The Hindu Who Chaired Pakistan’s First Assembly – Who Was Jogendra Nath Mandal?

On 10 August 1947, the first person to sit in the chair of Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly was not a Muslim. He was Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Dalit lawyer from a village in Barisal, Bengal. The next day he declared Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah elected and handed him the chair. In this Urdu documentary we follow Mandal’s whole journey. He beat a Congress heavyweight in 1937 and allied with the Muslim League in Bengal. He helped Dr. B.R. Ambedkar enter India’s Constituent Assembly. Jinnah chose him for the Interim Government, and he campaigned in the Sylhet referendum. He then became Pakistan’s first Minister of Law and Labour. After Jinnah’s death, things changed. The 1950 riots in East Bengal followed, along with a clash with the bureaucracy and a statement Liaquat Ali Khan asked him to issue. On 8 October 1950 he wrote a resignation letter from Calcutta that still echoes today. We look at who forced him to leave, his forgotten final years in India, his death, and why history calls him “Pakistan’s Ambedkar”. Subscribe to Election Box for more deep dives into the politics and history of the subcontinent. #JogendraNathMandal #PakistanHistory #QuaidEAzam #Partition1947 #UrduDocumentary