Hai, Muhammad Abdul (1919-69) educationist, litterateur and phonologist, was born in the village of Maricha in Murshidabad, in 1919. He passed High Madrasa examination (1936) from Rajshahi Madrasa and IA (1938) from Islamic Intermediate College, Dhaka. He completed BA Honours in Bangla (1941), obtaining first class second position, and MA (1942), obtaining first class first position from the University of Dhaka. Abdul Hai also passed MA (1952) in Phonology from London University.

After passing MA, Hai joined the Bengal Education Service and taught at various government colleges, including Krishna Nagar College, Rajshahi Government College, Chittagong Government College and Dhaka College. In 1949 he joined the Bangla Department of Dhaka University, becoming head of the department in 1954 and professor in 1962. Hai served as editor of the half-yearly literary journal Sahitya Patrika (1956).

Hai was a staunch nationalist. When the government of Pakistan attempted to stop tagore songs on radio and television and to introduce Arabic and Roman script for writing Bangla, he organised a resistance against it.

Hai wrote several books on bangla language and literature, including Sahitya o Sangskrti (Literature and Culture, 1954), Bilate Sare Satsha Din (Seven hundred and fifty days in England, 1954), Tosamod O Rajnitir Bhasa (Language of sycophancy and politics, 1959), Bhasa O Sahitya (Language and Literature, 1960) Dhvanibijnan O Bangla Dhvanitattva (Phonology and Bangla Phonetics, 1964). Hai also wrote an English book on Bangla phonetics: A Phonetic and Phonological Study of Nasals and Nasalization in Bengali (1960). He co-authored Bangla Sahityer Itibrtta (History of Bangla Literature, 1968) with Syed Ali Ahsan and Traditional Culture in East Pakistan with muhammad shahidullah.

Hai, who pioneered research in Bangla phonetics, was given the Bangla Academy Literary Award (1961) for his scholarly contributions. Hai was killed on 3 June 1969 in an accident on a railway line. [Badiuzzaman]