[6] Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, supported an independent Bengal; this was strongly opposed by the Congress Party.

After his death, the Awami League veered towards Bengali nationalism, the 6-point movement, East Pakistani secession and ultimately Bangladeshi independence in 1971.

Many places in South Asia bear his name, including an avenue in Islamabad; a large park near his mausoleum in Dhaka; and streets, dormitories and memorials across Bangladesh.

The Suhrawardy family home in modern-day Kolkata has been leased as a Library and Information Centre of the Bangladesh High Commission in India by the city's Waqf board.

Claiming themselves as descendants of the first caliph of Islam,[11]: 81 [12] the Suhrawardy lineage is traced to Shihab al-Din 'Umar al-Suhrawardi, a Sufi who lived in Baghdad during the 12th century.

His grandfather, Ubaidullah Al Ubaidi Suhrawardy, was a Dhaka-based Sufi leader of the Bengali Renaissance and buried beside the Lalbagh Fort.

His first wife was Begum Niaz Fatima, the daughter of Justice Sir Abdur Rahim, a member of the Governor's Executive Council and Speaker of the Central Legislative Assembly.

His brother Hasan later recounted that "it is difficult now for me to recapture the elation and the ecstasy of those days, but I remember distinctly that look of awe which was in my landlady's eyes when she brought in the breakfast with the morning newspaper containing the scoop".

His nieces include Princess Sarvath al-Hassan of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; the late Bangladeshi barrister Salma Sobhan; and the film-maker Naz Ikramullah.

He created 36 trade unions among sailors, railway employees, jute and cotton mills workers, rickshaw pullers, cart drivers and other working class groups dominated by Bengali Muslims.

According to author Thomas Keneally, Suhrawardy blamed black marketers and the central government in New Delhi for the Bengal famine of 1943 during World War II, and claimed he worked tirelessly on relief.

Viceroy Lord Wavell, however, believed that Suhrawardy was corrupt, that he "siphoned money from every project that was undertaken to ease the famine, and awarded to his associates contracts for warehousing, the sale of grain to governments, and transportation.

"[21] On the other hand, Indian author, Madhushree Mukherjee, laid major responsibility of this famine to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who wanted the ration for war efforts only and had refrained the U.S. aid to Bengal.

These were mainly concentrated in the North-central parts of the city like Rajabazar, Kelabagan, College Street, Harrison Road, Colootolla and Burrabazar.

So, whatever Suhrawardy may have meant to convey by this, the impression of such a statement on a largely uneducated audience is construed by some to be an open invitation to disorder[25] indeed, many of the listeners are reported to have started attacking Hindus and looting Hindu shops as soon as they left the meeting.

[25][26] Subsequently, there were reports of lorries (trucks) that came down Harrison Road in Calcutta, carrying hardline Muslim gangsters armed with brickbats and bottles as weapons and attacking Hindu-owned shops.

At 8 pm forces were deployed to secure main routes and conduct patrols from those arteries, thereby freeing up police for work in the slums and the other underdeveloped sections.

On 2 June 1947, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee informed the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom Lewis Williams Douglas that there was a "distinct possibility Bengal might decide against partition and against joining either Hindustan or Pakistan".

[34] One of the highlights of Suhrawardy's political career was leading the United Front campaign during the 1954 East Bengali election which booted the Muslim League out of power.

Suhrawardy toured the United States, was hosted by President Eisenhower at the White House, and met with American movie stars in Hollywood.

His staunchly pro-Western foreign policy was opposed by Bengali radicals led by Maulana Bhashani who caused a split in the Awami League.

Since 1932, elections in Pakistan's provinces were held under the "separate electorate" system of dividing seats in parliament among religious groups in accordance with the colonial-era Communal Award.

[38] In 1956, Prime Minister Suhrawardy halted the National Finance Commission (NFC) programme to allocate taxed revenue equally between East and West Pakistan.

[citation needed] A poor harvest led to heavy imports that year, mostly in the form of foreign aid, to meet food shortages.

Suhrawardy accepted Eisenhower's request to lease a base in Pakistan from which the United States Air Force could gather intelligence about the Soviet Union.

[45] The 1960 U-2 incident severely compromised the national security of Pakistan when Soviet Union eventually discovered the base through interrogating its pilot.

[52] The riots ended with thousand deaths and the Indian press blaming Suhrawardy of obstructing the police work, which is well documented by several authors and eyewitnesses.

[25] Historian Joya Chatterji allocates much of the responsibility to Suhrawardy, for setting up the confrontation and failing to stop the rioting, but points out that Hindu leaders were also culpable.

"[62] According to Tathagata Roy, Suhrawardy had pre-planned the riot long back, evident from the fact that demographic changes were being made in the Calcutta Police constabulary.

Making use of recently disclosed or hitherto unused sources, he also revealed that Suhrawardy was at odds with Muslim League's radical fraction also after Noakhali riots; however, in some other cases of the Hindu-Muslim armed fights (primarily in Calcutta during Spring 1947) he did less to stop the acts of violence than he could, what made him - according to Flasiński - guilty by negligence.