Mohammad Hidayatullah was appointed as an Additional Judge of the High Court of Central Provinces and Berar on June 24, 1946, and on September 13, 1946, he was appointed as a permanent judge of the same High Court, where he served until his elevation to Chief Justice of the Nagpur High Court on December 3, 1954.

Hidayatullah was born in 1905 to the prominent Khan Bahadur Hafiz Mohammed Wilayatullah family. Munshi Kudartullah, his grandfather, was an advocate in Varanasi. His father was a poet of national renown who wrote Urdu poetry, and it is likely that Justice Hidayatullah inherited his love of language and literature from him. Wilayatullah won the gold medal at Aligarh Muslim University in 1897, defeating Sir Ziauddin Ahmad, a favorite of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He served in the ICS until 1928 and in the Central Legislative Assembly from 1929 to 1933. Hidaytullah's elder brothers, Mohammed Ikramullah (ICS, later Foreign Secretary of Pakistan) and Ahmedullah (ICS, retired as Chairman of the Tariff Board), were both scholars and athletes. He, on the other hand, performed admirably in Urdu poetry. In 1948, Hidayatullah married Pushpa Shah.Arshad Hidayatullah, their son, is a Senior Counsel at the Supreme Court of India.

In his honor, the Hidayatullah National Law University was established in 2003, in his home town of Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh University also organizes Justice Hidayatullah Memorial National Moot Court Competition (HNMCC) in his memory