October 1984 – December 1987
On February 8, 1934 poet Abu Zafar Mohammad Obaidullah Khan (A. Z. M. Obaidullah Khan) was born in Baherchar-Kshudrakathi village under Babuganj upazila of Barisal district on 8 February 1934, in undivided India. He was the second son of Justice Abdul Jabbar Khan, a former speaker of the Pakistan national assembly. He received his primary education in Mymensingh town where his father Abdul Jabbar Khan was at that time working as the District Judge. In 1948, he passed Matriculation examination from the Mymensingh Zilla School. He passed the Intermediate of Arts examination as a student of the Dhaka College in 1950. Then he got admitted into the Dhaka University for studying English and after securing B.A. (Honours) and M.A. degrees he joined the same university in 1954 as a lecturer in the Department of English. He appeared in the Pakistan Superior Service Examinations and having stood second in the combined national merit list, he joined the Civil Service of Pakistan in 1957. He was promoted as Secretary to the Government of Bangladesh in 1976 and after retiring in 1982, he accecpted to be a minister for Agriculture and Water Resources in 1982. Later he also served as Bangladesh’s Ambassador to the United States of America. In 1992, he joined as Asstt Director General of FAO Regional Office in Bangkok from where he retired four years later. He died on March 19, 2001. He was the second eldest brother of journalist Enayetullah Khan and politician Rashed Khan Menon.
Abu Zafar Obaidullah actively participated in the Language Movement of 1952 . He composed “Kono Ek Ma-key” [Tr. To a Mother] for the first anthology on Ekushey, which is recited at the Central Shaheed Minar on February 21 every year.
