Haji Mohammad Danesh

Hajee Mohammad Danesh (1900 – 28 June 1986) was a Bangladeshi politician and communist activist.

Haji Mohammad Danesh was born to a Bengali Muslim peasant family in the village of Sultanpur in the Dinajpur district of what was then the Bengal Presidency of British India, and now a part of Bangladesh. Danesh studied at the Aligarh Muslim University, where he obtained a master's degree in history in 1931. He also earned a degree in law in 1932 and joined the bar of the Dinajpur district court.

In the 1930s, Danesh became active in the communist organisations of Bengal, especially the Bengal provincial organisation of the Communist Party of India. He was arrested twice in 1938 by the government of Bengal for his participation in the Tebhaga movement, an agitation in northern Bengal against zamindars landlords for landless peasants and sharecroppers who sought a greater share of the yield, most of which was surrendered to the zamindars. Danesh was one of the few Muslim communist leaders of the struggle, and worked to mobilise the Muslim peasantry in favour of the movement. In 1945, he joined the All India Muslim League, but was later expelled for his participation in the continuing Tebagha movement, and re-arrested by the Bengal government in 1946. After the partition of India and Bengal in 1947, Danesh remained in his home district of Dinajpur, which fell in Muslim-majority East Bengal, which became part of the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan. Danesh briefly left active politics, to work as a professor of law at the Dinajpur Surendranath College.

In January 1953, Danesh rejoined mainstream politics of East Bengal (also known as East Pakistan) by forming the Ganatantri Dal (Democratic Party). The party joined the multi-party United Front under the leadership of A. K. Fazlul Huq, which swept the provincial elections in East Bengal, defeating the ruling Muslim League. Danesh was elected to the East Bengal legislature. After the central government dismissed the United Front government, Danesh was arrested by police and released in 1956. In 1957, he merged the Ganatantri Dal into the new National Awami Party (NAP), formed by veteran socialist leader Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani. He was elected vice-president and later the general secretary of the NAP.

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