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My father, Ziauddin Mahmood, who has died of motor neurone disease aged 73, was a political activist, journalist, teacher and barrister who challenged social injustice.
The obituary of Ziauddin Mahmood was taken down on 24 June 2014 for personal reasons at the request of the family.
He was born in Barisal, in the Bay of Bengal, then under British rule, to ABM Mazharul Huq, who became a judge in the East Pakistan high court, and his wife, Meherunessa Khatun. Growing up in Dhaka, Zia witnessed the turbulent political and social changes that beset the new state of Pakistan. In East Pakistan demands for the Bengali language to have equal status with Urdu grew into a widespread protest movement. Zia became fiercely political at a young age after demonstrating students were killed by Pakistani police in 1952.
As a student, Zia rallied his peers against West Pakistan's suppression of East Pakistan and led the Dhaka University Students' Union in 1961, at a time when Pakistan's president, General Ayub Khan, ruled the country by martial law. The same year, Zia drew national attention when he challenged the foreign minister, Manzur Qadir, following a speech at the university.
Zia's activism and Marxist beliefs led the Pakistani authorities to issue a warrant for his arrest. He went underground, but was discovered and imprisoned in Dhaka central jail, where a fellow prisoner was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the future prime minister of independent Bangladesh. On his eventual release, Zia qualified as a lawyer, worked as a journalist and taught at Notre Dame College in Dhaka.
In 1964, under threat of further imprisonment, Zia left Dhaka for London. He enrolled at Middle Temple and qualified as a barrister. He later gained a master of laws from King's College London. He fought for the cause of the Bengali people of East Pakistan and wrote for the London-based publication Ganojudda (People's War) during the liberation war of Bangladesh. During this time Zia met his wife, Maya Alva, an Indian student of history at Soas, who shared his political views.
Zia was active in the anti-Vietnam war movement and was a founder member of the original Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He lectured in law and economics in various London schools, and volunteered as a community law centre adviser.
In later years, contemporaries asked Zia to join mainstream Bangladeshi politics but he declined, wanting only stability for his family. He continued to teach and practise law, taking up pro bono legal cases, including one involving whistleblowers and missing European Union funds at a London local authority.
Zia is survived by Maya, and by his son, Firdaus, and me.
