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Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Born
In the North-West Frontier, Ghaffar Khan built the Khudai Khidmatgar, a non-violent Pashtun movement of tens of thousands that opposed British rule from 1929. He opposed Partition and spent much of his later life imprisoned or in exile under Pakistani governments, a reminder that independence did not settle regional autonomy.
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A. K. Fazlul Huq
Born
Fazlul Huq's Krishak Praja Party represented Bengal's Muslim and peasant tenants, and as the province's first premier from 1937 he pushed debt relief and tenancy reform against zamindar landlords. He moved the 1940 Lahore Resolution and later led the 1954 United Front that swept the Muslim League from power in East Bengal.
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Huseyn Suhrawardy
Born
A Bengali lawyer, Suhrawardy was premier of Bengal during the 1946 Calcutta killings, for which critics hold him partly responsible, and later co-founded the Awami League. As Pakistan's prime minister in 1956 and 1957 he defended parliamentary government and East Bengal's equal representation before the army took over in 1958.
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Ram Manohar Lohia
Born
Lohia's socialism argued that caste was as central as class in Indian politics, and his call for anti-Congress alliances produced coalition governments in several states in 1967. His followers in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar became the backward-caste parties that reshaped north Indian politics after him.
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K. Kamaraj
Born
A Tamil Congressman with little formal schooling, Kamaraj was chief minister of Madras State from 1954 to 1963, expanding schools across the state and extending free midday meals for pupils. As Congress president he was the "kingmaker" who chose Shastri and then Indira Gandhi as prime minister.
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E. M. S. Namboodiripad
Born
In 1957 Namboodiripad led one of the world's first elected communist governments, in Kerala, introducing land reform and education bills. It was dismissed by the central government in 1959 after mass protests, a controversial use of President's Rule; his later governments completed land redistribution.
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Lal Bahadur Shastri
Born
India's second prime minister, from a modest family in Uttar Pradesh, held office for only 19 months but led the country through the 1965 war with Pakistan and backed the dairy and Green Revolution programmes. He resigned as railway minister in 1956 over an accident, an act of ministerial responsibility still cited.
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Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani
Born
The "red Maulana" founded the Awami Muslim League in 1949, later the Awami League, and then the leftist National Awami Party, organising peasants across East Bengal and Assam. His 1957 Kagmari conference speech warned West Pakistan that East Bengal might part ways, fourteen years before Bangladesh's independence.
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Tajuddin Ahmad
Born
With Sheikh Mujib in Pakistani custody, Tajuddin led Bangladesh's government-in-exile through the 1971 war as its first prime minister, organising the administration and the liberation forces from India. As finance minister he was later sidelined, and he was killed in Dhaka Central Jail in November 1975.
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Jayaprakash Narayan
Born
Never holding office, JP led the 1974 Bihar student movement for "total revolution" against corruption, was jailed during the Emergency and united the opposition into the Janata Party, which defeated Indira Gandhi in 1977. The Janata government's quick collapse is the counterpoint to his success.
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Karpoori Thakur
Born
A barber's son, Thakur twice served as Bihar's chief minister and in 1978 introduced a layered reservation system in state jobs for backward classes, including a separate quota for the most backward, women and poor upper-caste applicants. It preceded the national Mandal reforms by over a decade; he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2024.
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Jyoti Basu
Born
West Bengal's chief minister from 1977 to 2000 led the Left Front through Operation Barga, which registered sharecroppers' rights, and elected village councils with real budgets. Critics point to industrial decline, party control of local life and the violence of Bengal's later politics.
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Madan Bhandari
Born
Bhandari took Nepal's main communist party, the CPN-UML, into competitive multiparty politics after 1990 with his doctrine of "people's multiparty democracy", accepting elections and a free press. He died in a 1993 jeep accident whose cause is still disputed, and his doctrine still anchors the UML.
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Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Born
A poet and schoolteacher's son, Vajpayee became the first non-Congress prime minister to complete a full term, leading a coalition of over 20 parties from 1999 to 2004. His record includes the 1998 nuclear tests, the Lahore bus diplomacy with Pakistan and the national highways programme; critics point to the 2002 Gujarat violence under his government.
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Asma Jahangir
Born
A Lahore lawyer rather than an elected politician, Jahangir co-founded the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, defended blasphemy accused and bonded labourers, and became the first woman president of the Supreme Court Bar Association in 2010. She was a leading figure in the 2007 lawyers' movement against military rule and died in 2018.
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Mohamed Nasheed
Born
A former political prisoner, Nasheed won the Maldives' first multiparty presidential election in 2008, ending 30 years of Gayoom's rule, and held an underwater cabinet meeting in 2009 to dramatise sea-level rise. He resigned under police and military pressure in 2012, was jailed on terrorism charges widely criticised abroad, and later served as speaker of parliament.
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Manmohan Singh
Born
An economist born in a Punjab village that is now in Pakistan, Singh opened India's economy as finance minister in 1991 and, as prime minister from 2004 to 2014, passed the rural employment guarantee and the right to information act. Critics note that real power in his government lay with the Gandhi family's party leadership; he died in December 2024.
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Mamata Banerjee
Banerjee left Congress to found the Trinamool Congress in 1998 and, after the Singur and Nandigram land protests, ended 34 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal in 2011. Her governments ran cash-transfer schemes for girls and women but faced charges of political violence; she lost power and her own seat to the BJP in May 2026.
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Anura Kumara Dissanayake
Born
From a rural working family and the once-insurgent JVP, Dissanayake led the National People's Power coalition to the presidency in 2024 and a two-thirds majority in parliament, breaking the dominance of Sri Lanka's family-based parties after the 2022 Aragalaya protests. His government has kept the IMF recovery programme while critics question its pace on promised "system change".
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