Bengali military leader and statesman Hussain Mohammad Ershad (born 1930) was chief of staff of the Bangladesh army and served as president of Bangladesh from 1983 to 1990.

A meeting of opposites, a combination of calculated indifference, humanistic compassion, and poetic fatalism that made him stand out as a modern-day Machiavellian prince of the Third World, Hussain Mohammad Ershad of Bangladesh epitomized both ability and ineptitude of leadership character and effectiveness. If he ushered in political stability and increased developmental activities, he was also perceived as installing a variety of politico-economic corruption schemes. In spite of a series of politically instigated and enforced general strikes he managed to maintain himself in power for eight years.

Born on February 1, 1930, in Rangpur, North Bengal (now Bangladesh), of an upper-class Bengali family, Ershad went to Carmichael College in his hometown. He graduated, however, from Dhaka University, the premier university of then East Bengal (eastern...