SHAIKH AHMAD HASSAN SCHOOL OF LAW: ANOTHER STORY OF GRATITUDE[1]

By:
DR. PARVEZ HASSAN[2]

Honorable Chief Justice of Pakistan, Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, Chief Justice of the Balochistan High Court, Judges of the Supreme and High Courts of Pakistan, former Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts, Pro Chancellor, Rector, Board of Trustees, Vice Chancellor, Faculty, Students of LUMS and SAHSOL, Vice Chancellors, Distinguished Friends and Guests:

I want to begin this story of gratitude by acknowledging, gratefully, the support and encouragement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court and Mr. Justice Mansoor Ali Shah for another initiative of the family of Begum Razia and Shaikh Ahmad Hassan at Kinnaird College last week.

On behalf of the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan Family represented here by sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, and even a great-grandson and a great-granddaughter, all led by the head of the family, our eldest brother, Jawed Hassan, I thank the Board of Trustees of LUMS and particularly my good friends Syed Babar Ali and Razak Dawood for naming the Law School at LUMS as the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (“SAHSOL”). This gives us great joy and pride to see Shaikh Ahmad Hassan so honoured by this great educational institution in Pakistan. For me, personally, this has been overwhelming. My association with LUMS started on 29 November 1983 with a first meeting regarding LUMS with Syed Babar Ali and Razak Dawood to brain-storm the possibility of a Business School in Lahore. But I must confess that today has been the most pleasurable day in this over thirty (30) years pro bono relationship.

I was visiting my daughter, Yasmeen, in New York, when I got a call from Razak Dawood to inform me that, in my absence, in a meeting on 22 June 2012, the Board of Trustees of LUMS had decided to upgrade the Law Department to a School of Law. The three other Schools at LUMS have a most distinguished lineage. The first and flagship School is the Suleman Dawood School of Business named after the nationally-acknowledged business leader and the father of Razak Dawood. The School of Humanities and Social Services carries the stellar name of Nawab Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani whose family, including Abida Apa, has graciously joined us today. The third School, the School of Science and Engineering, the most ambitious commitment of LUMS, bears the illustrious name of Syed Babar Ali. And, the Board of Trustees moved to name the fourth School at LUMS as the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law.

About this time, the Chief Justice of Pakistan who was then a free man, sans security and protocol, walked regularly in a park that I also use for my exercise. Mr. (then) Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani stopped me as we crossed each other in the park and felicitated me on the initiative at LUMS. I was overwhelmed with the sincerity and generosity of his remarks and spontaneously thought of requesting him to the launch of SAHSOL. And, when our dynamic Vice Chancellor recommended that we invite the CJP for the ground-breaking of SAHSOL, we in the Management Committee enthusiastically agreed and I particularly felt that the choice was after my heart. Please accept, Chief Justice, my personal gratitude for so honouring Shaikh Ahmad Hassan and his family with your presence here with your brother Judges.

There is a long list of other acknowledgments of gratitude. But I will be brief. First, I thank Syed Babar Ali who visited my house to donate an eight figure sum for the Law School. Razak Dawood, another life-long friend, was equally generous with his contribution. My heartfelt appreciation to both these stalwarts of public service who have enriched my life with their friendship.

I have recently reached out to some of the leading legal families in Lahore and Karachi to invite them to participate in the naming opportunities offered in the new Building the construction of which starts today. Amongst others, I called on Mr. Hasan Irfan, Senior Partner, Irfan & Irfan, the leading intellectual property law firm in the country, and found his response most encouraging. At a recent wedding function, a member of his family took me aside to confirm that the family will support the construction of the Moot Court Auditorium which I might add we plan to model on Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial’s Court Room in the Lahore High Court. So successful, you will agree, was this meeting at the wedding that I have now started to go to more weddings.

I have also approached some Chinese Companies doing business in Pakistan to support the Centre for International Legal Studies at SAHSOL. The effort will be to create a hub of Chinese Legal Studies in the region enabled by an exchange of faculty and students from Law Schools in China.

May I also add my gratitude to Justice Mansoor Ali Shah, Justice Fazal Karim, Deans Arif Butt, Anjum Altaf, Ali Qazilbash and the Vice Chancellor for providing support and guidance in the SAHSOL Advisory Board. Responding to Justice Mansoor Ali Shah’s challenge to think outside the box, we commit that in addition to supporting the advocacy and representational skills required in the Courts, arbitrations and dispute resolution proceedings, the vision of SAHSOL includes creating and nurturing the capacity to support the national and international economic regulatory framework in fields including telecommunications, securities, energy, competition, cyberspace, electronic media, foreign investment, international and regional trade, WTO issues, banking, intellectual property, terrorism, human rights and sustainable development. We are confident that SAHSOL will positively impact the entire social, political and economic fabric of Pakistan, by shepherding new generations of Pakistanis engaged with the law and policy making. The School, we hope, will become a significant contributor to the intellectual evolution and ideological growth of our society, continuing and building upon the impressive accomplishments of LUMS in the fields of management, the humanities, the social sciences and in the natural and applied sciences.

SAHSOL will inshallah lead change in legal education to be the nation’s law school with a difference. It will constantly review its offered courses to accord with the changing needs of the future. It will be driven by the excellence of its core full time faculty supported by the experience of the fields offered by an adjunct faculty. Its governance will be merit-driven and a need-based financial aid policy will enable access to the disadvantaged.

But beyond the vision of SAHSOL, I want to today share the life and career of Shaikh Ahmad Hassan. Let me pick up some important nuggets of his extraordinary life:

Shaikh Ahmad Hassan, destined to dedicate his life to public service and educational excellence, was born in Bahawalpur in 1908. He did his F.Sc. from Aligarh University in 1927 and his B.Sc. (Civil Engineering) from Durham University in the U.K. in 1930. On return to Bahawalpur, he joined the Government of Bahawalpur as a Sub Divisional Officer, Public Works Department, in 1930 and rose to the highest position of Chief Engineer by 1958 when One Unit was introduced in the country. By this time, Shaikh Ahmad Hassan had married my mother, Begum Razia, daughter of Mr. Khurshid Hak, later, I believe, a District and Sessions Judge, in Hoshiarpur in 1935. Our parents had three sons and four daughter during their stay in Bahawalpur.

In Bahawalpur, Shaikh Ahmad Hassan had shown his integrity, dedication, hard work and compassion for the poor to the notice of the Nawab of Bahawalpur and his Chief Minister, Syed Hasan Mahmud. Both supported his vision, role and leadership in the design and building of the Abbasia Canal which served the development of Cholistan, and several developmental projects such as the Sports Stadium Complex, Sadiq Egerton College, Sadiq Jamia Masjid, Sadiq Public School and Victoria Hospital (Expansion) in Bahawalpur.

Shaikh Ahmad Hassan’s reputation and record achievements were soon noticed outside Bahawalpur and he was included in the national delegation for the negotiation of the Indus Basin Treaty in Washington D.C. in 1952-53. I do recall, I hope accurately, that he never agreed to the surrender of three (3) rivers to India but his technical views were over-ruled by the civil service leadership of the delegation and, later, endorsed by Ayub Khan’s Government.

One Unit brought Shaikh Ahmad Hassan and the family to Lahore in 1958 and in less than a decade, he became the Secretary, Irrigation and Power, Government of West Pakistan. Here, he fought his most famous battles with foreign Consultants in the design of Link Canals and Dams under the Indus Basin Treaty. He particularly canvassed the need of a fifth tunnel at Tarbela against the initial advice of the foreign consulting engineers. I recall Shaikh Ahmad Hassan visiting New York in 1966 for a review of the Tarbela Dam design with TAMS. I was then practicing law on Wall Street in New York and it was a unique pleasure to have him stay with me in my apartment.

All this activist contribution led to Shaikh Ahmad Hassan being elected President of the country’s leading scientific and engineering institutions, the Institution of Engineers, 1971-72, the Pakistan Engineering Congress, 1970, and the Scientific Society of Pakistan, 1969. He was awarded the Sitare-e-Quaid-e-Azam in 1968.

On retirement in 1968, Shaikh Ahmad Hassan was appointed and served as Vice Chancellor, West Pakistan University of Engineering and Technology for five (5) years till 1972. In 1979, he served as Advisor, Governor of Punjab (Irrigation, Water Logging, and Salinity).

It was a measure of his eloquent resonance and respect as an icon in the engineering profession that the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Science in Engineering in 1986.

The Shaikh Ahmad Hassan Family is proud of its association with LUMS first through me, then through my brother, Dr. Tariq Hassan, as an adjunct faculty at the Law School, and now with the Law School named after Shaikh Ahmad Hassan. Shaikh Ahmad Hassan’s excellence in his profession, his matchless integrity and his humanity well fits the quality and reputation of LUMS. Perhaps he may have another qualification for this honour: Syed Babar Ali told me several years ago that Shaikh Ahmad Hassan and my mother, Begum Razia Hassan, are the only parents in the over 370 years of Harvard’s history whose two (2) sons have Doctorates of Law from its Law School. Other parents undoubtedly may have had two or more children doing Doctorates at different Schools of Harvard but it is unique that two sons of Begum Razia and Shaikh Ahmad Hassan studied at the Harvard Law School to each receive a Doctorate of Law.

As the construction is inaugurated by the Chief Justice of Pakistan today, the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan Family prays for SAHSOL’s success and leadership as an important center of legal learning and research in the region. May Allah shower his blessings on this effort. The LUMS Campus Architect, Habib Fida Ali, has designed an imposing building. My friend, Mr. Farid Ahsanuddin and his firm, Republic Engineering Corporation, are providing pro bono engineering services. They have, following a bidding process, selected Professional Construction Services, headed by Mr. Sadiq Qamar, as the Contractor in whose qualitative workmanship I have personal experience. So we will be off to a great start with the ground-breaking this afternoon. And, I know that my son, Omar, Architect, will anchor, with Habib Fida Ali, Farid Ahsanuddin and the in-house team of LUMS and the National Management Foundation, the supervision of this entire construction of the Building in memory of his grandfather. I also hope that his personal dedication and commitment will ensure our coming back to this campus for the inauguration of SAHSOL for the classes and academic session commencing in fall 2015.

And, finally, a personal postscript: I have not been remiss in my love, respect and devotion to my mother, Begum Razia Hassan. Both Mona Kasuri and Shahid Kardar, present with us today, following Sartaj Aziz, will facilitate this story at the Beacon house University on 17 April 2014.[3] I look forward to my daughter, Yasmeen, who could not be here today, joining us for the remembrance for my mother in the next two weeks. As another Harvard law graduate in the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan Family, she would have enjoyed today’s happy event.

In the end, I want the youngest of the children of Shaikh Ahmad Hassan, Dr. Tariq Hassan, to present to the Vice Chancellor, for the archives of LUMS, a book carrying twenty (20) papers on Shaikh Ahmad Hassan presented at a Memorial for him organized by the Pakistan Engineering Congress in October 2000. This will be a constant reminder to future generations of the qualities of the icon after whom the Law School is named.

I thank you.

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[1]. For an earlier and first story, see Dr. Parvez Hassan Environmental Law Centre: A Story of Gratitude, PLD 2003 Journal 19-28

[2]. B.A. (Pb), LL.B. (Pb), LL.M. (Yale), S.J.D. (Harvard); Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of Pakistan; remarks made at the Groundbreaking of the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law (SAHSOL), at LUMS, Lahore, on 5 April 2014.

[3]. This was rescheduled to 13 April 2014.