Hussain Muhammad Ershad (1 February 1930-14 July 2019) was the military dictator of Bangladesh from 11 December 1983 to 6 December 1990, succeeding Abdus Sattar and preceding Shahabuddin Ahmed. Ershad, a top adviser to the late Ziaur Rahman, seized power in a coup in 1982 before becoming President of Bangladesh on 11 December 1983. Ershad achieved his goals of stabilizing the Bangladeshi Army and working out population and environmental issues, but his implementation of Islam as the state religion betrayed the secularism that was declared in the original constitution.
Biography[]
Hussain Muhammad Ershad was born on 1 February 1930 in Dinhata, West Bengal, British India (now in India) to a family of Sunni Muslim Bengalis. He joined the Pakistani Army in 1952 and rose in the ranks, and in 1971 he was stationed in West Pakistan with the 7th East Bengal Regiment; at the start of the Bangladesh Liberation War, he was interned alongside all other Bengali officers in the army. In 1973, following the Simla Agreement between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Ershad was released from prison and returned to Bangladesh. He became Adjutant-General of the Bangladeshi Army and was appointed Chief of the Army Staff following Ziaur Rahman's army coup, and he became Rahman's closest political adviser. After Rahman was assassinated, he remained loyal to the government and had the coup's leader Abul Manzoor arrested and executed.
On 24 March 1982, Ershad overthrew Abdus Sattar in a military coup and installed a new military dictatorship, founding the Jatiya Party. He imitated Rahman's rule by installing AFM Ahsanuddin Chowdhury as a civilian president, but on 11 December 1983 he became the new President, succeeding Chowdhury as the new president. During his rule, he stabilized the Bangladeshi Army, and in 1988 he authorized the use of Bangladeshi soldiers in the United Nations' peacekeeping efforts. Ershad made a change to the constitution's promise of secularism when he made Islam the state religion of the country, and constitutional changes led to a 1990 coup against Ershad that installed Shahabuddin Ahmed as the new President of Bangladesh. Ershad was arrested, but in 1998 it was ruled that his arrest was illegal and he was released. In 2008, he returned to lead the Jatiya Party, and his contributions to population and environmental issues led to him being made a UN laureate. He died in 2019 at the age of 89.