Mohammad Ali Bogra

Mohammad Ali Bogra (19 October 1909 – 23 January 1963) was a Pakistani politician and diplomat who served as the third prime minister of Pakistan from 1953 to 1955.¹ Recalled from Washington to succeed Khawaja Nazimuddin, he is remembered for the Bogra formula, his constitutional proposal for sharing power between Pakistan's two wings, and for the One Unit policy that merged the western provinces.¹

He was born on 19 October 1909 at Backergunge, now Barisal, into the aristocratic family known as the Nawabs of Dhanbari; his father Altaf Ali Chowdhury was a vice-president of the Muslim League's East Bengal faction, and his grandfather Nawab Ali Chowdhury was the first Bengali Muslim appointed a minister.¹ He was educated at Presidency College of the University of Calcutta and entered politics on the Muslim League's platform, sitting in the Bengal cabinet of H. S. Suhrawardy in the 1940s.¹

After the independence of Pakistan in 1947 he joined the foreign service, serving as ambassador to Burma (1948), high commissioner to Canada (1949–1952) and twice as ambassador to the United States.¹ In April 1953 Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad appointed him prime minister in place of Khawaja Nazimuddin, and he also became president of the Muslim League; his government was dismissed in 1955 and he stepped down in favour of his finance minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali.¹ He later served as ambassador to Japan (1959–1962) and as foreign minister in 1962–63.¹ On his religion the sources are thin: the Urdu article's infobox gives Shia Islam, but no article text in any language names a school for him, and Wikidata gives Islam only.²³

He died on 23 January 1963 at Dacca and was buried at the Nawab Palace in Bogra.¹³

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