Early Life and Military Career
Hussain Muhammad Ershad was born in Rangpur in 1930. His parents migrated from Dinhata subdivision of Coochbehar district of West Bengal, India. He graduated from the University of Dhaka in 1950 and was commissioned into the Pakistan Army in 1952. Between he was an adjutant in the East Bengal regimental depot in Chittagong. He also completed advanced courses from the prestigious Command and Staff College in Quetta in 1966. After serving with a brigade in Sialkot, he was given command of the 3rd East Bengal Regiment in 1969 and the 7th East Bengal Regiment in 1971. During the Bangladesh Liberation War, he was interned along with other Bengali officers stationed in West Pakistan as a Prisoner of War at the outbreak of the 1971 Liberation War and repatriated to Bangladesh in 1973 in accordance with the Simla Agreement between India's Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto. He arrived back to his homeland - the new state of Bangladesh in 1973, and was appointed Adjutant General of the Bangladesh Army by Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. After attending advanced military courses in National Defence University (NDU), India, Ershad was appointed Deputy chief of army staff in 1975 by Major General Ziaur Rahman when Zia became the Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator following Chief Justice of Bangladesh Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem's elevation to the presidency on November 7, 1975.
Ershad remained loyal to Ziaur Rahman, Major General Zia had been appointed Army Chief by President of Bangladesh Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad after the Assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country's founding leader, on 15 August 1975 as the country headed towards communism banning multiparty rule by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Although Major General Ziaur Rahman was arrested in a counter-coup on November 3, 1975, he was restored to power in a coup led by Lt. Colonel Abu Taher on November 7, 1975. When Ziaur Rahman assumed the presidency after legalizing military coups and the revival of the multiparty system through the Fifth Amendment of the Bangladesh Constitution he appointed H M Ershad as the new Chief of Army Staff, promoting him to the rank of Lieutenant General. Viewed as a professional officer with no political aspiration because of his imprisonment during the Bangladesh Independence War in former West Pakistan and having a talent for Bengali speech writing, he soon became the closest politico-military counselor of Ziaur Rahman.
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