Angus Hume (M) Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong Hill Tracts with the DC office staffs. Chittagong, Bangladesh. Early (1950s) (Colorized)

Angus Hume (M) Deputy Commissioner of Chittagong Hill Tracts with the DC office staffs. Chittagong, Bangladesh. Early (1950s)

Lt Col Angus Hume was one of the last British Deputy Commissioner's of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh from 1950-53. He had a number of staff from the Indigenous and Bengali communities. 

Hume ( Born on February 21, 1914) was a lieutenant-colonel when abruptly dispatched to Bengal to work for the Grain Collection Scheme during the great famine of 1946, which cost many thousands of lives. He left the Army in 1947 but was to spend the next 27 years in the service of Pakistan and then Bangladesh.

From 1951 to 1953 he was employed by the Government of Pakistan as the deputy commissioner in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the belt of tribal regions to the east of the Ganges delta. When the rajah of the Chakma tribe, Rajah Nalinaksha Roy, died unexpectedly in 1951, Hume was instrumental in returning his body from Chittagong to the Chakma capital at Rangamati, and was responsible for installing his successor, Rajah Tridiv Roy, in 1952.

The following year Hume married Rajkumari (Princess) Amiti Roy, daughter of the late rajah, and he later resigned his post in protest at the opposition of the Dhaka Government to the new rajah exercising justice in his local court. He was appointed OBE for his services in East Pakistan in 1954.

At the time of the Bangladesh's war, which led to the separation of West and East Pakistan in 1971, the latter becoming Bangladesh, Hume was working for the Pakistan Tea Association. He happened to be visiting Rangamati as the army of West Pakistan neared the town.

At the request of the local traders and representatives of the hill people, he accompanied their delegation to ask that the town should not be shelled or fought over. This concession was achieved but Hume’s humanitarian action eventually led to him being declared persona non grata by Dhaka. Even so, the Hume Cup football trophy — instituted while he was deputy commissioner — is still competed for today.

At first, Hume declined to leave the country to which he had become deeply attached. Moreover, his marriage to Rajkumari Amiti had been dissolved in 1963 and his new wife, Rajkumari Moitri Roy, had a small daughter, but his position became untenable after his arrest in 1973. He left and, through his experience of the Middle East and knowledge of Arabic, was able to secure an appointment in the Sultanate of Oman. He remained there until his final return to England in 1979.

John Angus Hume was the fourth child of Captain Robert Hume, a master mariner of the White Star Line, who had been Chief Officer of the hospital ship SS Britannic when she was sunk in the Mediterranean during the First World War. He was born in Southampton and educated at King Edward VI School there. He was studying land survey until the outbreak of war.

He contributed to Guy Mountfort’s book Vanishing Jungle, about the wildlife of East and West Pakistan, published in the 1960s. A selection of his photographs formed the basis of an exhibition at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol in 2004.

His second wife survives him, with two sons of his first marriage and the daughter of his second.

Angus Hume, OBE, soldier and administrator, was born on February 21, 1914. He died on August 28, 2005, aged 91.