Bashir Ahmad Mallal
IHFS – Excellence Award For Legal Contribution
Bashir Ahmad Mallal born on 26th February 1898 was a star in his own right. If there was anything about Mallal it was in the way he helped inaugurate the Malayan Law Journal. He was also a pre-eminent law scholar. He was born in West Pakistan and had very early on from his arrival in Singapore showed his legal flair. He joined the law firm of Battenburg & Silva as a law clerk.
Mallal was a self-made man in the sense he taught himself law and oversaw the publication and distributions of huge number of law books. His keen eye and knack for the law for law allowed him to suss out deficiencies in the law and went about reporting them vigorously. Some of his illustrative works had included The Criminal Procedure Code of the Straits Settlements, Annotated (1931) and Mallal’s Criminal Procedure (1931). His Supreme Court Practice and Digests of Singapore and Malayan Law (later Malaysian).
Mallal lacked a formal legal education and what he knew was learned off his own bat. His pursuit and determination was such that he won a recognition that has rarely if ever, had been won by any in the Straits Settlements in those heady days.
Mallal was the prime mover, together with R Jumabhoy and others, responsible for the formation of Singapore Indian Association in 1923 and was the founding Secretary.
Mallal was a generous man, by even the most conservative of all accounts. He donated generously to the top students of the law faculty and stocked out a library with a large collection of books.
Naturally his very illuminating achievements did not go unnoticed.
For a man who had little formal legal education nor, nary a background in the craft, Mallal received the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Even a Mallal Moot Prize was named in his honour.
Until his death in 1972, Mallal was relentless in the pursuit of legal education in Singapore. His death was occasion for the then Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin to eulogize Mallal’s passing as a ‘great loss’, in absolute and clear reference to the man’s colossal contributions to the growth of Singapore’s legal culture.
Following his death, Mallal’s anointed protégé Al-Mansor Adabi became the editor of the Malayan Law Journal and up to this day, the name of Mallal rings out in the cases reported from Malaya and Brunei and is now touted as the longest-surviving law report in the region.