Sharing and preserving Irish-Bengali activist couple Nora and Sultan Shariff’s story at TMM
Nora and Sultan Shariff met as students in 1960s London, and went on to become crucial activists in the struggle for Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan, and important figures in the Bengali communities of south London. Thanks to a small grant from the Irish government’s Emigrant Support Programme, facilitated by the Association of Mixed Race Irish (AMRI), The Mixed Museum is beginning the process of preserving and sharing their story, starting with an entry in TMM’s and AMRI’s digital exhibition Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000.
In this blogpost, ahead of working with The Mixed Museum to house their parents’ archive, the couple’s daughters Dr Razia Shariff and Dr Fauzia Knight remember their childhoods in an Irish-Bengali household – and reflect on what their parents taught them.
The beginnings of a mixed Bengali-Irish story
When sisters Dr Razia Shariff and Dr Fauzia Knight describe their family home in 1970s and 1980s south London, the picture they paint is one of intellectual debate combined with everyday warmth and welcome.
“The door was always open,” says Fauzia. “There’d be people knocking on the door at all times of the day and night. The house would be full of people, and I’d fall asleep on mum’s lap while everyone was talking. As a child, you don’t question anything. That was just completely normal.”
Fauzia and Razia’s parents were Nora and Sultan Shariff, a couple who played an extraordinary role in the Bangladeshi liberation movement, but also made a huge impact in their local communities.
Nora Shariff, who died in 2013, was born Nora Murray in 1943 in Dublin, Ireland. She was the second daughter of Sean and Margaret Murray, both of whom worked for the Irish civil service, where they met. On retirement, her father was Assistant Secretary General at the Department of Finance, having been involved in negotiating Ireland’s entry to the European Union.
Nora’s mother died when she was just three years old, leaving her, her two sisters, and her brother. Her father went on to remarry a woman named Marie Slowey, and Nora helped look after her additional five younger brothers and sisters during her teenage years. Nora was a bright student and talented linguist, studying languages at University College Dublin.
Sultan Shariff, who died in 2025, was born in the village of Sarukhali in the Barisil District in what was then East Pakistan in 1941. The eldest son of 14, he was born to his mother Rahela Begum and his father Khurshed Ali Shariff, who was head of the local district and also taught in the village school. Razia and Fauzia describe his mother as “very, very loving” and his father as “a very devout Muslim, humble, quiet”.
Sultan began campaigning for Bangladeshi independence while studying sciences at Dhaka University. He moved to London in 1963 to study law. In 1966, he became President of the Pakistan Youth Federation and, on 2 February 1969, led 8,000 people on a march from Hyde Park to the High Commission to demand Bangladeshi independence.
While they came from different countries, continents and religious backgrounds, the couple had a lot in common. Both had fathers who served their communities and came from families in which education was highly valued. Both also had an innate belief that they could do anything they set their minds to, says Razia.
“Mum was a bit of a tomboy – no make-up, just very practical, straightforward and hands-on. Ever since she was a child, she was used to getting her hands dirty. And dad had what we’d call village ‘buddhi’ – it’s hard to translate, but a kind of practical cleverness or creativity, where if you didn’t have the right tool, or you didn’t know how to do something, you found a way around it. ‘So we don’t have a hammer, we’ll just use something else’, you know?
“We grew up as young people who felt like there were no limits. As long as you put in the hard work and you pursued what you wanted in a dedicated way, anything was possible.”
Nora and Sultan Shariff and the Bangladesh Liberation War
This attitude found expression in the couple’s activities in support of Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. The borders of modern Bangladesh were established during the partition of India in 1947, marking the end of British rule in the region.
India was divided into the Union of India and the newly-created Dominion of Pakistan, which consisted of two geographically separate areas to the east and west, with India in between. The region of Bengal was split between India and East Pakistan.
Over decades, widening economic inequality between East and West Pakistan, and differences in attitudes towards religion and language in public life fuelled growing calls for East Pakistan’s independence from Pakistani rule. In March 1971, opposition leaders who had been prevented from taking power despite winning the first democratic election in Pakistan declared Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. This sparked the nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War.
In the years leading up to the war, Nora and Sultan had been heavily involved in East Pakistan student politics and the growing independence movement. Nora moved to London from Dublin in 1964 to study hospitality management and, while there, managed the Serpentine Restaurant in Hyde Park. She spent time at the International Student Hall near Regent’s Park, where she met Sultan who was studying for the bar and working part-time managing the ice cream trolleys around the park.
The couple married in 1968 – “they had two weddings, a Muslim one and a reception in Ireland, to keep everyone happy”, says Razia – and, together, they worked with the student movement in London to raise awareness of the situation in East Pakistan. In 1969, Nora worked with others to arrange legal counsel for the activist Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the Agartala Conspiracy Case. Sheikh Mujib would go on to be the founding president of Bangladesh.
In 1971, the year after their first daughter, Razia was born, the couple found themselves at the centre of world events. “When the Liberation War broke out in March, there were two people who flew out from the UK to Bangladesh, and dad was one of them,” explains Razia.
“Mum was back here in the UK, carrying on with the campaigning and doing her bar exam. Every now and then she’d get a telegram from dad about how he was helping out with the alternative government they’d set up in India or organising the refugee camps on the borders.”
This period says everything about their dynamic, adds Fauzia. “They were fully functioning, independent people who kind of sparked off each other,” she says. “It was the sort of relationship where they both found in the other person something that they wanted for themselves, and it was mutual admiration.
“Mum was very practical, very into detail. Whereas dad was big picture – he’d have ideas every day, massive ideas, dream-like ideas. And mum would be the one saying, ‘Right, come on, how are we going to do this?’. He’d say, ‘We need placards for the demonstration on Sunday’ and she’d be like, ‘Okay, let’s clear the kitchen table. Get your men around. We need wood, we need posters’. She was an organiser and it just energised her. She loved it.”
The couple’s ongoing activism – and Nora’s legendary cooking
After the war, having passed the bar exam to become a barrister, Nora left the UK with Razia to join Sultan in Bangladesh in 1972. While Sultan worked within the new government, establishing the infrastructure for a fledgling nation, Nora taught law at Dhaka University. Their second daughter, Fauzia, was born in 1974.
“Dad understood world politics at a very human level,” says Fauzia. “He was instrumental in getting international support for Bangladeshi independence and, later, for Bangladesh.”
In August 1975, after Bangladesh’s founding president Sheikh Mujib, known as Bangabandhu (the people’s friend), and his family members were assassinated, the couple decided it wasn’t safe to stay. Nora took Razia and Fauzia to Ireland, where they stayed with Nora’s parents while Nora enrolled in a postgraduate course. Sultan joined them when they moved back to the UK about a year later.
But the organising and hosting of activists did not stop. Razia and Fauzia’s abiding memory of their childhood in Merton, south London, is of a house that was always full of people, political debate – and food. “I remember one day we were doing some kind of DIY and then suddenly dad rings and says, ‘Oh yeah, I’m bringing 30 people home from the airport’” remembers Razia. “And it was, quick, put everything away, make the house look nice, start cooking the food!”
“One of mum’s big passions, as well as being a linguist, was cooking and food,” adds Fauzia. “She became renowned for her Indian food among the Bengali community. All the friends of the family would give her tips about cooking and then she’d create around that and make her own curries. She would regularly put on huge banquets and you’d never know how many people were coming – there would be rice, dhal, mutton curry, fish curry, ten different types of vegetables. Everyone would flock because they knew she was cooking.
“We’d be able to fit 14 people around the table, maybe. But I do remember us putting out sheets on the floor sometimes – that was fairly common and traditional, so people could sit and eat. Mum loved it.”
Listen to Nora speak in Bengali about her life and work in the YouTube video 'Nora: Emerald of Bengal':
Considering a mixed race Irish and Bengali identity
The sisters remember Nora cooking Irish stew only about once a year, but say they had a very strong connection with Ireland, with regular family get-togethers and Christmases at Sean and Marie's family home in Balram, Terenure, Dublin, and later at Nora's sister’s home in mid Wales.
Neither sister considered themselves ‘mixed race’ as children, and being part of a mixed family was not discussed. “When we were growing up in the 1980s, the common term was ‘half-caste’, which was a derogatory term,” says Fauzia. “For us it was more about having a multicultural identity – we were Bengali, we were Irish, and we were English, in a way.”
“Although mum and dad weren’t very religious, they were political and they were cultural,” agrees Razia. “Mum was still very Irish in her way of being and doing, and dad was very Bengali in his way of being and doing. And so you became aware of that.”
Fauzia says the bigger “chasm” she felt growing up was around class identity. “We had two educated parents and there would be quite high-level academic discussions around the dinner table about world issues, responsibilities, political ideologies. We were growing up in a working-class, white area where our peers weren’t necessarily so focused on education and serving society and those strong values we grew up with.”
Apart from Nora’s sister, who lived in Reading and, later, Wales, and a cousin of their father’s, the Shariffs had no other family members nearby, from either Ireland or Bangladesh. But they were part of a large Bengali community, who saw Nora and Sultan as unofficial community leaders (in March 2012, to mark Independence Day, the Bangladeshi government recognised Nora's contribution to the liberation war with an award as a foreign friend of Bangladesh).
Neither Razia or Fauzia remember any negative reactions from the Bangladeshi community about Nora and Sultan being from different backgrounds. “They just respected mum too much,” says Razia. “She didn’t come in as a privileged white woman. She was fluent in Bengali, she wore the sari. And she was a huge support to young women in the community, particularly those who had just arrived – a friendly, non-judgemental, older figure who would make sure everyone was okay.”
Both Nora’s and Sultan’s parents had accepted their 1960s marriage. “All dad’s dad said was that mum would have to become a Muslim, otherwise no problems with that,” says Razia. “Mum’s dad made enquiries about dad with the Pakistan embassy in Ireland (Bangladesh was still Pakistan then) and luckily, because dad was involved in student politics, they knew him and vouched for him!”
Razia points out that there was a family precedent for marrying outside of one’s faith: Nora’s mother, Margaret, was a Protestant from Northern Ireland, who met her father, Sean – who was Catholic – at the Irish civil service in Dublin. “Sean’s only warning was, ‘Well, you know your children are going to be mixed and that’s going to be hard for them.’ If you think about him marrying Margaret in 1939 and the Irish troubles between Protestants and Catholics, he would have seen and felt all that, so I think that’s where that came from.”
Archiving the Shariffs family history
Fauzia and Razia both say that it was only towards the end of their parents’ lives that they began to consider their importance in a historical context.
“After mum retired, she suddenly had all this time on her hands,” remembers Fauzia. “And dad was still really politically engaged, so mum would be writing letters to ministers, doing political campaigns, informing the UN reports about Bangladesh’s progress. And I began to appreciate more what they did. I’d hear mum report back about doing a talk about domestic violence in the home, say, and the amazing response she’d get, and I’d think, ‘What you’re doing is really appreciated and important’.
“And then, after she passed, that’s when we started meeting all the people whose lives they have touched. Even though mum died in 2013, at dad’s passing in 2025 people I don’t know were coming up to me telling me how much they love and miss her.”
She adds: “Mum and dad weren’t just working at high-level politics. They were community support. Within migrant communities like the Bangladeshi community, when somebody comes to the UK, the first thing they think is, Who can I call? Where can I stay? Where can I get a job? Even, where can I buy decent gulab jamun?” She laughs. “And mum and dad would be there.”
Sultan had diabetes and was seriously ill for periods before his death in August 2025. The sisters say he became more reflective during this time. “He was a community leader and a politician, and he was like that in the public space, but he was kind of like that in our private, personal space as well,” says Razia. “But towards the end of his life, he talked more about his personal experiences. And that was lovely. We saw a different side to him.”
After his death, Razia remembers going to one of the many functions held for him, and seeing “a sea of 300 to 400 men who I didn’t really know”. She continues: “They all went up, one after the other, and they talked about how they’d been touched by mum and dad. And I just felt that connection with them all. Some of them were political leaders, but so many of them were telling stories about what they’d done for them personally. We want to recognise the enormous energy and effort they put into the community.”
Razia started to organise her mother’s letters and research her parents’ lives. It was during that research that she came across The Mixed Museum and realised it would be the right place to preserve her parents’ story. “I want mum’s letters to be digitally archived and accessible to people, and The Mixed Museum just seemed a perfect place for that. So I reached out, and the museum was delighted to work with us to find a way to make this happen.”
Thanks to funding from the Irish Government’s Emigrant Support Programme facilitated by the Association of Mixed Race Irish (AMRI), The Mixed Museum (TMM) has added an entry on the Shariffs to TMM’s and AMRI’s digital exhibition Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000. TMM is also working with Razia and Fauzia to explore funding options that would allow Nora’s collection of 170 letters – written over four years while she was living in Bangladesh and then with her family in Ireland – to be digitised and catalogued and then made accessible via a searchable digital archive.
The sisters hope their parents’ story will make an important contribution to the museum’s work preserving and sharing histories of racial mixing in Britain. “In the current context, it’s so important to celebrate mixed heritage, to try and help people overcome that fear or prejudice and help them see that mixing is a bonus, an asset,” says Razia. “There’s so much more that unites us than divides us.”
“As someone from a mixed race background, it’s incredibly powerful and cathartic to read this history and see us visually represented,” agrees Fauzia. “The museum gives a sense of how we are all interconnected in this world, and that this isn’t something new or unusual, it’s just part of our history as humanity. It’s wonderful.”
Learn more
Read the entry about Nora and Shariff Sultan at TMM’s digital exhibition Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000, which includes more photos and an extract from Nora's letters
Watch a video of Nora Shariff discussing her life and work in Bengali
Visit TMM’s digital exhibition Mixed Race Irish Families in Britain, 1700-2000, curated in collaboration with the Association of Mixed Race Irish, to learn about the social context within which the Shariffs met and raised their family
Many thanks to Irish Emigrant Support fund for providing a small grant to TMM, facilitated by the Association of Mixed Race Irish, to support our initial work with the Shariff family,
All images © Shariff Family Collection at The Mixed Museum / Courtesy of the Shariff Family. Images not to be reproduced without permission. For any copyright requests or queries, please contact The Mixed Museum.
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