Mohammad Hidayatullah
Mohammad Hidayatullah (17 December 1905 – 18 September 1992) was the 11th Chief Justice of India serving from 25 February 1968 to 16 December 1970, and the sixth Vice President of India, serving from 31 August 1979 to 30 August 1984. He had also served as the Acting President of India from 20 July 1969 to 24 August 1969 and from 6 October 1982 to 31 October 1982. He is regarded as an eminent jurist, scholar, educationist, author and linguist. His brother, Mohammed Ikramullah, was a prominent Pakistani diplomat, whose wife, Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, was a niece of Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, sometime Prime Minister of undivided Pakistan and herself a member of the first Pakistani Constituent assembly.
Hidayatullah was born in 1905 in the well-known family of Khan Bahadur Hafiz Mohammed Wilayatullah, an upper-class family. His grand father Munshi Kudartullah was advocate in Varanasi. His father was a poet of all-India repute who wrote poems in Urdu and probably it must have been from him that Justice Hidayatullah got his love for language and literature. Wilayatullah was Gold medallist of Aligarh Muslim University in 1897 besting famous mathematician Sir Ziauddin Ahmad, a favourite of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He served till 1928 in ICS and from 1929–33 as member of Central Legislative Assembly. Hidaytullah’s elder brothers Mohammed Ikramullah (ICS, later Foreign Secretary, Pakistan) and Ahmedullah (ICS, retired as Chairman, Tariff Board) were scholars as well as sportsmen. He on the other hand excelled in Urdu poetry.
After completing primary education at the Government High School of Raipur in 1922, Hidayatullah attended Morris College in Nagpur, where he was nominated as the Phillip’s Scholar in 1926. When he graduated in 1926, he was awarded the Malak Gold Medal. Following the trend of Indians studying British law abroad, Hidayatullah attended Trinity College at the University of Cambridge from 1927 to 1930 and obtained B.A. and M.A. Degrees from there. Here he secured the 2nd order of merit and was awarded a Gold Medal for his performance in 1930. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln’s Inn when he was just 25 years old. He was awarded LL.D. (Honoris Causa) from University of the Philippines and D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) from University of Bhopal (now Barkatullah University) and University of Kakatiya. While at Cambridge, Hidayatullah was elected and served as the President of the Indian Majlis in 1929. Also while here, he pursued English and Law Tripos from the renowned Lincoln’s Inn. In addition he secured a place of Barrister-at-Law in 1930.
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