He served as a minister and a member of parliament in both the East Pakistan Provincial Assembly and Bangladesh Jatiya Sangsad.
He was the food and agriculture minister of the erstwhile East Pakistan government and a leader of the Convention Muslim League.
As a result, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman cancelled his citizenship in 1972, and stripped him off his lands and property and Kader remained stranded in Karachi.
His first wife was Lutfa Kader from Murshidabad, West Bengal, India and he had six sons and one daughter with her.
She is believed to be a sayyidah, an honorific title denoting people accepted as descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.