Orr, Dignam and Co.
The early law practice of Dr. Kamal Hossain
Kamal Hossain was called to the bar at one of the four inns of court in England and Wales. He became a member of The Honorable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. After being called in 1959, he returned to East Pakistan and joined one of the last remaining British law firms which continued to practice in the subcontinent after partition. Hossain responded to an ad in The Times seeking applications for vacancies at Orr, Dignam and Co. which had offices in Dhaka and Chittagong. Both cities continued to host sizeable British businesses even after partition, including a British chamber of commerce, a tea auction and trading houses in the port city of Chittagong. The river port of Narayanganj near Dhaka was a hub for the jute trade. Some of the major British businesses included James Finlay, Burmah Oil and Rally Brothers & Co.
Hossain applied for a job at Orr, Dignam and Co. He was interviewed in Athens and offered a job at the company’s Dhaka office. Hossain made a stopover in Karachi enroute to East Pakistan where met his father who had recently been a member of the Planning Commission under Suhrawardy’s government. When his father asked him if he wanted to start a law practice in Karachi, Hossain said “no, I wanted to get back to Dhaka. So I went there and joined Orr, Dignam and Co.”
Working at Orr, Dignam and Co. proved to be a good training ground for Hossain. Initially, he dealt with fairly run of the mill cases. Some of his earliest clients included Rally Brothers & Co., Maulana Bhashani, and Chandranath Films. When Hossain started working in Dhaka, East and West Pakistan were under the grip of Ayub Khan’s martial law. Suhrawardy emerged as an opposition lawyer and human rights defender. Hossain dealt with habeas corpus cases. Whenever Suhrawardy visited Dhaka, Hossain met him at the house of an editor who lived in Hossain’s neighborhood. There, Hossain also came into contact with a 39-year old Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Hossain and Suhrawardy often drove their car through narrow alleyways in Dhaka to avoid being detected by Pakistani spies and intelligence agents.
At Orr, Dignam and Co., the partners included an Irish solicitor and British barristers with a team of local lawyers in Dhaka and Chittagong. Hossain later returned to Oxford to pursue his doctoral studies. In 1963, he set up his own law practice in Dhaka with A. M. Haidermota which operated for 8 years until 1971.
Footnotes
Philippe Sands, Nico Schrijver and Sharif Bhuiyan, ‘An Interview with Kamal Hossain’ in International Law and Developing Countries. Essays in Honour of Kamal Hossain (UPL Books 2017) 12-13
Kamal Hossain Interview (Alal o Dulal blog)
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