Quasem, (Principal) Abul (1920-1991) language movement activist, educationist and writer. Abul Quasem was born in 1920 at village Chhedandi in Patia thana of Chittagong district. He passed Matriculation examination from Barma High School in 1939, ISc from Chittagong College in 1941, and obtained BSc (Hons) and MSc degree in Physics from Dhaka University in 1944 and 1945 respectively. He joined the Dhaka University in 1945 as a Lecturer in Physics, a position which he held till 1953 AD.

Abul Quasem was the founder of Tamaddun Majlish (1947), a literary and cultural organisation which pioneered the demand for recognition of Bangla as the state language of Pakistan through a booklet entitled Pakistaner Rastra bhasa: Bangla na Urdu (The State Language of Pakistan : Bangla or Urdu) published in 1947. He published a Bangla weekly entitled Sainik in 1948, It was the organ of Tamaddun Majlish and continued to be published till 1961. He took active part in the language movement as a member of the Rastra-bhasa Karma-parisad. Abul Quasem was one of the founders of the Khilafat-e-Rabbani Party (1952). He was elected a member of the East Bengal Provincial Assembly in 1954 from the Patia-Boalkhali constituency in Chittagong as a nominee of united front. He felt the need of introducing Bangla as medium of higher education in colleges and universities. With this end in view he established the Bangla College in Dhaka in 1962 and served the college as Principal till 1981. He devised a model for the reorientation of spelling of Bangla words and the pattern of Bangla scripts. Some of his publications are: Pakistaner Rastra-bhasa (1947), Ekmatra Path (1949), Ghoshana (1952), Vibartanbad (1952), Islam ki Diechhe ebang ki Ditay Parey (1952), Mukti Kone Pathey (1952), Sreni-sangram (1953), Ekush Dafar Rupayan (1955), Dooti Prasna (1955), Shasantrantrik Moolneeti (1955), Sangathan (1964), Adhunik Chintadhara (1964), Islami Rastra-neeti, Qoranic Arthaneeti. He died in Dhaka on 11 March 1991. [Muazzam Hussain Khan]