Farrukh Siyar Hashmi

Early life

Born in Gujrat, pre-partition India, now Pakistan, to Dr Ziaullah Qureshi & Majida Mufti, Hashmi was brought up in a religious Muslim household which placed great focus on learning and a heterogeneous education. Hashmi attended both a Muslim madrassa and a Brahmin Hindu school, where as a Muslim non-Brahmin he studied from outside the threshold of the building to avoid polluting it. He memorised both the Qur'an and tracts of the Hindu Vedas.

In his early twenties, Hashmi witnessed the horrors of Partition and its division of people along ethnic and religious lines – as a young medic, helping those injured, he saved a young Sikh woman from mob violence but fled from Amritsar University after being attacked, eventually resuming his medical studies in Lahore, Pakistan.

Life in Britain

In 1953 he moved to the United Kingdom for postgraduate studies, experiencing and witnessing racism and struggles of ethnic minorities and immigrants in post-War Britain. Hashmi intended to work in a teaching hospital but was told by the British Medical Association that as an immigrant he would never be able to get such a job – persevering for three months, he found unpaid attachment at the teaching hospital in Hampstead, in which he proved himself and was offered a paid post as a junior doctor. Later, with the intention to support other doctors and help challenge the discriminatory attitudes of the medical profession, he founded the Overseas Doctor's Association in 1975.

Hashmi worked in London hospitals for some time, in both the Royal Free and King’s College groups, and then in Edinburgh, followed by a 5-year research post at the University of Birmingham in transcultural psychiatry in the British context: mental illness caused or influenced by cultural and/or religious factors, including the effects of migration and racism. It was this work in mental illness through which he became active in the field of race relations, informed by his personal experiences of the events leading to Partition and racial discrimination upon moving to the UK.

Transcultural psychiatry and race relations

As a result of his research in Birmingham, Hashmi acted in an advisory capacity to the UK government for many years: he was made a member of the Race Relations Board in the Home Office (1976-1985) and for this work was appointed an OBE for services to race relations in 1974, contributing to the passing of the Race Relations Act by Parliament in 1976. He was a Commissioner at the Commission for Racial Equality 1980-1986, and a key advisor to the government during the 1981 and 1985 Handsworth riots, highlighting the impact of social divisions and inequality on the individual and community level. His view was that although it would be ideal if racism and discrimination disappeared through integration, education and awareness, sometimes legislation was necessary to encourage and expedite this process.

Support of South Asian arts in Britain

Hashmi’s interest in scholarship and diversity reached beyond his professional life, and he was active in interfaith work in a voluntary capacity in Birmingham. He was active in his support for South Asian arts and their promotion in the British context, hosting poets including Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ahmad Faraz, and as a trustee of Ravi Music College. Hashmi was a founder of the Iqbal Academy at Coventry Cathedral, and its chairman, 1972–1973.

Latter years

After retirement Hashmi developed a medico-legal practice and worked as an expert witness, particularly with patients from ethnic minority backgrounds until retiring fully from clinical practice just short of his 80th birthday upon receiving his diagnosis of cancer. Hashmi died at his family home in Birmingham UK, on 25 December 2010.

Positions held

Published works

Awards

1974 Awarded OBE for services to Race Relations