Khan Sarwar Murshid was a Bangladeshi educationist, diplomat and intellectual.
Background
Sarwar Murshid was born in Munsef Bari of Comilla town at the home of his maternal grandparents, and raised largely in Brahmanbaria. His father, Ali Ahmed Khan, who hailed from village Nasirabad, near Nabinagor thana of Comilla district, but now under the jurisdiction of Brahmanbaria district, was a well known advocate and a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Education
Murshid was educated at the University of Dhaka and University of Nottingham.
Career
He served as Vice Chancellor of Rajshahi University during 1972-1975. As a diplomat, he served as the Bangladeshi high commissioner to Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and he was appointed Assistant Secretary General to the Commonwealth Secretariat in 1978. He was the first chairman of the Bangladeshi branch of Transparency International, an anti-corruption body, and was a trustee until his death.
Between 1949 and 1965, Murshid edited a literary journal called New Values.
Among his students at Dhaka University were future Bengali intellectuals such as Shamsur Rahman, Abdul Mannan Syed and Zillur Rahman Siddiqui. Murshid died on 8 December 2012 from a heart attack after a massive stroke on 29 November.
He was given the guard of honor at Central Shaheed Minar for his contribution to the liberation war of Bangladesh as a freedom-fighter and buried at the Mirpur Martyred Intellectuals" Graveyard.
Membership
From 1948 onward, he was a faculty member of the English Department of Dhaka University, becoming a full professor in 1970. During the 1971 liberation war, he was a member of the planning commission of the Mujibnagar government-in-exile.