Harun M. Hashim - His Early Years
Excerpt from "The Benchmark"
“The only guide to a man is his conscience;
the only shield to his memory is the rectitude
and sincerity of his actions. With this shield,
however the fates may play, we march
always in the ranks of honour.”
– Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), former British Prime Minister
“Thou art not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion.” These words in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It aptly describes the manner in which Tan Sri Dato’ Harun Mahmud Hashim (Harun) has gone about doing the things he does. Selflessly, honourably, ethically, with no thought of reward for himself or his family. The fact that he chose, after retirement from the judiciary in 1994, to take up an academic position at the International Islamic University is testimony to Harun’s impeccable character. Many others would have chosen a lucrative appointment as chairman of some corporation or other.
Upon checking the man’s details with the Chief Police Officer, Harun found out that the man was a notorious opium smuggler. The buyer was eager to get hold of Harun’s car as it had been driven all over Kelantan and Terengganu and was well-known to the police. Harun declined the offer and sold his car to a civil servant instead for RM3,500 – “When you are in a position of authority, you are often plagued with all manner of temptation. Money is not everything but to maintain one’s reputation is important, especially in the judiciary” (The Benchmark, 12 January 1995).
Later, when Harun became President of the Sessions Court in Kelantan, his father was transferred there as the High Court judge. According to Harun, “The first thing he did was to get me transferred out as he did not want to hear appeals from my court” (The Benchmark, 24 November 1994).
People are very much a product of their environment, and Harun’s sense of discipline and uprightness had been nurtured very early in his life. He lived with his grandfather, Captain Noor Mohamed Hashim, in Kuala Lumpur and later in Singapore for a great deal of his childhood. Captain Hashim was one of the earliest Malays appointed to the elite Malayan Civil Service (MCS). When he retired in 1935, he was appointed a member of the Straits Settlements Legislative Council to represent the Malays. He was conferred the Imperial Service Order by the King of England.
Captain Hashim ran his house like a military establishment and there was no doubt that he was a strict disciplinarian. Harun reported that “everything had to be precise, neat, smart and well polished, including the way we dressed” (The Benchmark, 13 February 1997). Harun described an occasion when the family was on its way to attend the King’s birthday in Singapore. Traffic came to a halt and the family’s car drew alongside an open military truck carrying soldiers of the Malay Regiment. It was raining and the soldiers were shivering in the rain. Captain Hashim rolled down the car window and shouted, “Soldiers, look like soldiers!”
Harun was still living with his grandfather in Singapore when World War II broke out. Harun’s father at that time was stationed in Kota Baru as Registrar of the Supreme Court and magistrate of the Central Court. During the war, Captain Hashim was appointed a member of the War Council and built an air raid shelter behind his house in St Michael’s road, off Serangoon. Harun remembered, “It was large enough for all of us to sleep in so that we did not have to get out of our beds during the night every time there was an air raid” (The Benchmark, 7 August 1995). The Japanese were constantly bombing Singapore at that time – exciting times indeed for a young imaginative boy. “During the day, I would get out of the air raid shelter and watched, fascinated rather than in awe, British and Japanese fighters engaged in dog-fights in the air, planes that were hit going down in a trail of smoke and bombs dropped from Japanese planes.”
By the first week of February 1942, the Japanese had conquered all of Malaya and were preparing to cross into Singapore. On 6 February 1942, Captain Hashim rushed home from a meeting and told his household to get ready by 6pm that evening to leave the island. He would however remain behind and join them later.
Harun and the rest of the family were directed to Clifford Pier and boarded a passenger ship, SS Felix Russell. There were three ships with evacuees leaving Singapore that night, escorted by British navy destroyers. When leaving the harbour, the SS Felix Russell was bombed by the Japanese. Its water tank was hit and the ship was without fresh water for the rest of the journey. Harun and his family were, in fact, rather lucky. The Japanese continually bombed the ships and the other two were hit and sank.
When the remaining ship finally reached Colombo, Sri Lanka, it was not allowed to land, and the ship then went on to Bombay. The whole journey had taken 18 days! On the ship was a friend of Captain Hashim’s, an Indian Justice of Peace of Singapore, who invited Harun and family to join him at his village, Edava, in Travancore in South India. The trip took three days by train. It was a Muslim village with substantial houses built with money remitted by the men working in Singapore. As the children had to go to school, Harun’s family moved to the state’s capital city, Trivandrum.
Short of money, Harun wrote to the Malayan representative in India and obtained allowances from his grandfather’s Widows and Orphans Pension Fund. He also succeeded in getting a portion of his father’s salary. The family of two adults, 11 children and three servants were thus able to live moderately in a rented bungalow. It is hard to believe that Harun himself was just a child then: “As the oldest male, I had become the head of the family at the age of 12!”
Captain Hashim never got to join the family in India. He passed away in 1944. After the war, Harun and the family returned to Singapore in 1946. In the meantime, Harun’s father had been transferred to the island and was with the Attorney-General’s department.
Harun followed in the footsteps of his grandfather and father by entering public service. In 1951, he was the Assistant District Officer (ADO) in charge of Gua Musang in Kelantan. This was during the Emergency Period, from 1948 to 1960, when the Government was doing battle with Communists in the country. Gua Musang, a one-street town with wooden shophouses, was in fact regarded as a war zone. The Chinese population was hostile to the authorities and the town was enclosed in a double perimeter fence, with watchtowers. An all-night curfew was in place.
He learnt early in his career that he had to show his authority when put in charge. At Gua Musang, he noticed that the lalang between the two perimeter fences had grown to a great height. Despite several meetings with the local council to clear the lalang, nothing was done. Harun then exercised his powers, called for a curfew from 6am to 6pm and had the residents clear the lalang. Upon inspecting the fencing later, he found holes in it and saw tinned food on the ground. It appeared that the residents were providing food to the Communists!
Harun threatened the Officer-in-Charge of the Police Department (OCPD), a strapping six-footer expatriate, that he would report the matter to the State War Executive Committee. He relented when the OCPD pleaded against it, provided the holes were mended and the lalang not be allowed to grow. Recounted Harun, “Since then, whenever he passed me along the street, he would give me a salute. This impressed the Chinese very much because there was a guncarrying European in uniform who saluted the Malay ADO and therefore, I must be superior” (The Benchmark, 18 August 1994).
There were no problems in administering the town thereafter. Harun was able to approve long-pending building plans, granted Temporary Occupation Licences to allow the residents to grow vegetables, and even re-sited the pig-sties for a cleaner environment. The ineffective local council was dissolved, and he gave the councillors dinner: “Never before had a Malay officer entertained the local Chinese. It was plain to them who was now in charge. They respect authority which is firm but fair.”
This penchant for being firm but fair would appear continually throughout Harun’s career, such as when he later became President of the Sessions Court in Kota Baru. The court staff were complacent, including the process-server who often played truant. Said Harun, “I gave him the sack. It was a painful decision as he had been in government service for many years and had a family to support.
Personally, he was quite a pleasant fellow but personal feelings should not deter one from doing one’s duty, especially when placed in a position of responsibility” (The Benchmark, 12 January 1995). Life in pre-Merdeka days was simple. Harun’s success as a public administrator led to his secondment as a magistrate in Kelantan. An avid picture-goer, he had no problems with parking. “On the very first night after becoming a magistrate, I went to the cinema as usual and a uniformed policeman gave me a smart salute and directed me to park my car right in front of the main entrance reserved for the VIPs” (The Benchmark, 10 November 1994).
Facilities were rudimentary: “The Pasir Puteh Court was literally an open court as the court room had no walls – just the pillars and the roof, with a commanding view from the Bench of the compound outside, including the public toilets to the left and the main road in front.” There were moments of hilarity to lighten things up, such as when Harun’s court was in session and charges were read out for a number of people riding bicycles at night without lights. Harun fined each person RM2. Finally a name ‘Ismail Ali’ was called out once, twice and then three times, “whereupon I saw a man emerge from the public toilet and sprint into the dock.” Harun fined this man RM3 because “in his haste to get to the dock, he had overlooked to button up his trousers!” It was a fair amount indeed to be fined for contempt of court.
Harun’s secondment as a magistrate was part of the ‘malayanisation’ of the judiciary. In 1955, he was selected to do law at the Inns of Court in London. He returned to Malaya in November 1958, after having been called to the Bar of England and Wales by the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. He had also completed the post-final practical course by the Council of Legal Education of the Inns of Court, in lieu of chambering. Harun’s return home saw him joining the ranks of ‘England Returned’.
Harun was posted as First Magistrate in Penang and soon found out that it was not easy to be rid of the vestiges of the colonial period. “On my first working day, I arrived just before 8.30am and was guided to a personal garage next to my Chambers. A peon opened the door of my car, another opened the other door and took my brief. This procession then proceeded to my Chambers, where a third peon held open the swing door for my entry. A fourth peon flicked the last speck of dust on my table with his feather duster. This routine was kept up throughout my stay in Penang. And I was only a magistrate!” (The Benchmark, May 1995).
Two months later, Harun was transferred to Kota Baru as President of the Sessions Court. And so his illustrious career in government service and on the Bench continued until his retirement from the judiciary as a judge of the Supreme Court in 1994.
from "The Benchmark" pp xv - xx, published by Peninsula Digital Sdn Bhd
ISBN 983-40755-0-2 (hardback), ISBN 983-40755-1-0 (paperback)
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