Muhammad Ali Bogra

Muhammad Ali Bogra was a Pakistani statesman and diplomat who served as the third Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1953 to 1955. Born in 1909 into the prominent Nawab family of Bogra in eastern Bengal, he was educated at Hare School in Calcutta and Presidency College, the same institutions that schooled much of the Bengali Muslim elite of his generation.

He entered politics through the All-India Muslim League, won a seat in the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1937 and served as a parliamentary secretary and then a cabinet minister in the provincial government during the Pakistan movement. After partition in 1947 he transferred to the new federal service and became Pakistan's ambassador to Burma, then to Canada, and from 1952 high commissioner and ambassador to the United States, where he cultivated a close working relationship with the Eisenhower administration.

In April 1953 Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dismissed Khwaja Nazimuddin and summoned Bogra back from Washington to form a government. He spent his short premiership trying to draft a constitution and signed the mutual defence assistance agreement with the United States that brought Pakistan into the Baghdad Pact and SEATO. His proposed power-sharing formula between the two wings of the country, the so-called Bogra Formula, was an early attempt to reconcile East and West Pakistani representation.

Removed from office in August 1955 after Iskander Mirza forced a reshuffle, he returned to Washington as ambassador and later served as foreign minister under Ayub Khan from 1962. He died in Dhaka in January 1963.

The name Muhammad is Arabic for praiseworthy and is the most common given name for boys worldwide. He carried it through every embassy and cabinet room of his career.