[4][5] His father was a poet of all-India repute who wrote poems in Urdu and probably it must have been from him that Justice Hidayatullah got his love for language and literature.

[6][7] After completing primary education at the Government High School of Raipur in 1922, Hidayatullah attended Morris College in Nagpur, where he was nominated as the Phillip's Scholar in 1926.

Following the trend of Indians studying British law abroad, Hidayatullah attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge from 1927 to 1930 and obtained B.A.

[2][8] After graduation, Hidayatullah returned to India and enrolled as an advocate of the High Court of Central Provinces and Berar at Nagpur on 19 July 1930.

On 2 August 1943, he became the Advocate General of Central Provinces and Berar (now Madhya Pradesh) and continued to hold the said post till he was appointed as an Additional Judge of that High Court in 1946.

The visit of President of the United States Richard Nixon to India made his presidential term historic.

After his retirement, Hidayatullah was elected as the Vice-President of India by a consensus among different parties and occupied that high office with distinction from 1979 to August 1984.

His judgment in the case of Ranjit D. Udeshi[11] dealing with the law of obscenity, displayed a flair for literature and is particularly of note.

Before being elevated as a judge to High Court, Hidayatullah was involved in local and state affairs.

The following are some of the committee positions he held: Many of these positions, as well as those of High Court Justice were held prior to Indian Independence, they were all considered service to Great Britain, thus Hidayatullah was conferred the honour as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by King George VI in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours.

[7] Having received an education at one of the premier legal institutions of the time, Hidayatullah was able to segue into an academic career not long after returning to India.

[2] He was, at one time, a Member of the Executive Council of the World Assembly of Judges and of the Managing Committee of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.

He was also a Member of the World Association for Orphans and Abandoned Children and a Settlor of the Jawaharlal Nehru-Cambridge University Trust.

He also represented India in International Conferences held in different countries and cities, such as, Washington, London, Geneva, Sydney, the Hague, Tokyo, Stockholm, Belgrade, Cairo and Bangkok.

[2] In his honour, the Hidayatullah National Law University was established in 2003, in his home town of Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh.