Despite being a member of the treasury bench, he opposed what he considered to be the repressive mentality of the Nurul Amin government towards the Bengali Language Movement.

By the age of twenty-one, he was leading marchers in a non-violent protest for independence at the Salanga bazaar in Raiganj, when the crowd was fired upon, killing hundreds of people.

At the budget session of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly on 21 February 1952, Tarkabagish heavily criticized the killing of several protesters near Dhaka Medical College.

[1] Tarkabagish asked the leader of the house, Nurul Amin, to formulate an inquiry and to visit to the wounded students before proceeding the session.

But as Amin refused the proposal, he walked out of the assembly[6] and subsequently retired from Muslim League Parliamentary Party on 23 February 1952.

[1] He played an important role as one of the leaders of the alliance in the movement against military rule of Hussein Mohammad Ershad.He was all along uncompromising towards fundamentalism and sectarianism.

Maulana Abdur Rashid Tarkabagish was honoured with the Independence Day Award (posthumously) by the Government of Bangladesh in 2000 AD.