Husain was born in a prosperous family from Batala, Gurdaspur District. His father, Husain Baksh, was a Persian and Arabic scholar who worked as a district judge. Husain was a younger half-brother of Sir Fazal-i-Hussain, KCIE. During his early years he moved around Punjab and studied at schools in cities where his father was posted on transfers. He went to the Government College, Lahore with an Alfred Patiala Research Scholarship (1911-1913) before going to Christ's College, Cambridge for postgraduate studies. He was a Foundation Scholar in 1914, a Bachelor Scholar in 1916, and won the Frank Smart Prize in Zoology for 1916 and the Charles Darwin Prize in 1917. He was especially influenced by J Stanley Gardiner. He was selected as a supernumerary entomologist at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa in 1918. In 1918 he became entomologist to the Government of Punjab at the Punjab Agricultural College and Research Institute, Lyallpur. He worked there until 1930 with a break in 1925 serving as officiating Imperial Entomologist. From December 1930 he was involved in research on locusts. In 1933 he became a principal at the Punjab Agricultural College. In 1938 he became Vice Chancellor of the Punjab University at Lyallpur. At the Silver Jubilee session of the Indian Science Congress in 1938 at Calcutta, he gave a presidential address that examined the history of entomological research in India and its outlook.
