Citation for Datuk Mahadev Shankar

I have it from our President, Christopher Leong, that it was in the year 2011 that the Bar Council instituted the conferment of an award from time to time, to be called The Malaysian Bar Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition by the Malaysian Bar of past or present members, for outstanding contributions to the Malaysian Bar “inter alia in terms of leadership, service to the Bar and/or to the Nation, and/or in their practice at the Bar, which contributions had a significant, historical and lasting impact on the legal profession and on the community at large”.

The recipient of the inaugural Award was the late Raja Aziz Addruse; it was conferred on him posthumously in March 2012.  For 2013, there was one recipient, Dato’ Dr Sir Peter Mooney.
For this year, 2014, the recipient is Dato’ Mahadev Shankar.
I have been greatly honoured by the Bar Council requesting me to prepare, on behalf of the Bar Council, the citation for the conferment of the Award upon Dato’ Mahadev Shankar.
Dato’ Mahadev Shankar was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1932.  His father, the late Mr T V Mahadevan, had been from 1931 to 1958 (when he retired from Government service), Private Secretary to the Chief Justice of Malaya.  Shankar’s primary schooling started in 1940 at the Pasar Road School.  Two years later, the Japanese occupied Malaya.  Under the Japanese military administration, the Japanese language, Nippon-go, became the mandatory language of education in our schools.  Shankar went to one such school, Tek Sin Gakko, and by the end of 1942, Shankar had acquired a working knowledge of basic Japanese.