Kamran Hossain Chowdhury

Kamran Hossain Chowdhury
কামরান হোসেন চৌধুরী
Member of Bangladesh Parliament
In office 1988–1990
Personal details
Born	(1952-07-24)24 July 1952 Faridpur District, East Bengal, Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
Died	4 December 2024(2024-12-04) (aged 72)

Kamran Hossain Chowdhury (Bengali: কামরান হোসেন চৌধুরী; 24 July 1952 – 4 December 2024) was a Bangladeshi politician who was a Member of Parliament from Faridpur. He was a member of the 4th Jatiyo Sangshad. He was a member of the parliamentary standing committee on foreign relations.

Early life

Chowdhury was born on 24 July 1952. His father Shamsuddin Chowdhury was the son of a zamindar and studied at Islamia College in Calcutta during the British Raj. Shamsuddin lived in Baker Hostel with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. His mother Halima Chowdhury was the daughter of a magistrate who worked in different parts of Bengal throughout his career, including in Calcutta in the 1940s and Faridpur in the 1950s. Chowdhury studied at the Residential Model School and Notre Dame College in Dhaka, East Pakistan.

While Chowdhury was young, his home in Faridpur was visited by the stalwarts of Bengali Muslim politics, including A. K. Fazlul Huq and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy. His father was a distant nephew of Chowdhury Abdallah Zaheeruddin, who represented Faridpur in the Bengal Legislative Council, and Yusuf Ali Chowdhury, a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly. Chowdhury is also a distant nephew of former minister Chowdhury Kamal Ibne Yusuf.

Political career

Kamran H. Chowdhury (center) with Humayun Rashid Choudhury (first from right)

Chowdhury was elected to parliament from the town of Faridpur in 1988. In parliament, he was a member of the parliamentary standing committee on foreign relations. The committee supported the first dispatch of Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Forces, as well as deploying Bangladeshi troops to the Gulf War. He also served as chairman of the Faridpur District Council. During his tenure, the River Research Institute was established in Faridpur with Dutch government funding. A road from Goalundo Ghat to Jessore via Faridpur was also built in 1990. During the 1988 floods, President H M Ershad flew to Faridpur by helicopter to oversee relief operations coordinated by Chowdhury and the army.

Chowdhury was the Vice President of the Japan-Bangladesh Parliamentary Association. The association played a key role in mobilizing aid for the construction of Jamuna Bridge. As a member of the fourth parliament, Chowdhury had to vote for the 8th, 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution of Bangladesh. After the fall of Ershad, Chowdhury was a member of the Diplomatic Cell of Jatiya Party in the 1990s, as well as International Affairs Secretary in one faction of the party from 2001 to 2008. Chowdhury and his family were royal guests in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1996.

Personal life and death

Chowdhury was married to the late Shusmita Amin Chowdhury (Dina), a prominent Dhaka socialite, English teacher and Rabindra Sangeet singer. Their eldest son Umran Chowdhury is a lawyer, historian, and columnist. They have a younger son, Ayman.

Chowdhury was the nephew of Major General Nazirul Aziz Chishti, who was the Principal Staff Officer of the Bangladesh Armed Forces. His elder brother Imran Hossain Chowdhury was the first elected chairman of the Faridpur Sadar Upazila. Chowdhury's wife was the eldest daughter of Nurul Amin Khan, who was the Managing Director of the Jamuna Oil Company. Chowdhury's wife was the niece of Nurul Momen Khan (Mihir), the first Director-General of National Security Intelligence; A. R. Khandaker, former Inspector General of Police; and Niaz Mahmood Khan (Bobby), an independence activist.

Chowdhury died from heart disease on 4 December 2024, at the age of 72.