Ashab Uddin was born in April 1914, in Sadhanpur, a village in what is now Banshkhali Upazila of the Chittagong District of Bangladesh, which was then part of the British Indian province of Bengal.
[9][10] Abdul Karim reminisced later that Ashab Uddin Ahmad's lectures on prose and poetry were so engaging that listening to them was sufficient preparation for an examination.
[11] In his view, the Pakistani elite misused Islam as a way to promote its class interests at the expense of the country's "Sindhi, Baluch, Pathan and Bengali" peoples.
Nevertheless, it was shielded from persecution by the influential non-Bengali principal of Comilla Victoria College, Akhtar Hameed Khan, who was on friendly terms with Ashab Uddin.
Ashab Uddin and Abul Khair led a number of Comilla Victoria College to join the procession, which stretched out for a mile.
Prior to the Comilla protest, Ashab Uddin had talked to local Muhajir leaders in order to persuade them not to oppose the Bengali Language Movement.
As a result, after the demonstration, one Muhajir leader gave a speech in Urdu at the Comilla town hall in support of granting Bengali the status of a state language.
The members of the Teachers' Goodwill Mission were received on the day after their arrival in Swat by the ruler of the state, Abdul-Haqq Jahan Zeb.
After dinner, Ayub engaged Ashab Uddin in conversation and told him that East Bengal was nothing but "water", "population" and "student trouble".
For his part, Ashab Uddin reminded Ayub that, in the provincial elections of 1946, the Muslim League had attained its best results in Bengal.
[16] Although Ayub Khan seemed to accept the above argument made by Ashab Uddin Ahmad, the latter was left sorely disappointed, and afterwards cited this as an example of the "ill will" the Teachers' Goodwill Mission had met with in West Pakistan.
[17] In 1953, Ashab Uddin Ahmad and Abul Khair organised the first All-East-Bengal Literature Conference at the Comilla town hall, under the auspices of the Pragati Majlis.
A number of noteworthy East Bengali writers and journalists attended this conference, including Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad.
By 1953, Ashab Uddin Ahmad was a member of the Awami League, led by Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, and put forward his candidacy for the Banshkhali seat in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly elections of 1954 on a United Front ticket, the United Front being an alliance of parties of which the Awami League was the most important part.
To his immense relief, however, the scholar declared after the dawn prayer the following day that Ashab Uddin was a faithful and trustworthy man.
In Ashab Uddin's view, Rahman was innocent, and the riot had been organised by the Pakistani federal government, with the help of the director of the paper mill.
[24] On 4 September 1956, the Awami League formed a provincial government headed by Ataur Rahman Khan, in coalition with five smaller parties.
[25] Eight days later, on 12 September, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy of the Awami League became the prime minister of Pakistan, at the head of a coalition government.
[20] Abdul Hamid Bhashani, the president of the Awami League, convened the a five-day Kagmari Conference which was funded by Yar Mohammad Khan the treasurer of the Awami League also the founder and publisher of The Daily Ittefaq and Mirza Mehdy Ispahani in February 1957 to promote autonomy for East Pakistan and a neutral foreign policy for Pakistan.
[26] At the conference, during a meeting of the Awami League Central Committee, Suhrawardy said to Ashab Uddin in English, "you do not want that I should remain Prime Minister of Pakistan".
The following day, the Awami League Council met and voted by a wide margin to cancel the Pakistani military alliance with the US.
[29] All members of the cabinet, other than Dhirendranath Datta and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, withdrew from the assembly chamber, so as not to appear to back the resolution.
Delegates attending the inaugural NAP convention were attacked with sticks by thugs allegedly hired by the Awami League, but ultimately the formation of the party could not be prevented.
[34] On 7 October 1958, President Iskander Mirza instituted martial law, which dissolved the federal parliament and provincial assemblies.
Once they were successful on both fronts, Ashab Uddin and Datta decided to expand the activities of the force by attempting a march from Satkania south to Cox's Bazar via Banshkhali.
Ashab Uddin hoped that thousands of peasants would join the unit, which would then be able to seize and hold territory, subjecting members of exploitative classes to popular trials and fomenting a wider revolution.
[37] After the war, the Communist Party led by Toaha, which Ashab Uddin was a member of, was in opposition to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's government.
[36] When discussing the 1991 election, Ashab Uddin Ahmad expressed the view that parliamentary democracy was unsuitable for Bangladesh, given that most of the population at the time was illiterate, which exposed them to exploitation and communalism.
"[42] In his view, Indian democracy had not been able to solve the problems of "poverty, landlessness, homelessness, unemployment, the lack of education, untouchability and communalism."
He believed that, looking at India, Bangladeshis should draw the conclusion that, instead of democracy, what was needed was a popular revolution led by a revolutionary party.