Bobby Hajjaj (Bengali: ববি হাজ্জাজ; born 7 April 1974) is a Bangladeshi politician.
Hajjaj is the founder and Chairman of the political party Nationalist Democratic Movement (NDM). He is also an Oxford scholar, an academic, and spearheaded a citizen empowerment movement called Shopner Desh.
Hajjaj was born and raised in Dhaka. His father is the business tycoon Moosa Bin Shamsher, who is regarded as the founder of the labor export industry, which along with the readymade garments export industry, have been the bastion of Bangladesh’s economic success. Hajjaj’s grandfather Shamsher Ali was a government official in Faridpur during British Rule, and his forefathers were Islamic preachers by vocation. His mother is Kaniz Fatema Chowdhury. She is a scion of the famed Dhulai Zamindar family of Pabna, one of the preeminent Zamindari estates during the British Raj, and her father Abu Naser Chowdhury was the last rightful legatee to the estate. Hajjaj has two siblings. His sister Nancy Zahara is an entrepreneur and married to [ Sheikh Fahim],[6] son of Awami League presidium member Sheikh Selim. His brother, Barrister Zubi Moosa is a practicing advocate in the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. He is currently married to Barrister Rashna Imam, managing partner at Akthar Imam & Associates, one of the leading law firms in Bangladesh. They have two daughters, Inaaya Hajjaj and Nyaasa Hajjaj.
He completed his initial schooling from Maple Leaf International School. He pursued higher education overseas, graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in the nineties with a degree in Political Science.[7] During his undergraduate years he wrote for the university’s student newspaper, he also worked in multiple State Senate and Gubernatorial election campaigns. After graduation he worked in the financial industry in the USA for a year before returning to Bangladesh. Upon return he started work in business development and became a regular op-ed contributor to a few national English dailies, which included the Daily Star.[8]
From 2003 onward he spent three years mostly outside Bangladesh engaged in business development and strategy consultancy in the USA, Europe, and the Middle East. Hajjaj spent two years at Oxford University, where he first did his MBA (2006) and then pursued post-grad research in Strategy Science.
Since late 2009, Hajjaj has been stationed in Bangladesh. After his return he worked as a lecturer and researcher in Business Strategy at North South University,[9] and as a columnist with The Daily Independent, till late 2013. Currently he contributes to the Op-Ed column in Dhaka Tribune, speaking on social and political issues.[10] In late 2015, he launched a citizen empowerment movement ShopnerDesh through which he worked with youth all over the nation on issues including education, mass urbanization, and radicalism of youth.