Ahmed was born on 5 August 1889 at Musapur village on Sandwip Island in Chittagong District of Bengal Province in the-then British India (in present-day Bangladesh) to Mansur Ali.
In 1918, he was appointed assistant secretary of the literary society Bangio Musalman Sahitya Samiti and took responsibility for producing its monthly journal.
In 1924, he was sentenced to four years in prison because of his role in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case along with S.A. Dange, Nalini Gupta and Shaukat Usmani.
In November, 1925 he, along with Kazi Nazrul Islam, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, and others, organized the Labour Swaraj Party in Bengal.
After the partition of India in 1947, Ahmed moved to Kolkata rather than staying in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).