his son Jalaludin Abdur Rahim was a Nietzschean philosopher and one of the founders of the Pakistan People's Party.
Publications
References
External links Photograph of Sir Abdur Rahim