Features
THE END OF A CORPORATE GIANT
THE STORY OF WALKER SONS & CO LTD
by HUGH KARUNANAYAKE
THE EARLY YEARS
The firm known as Walker Sons and Co was Ceylon’s major engineering firm for over 175 years. The founder of the firm, John Walker, was born on August 24, 1819 in Doune, Scotland, the seventh child of James Walker, a cobbler, and his wife Charistina (nee Strang). He attended school in Deanston and was thereafter apprenticed in the engineering shop of Deanston Cotton Mill operated by James Finlay and Co.
In 1842 he travelled to Ceylon to work as an engineer for Wilson, Ritchie and Co. which owned the Hulftsdorf Mills and which revolutionized coconut oil production through the invention patented by David Wilson. John Walker thereafter worked in a number of firms in Ceylon before returning to Scotland in 1854.In Scotland he met William Turner an engineer who he had known in Ceylon, and who encouraged him to return to Ceylon to work in Turner’s engineering business in Kandy.
Walker arrived in Ceylon in 1854 and established his own engineering firm John Walker and Co at Trincomalee Street in Kandy, manufacturing machinery for the country’s rapidly developing coffee industry. The invention of a disc pulping machine patented in 1860 saw machinery exports to other coffee producing countries like Java, Southern India, and Brazil.
In a letter written by John Walker to his brother William in Glasgow in circa 1856 he stated that the buildings owned by the nascent company may be valued at £400 sterling. “The motive power is the Malabar cooly, as we have not enough water for the blacksmiths troughs, and fuel is expensive! Our customers are 300 planters scattered over the Central Province. As a class I would call them good customers, but some are are very long in paying”. In 1854 William became the buying agent for his brother John, and they established themselves in Glasgow under the name Walker Brothers.
In 1862 William joined John as a partner and by 1870 the company had opened branches in Badulla, and Haldumulla, and by1873 branches in Dickoya and Dimbulla. In 1873 Walker founded a new company Walker and Greig to supply machinery to the new tea plantations. In 1880 the company manufactured the first tea rolling machine. Walker brothers based their headquarters in Kandy, and thrived during the coffee boom, but as early as in 1864 the company contemplated moving to Colombo and leased out premises which however were never occupied.
With the construction of the South West breakwater in the Colombo harbour, in the 1870s, shipping out of, and into Colombo was the favoured option. The Company first leased out the premises known as “the Corner” at the corner of York Street and Main Street in 1881 and it moved its headquarters and workshops there. The premises were later acquired by the Company and in later years during the twentieth century housed its head offices, and show rooms there, while the workshops including the foundry, and dockyard were constructed on 15 acres of land in Mutwal leased out from the government for 99 years in 1912.
At a dinner given in London by the Ceylon Association in London in honour of the then Governor designate of Ceylon Sir Hugh Clifford, G.C.M.G.,C.B.E., Mr JL Loudon Shand who presided gave an interesting review of the planting history of Ceylon, and in the course of his speech made the following remarks:
“There are many other things that we planters have to be thankful for among others, is the Engineering genius which has attended all our efforts in Ceylon. Wherever we have foremost in coffee, tea, and rubber it is in invention and in having the highest Engineering enterprise at our disposal, and I am glad to see here tonight, representatives of the firm of Messrs Walker Sons and Company, who have done so much for us in Ceylon”.
John Walker retired at the age of 60 after steering the company for over 30 years, but continued as head of Walker and Greig. Walker Sons was thereafter headed by his brother William who became Senior Partner. John Walker died in Scotland in 1888 and his son John came out to Ceylon to take over the running of the company. In 1891 the firm was incorporated as a limited liability company by the name Walker Sons and Company Ltd and registered on the London Stock Exchange
EXPANSION- NEW AGENCIES
Walker Sons and Co grew to be one of the earliest corporate giants in Sri Lanka, having dominated the country’s engineering sphere for almost two centuries. It was arguably the company which had the greatest impact on the economic development of Ceylon up to the 20th Century. It was to play a dominant role in the transformation of the country’s economy from a peasant based one to a more export oriented plantation economy a process which was well in hand by the end of the 19th Century.
The company prospered and expanded during the first half of the twentieth Century having being appointed as sole agents in Ceylon for much sought after British made engineering products and services. Those agencies included Austin Motor Vehicles, Otis elevators , Carrier air conditioning, Formica products, Lucas batteries and Crittall windows. The first passenger lift in Ceylon was installed by Walkers Sons in the Galle Face Hotel in 1911. Likewise the first electric fans in Ceylon were installed by Walkers in the Bristol Hotel in the 1890s. Among its engineering services were Power installation, Oil engines for tea and rubber factories, a foundry with capacity for castings up to 10 tons in weight, a machine shop served with a 15 ton electric travelling crane, a heavy machine shop with electrically driven overhead cranes, a blacksmith’s shop, and a machinery repair shop, all based in the Mutwal facility.
MOTOR ENGINEERING
Walkers have been associated with the growth and expansion of the automotive sector in Ceylon more than any other institution in the country. The first motor car was imported to Ceylon in 1902, and in the very same year Walkers imported its first motor car, the “Locomobile” Thereafter it held the agency for Austin cars, and lorries, which were predominant in the nations fleet of motor vehicles. It was also the agent for Lucas batteries. The company acquired a two acre property in Galle Road Kollupitiya to serve exclusively as a motor service centre. The branch in Kandy as well as other branches of the company in Talawakelle, Ratnapura, Bandarawela, and Galle also were equipped with motor repair and service facilities.
MARINE ENGINEERING
Sri Lanka being an island with many bays around its shores, some of which were used as harbours for a range of shipping craft, would have been an ideal location for a regional maritime service hub, but somehow only Walker Sons rose to the challenge. The graving dock constructed by the company together with the adjacent nine acres of land comprised the Colombo Iron Works, known popularly as CIW which became the nerve center for all of the company’s engineering enterprise. The slipway of the company with a cradle 120 ft long was suitable for repair and maintenance work of craft. The company owned two ships the Lady McCallum and Lady Blake which operated around the shores of Ceylon were both commissioned by Walkers.
During the early 20th Century. In September 1926, the company launched the oil barge ” Mahaweli” built and powered to suit special requirements. During the Second World War the firm repaired and refitted 167 major warships, 322 minor warships and 1,932 merchant vessels, including the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, cruiser HMS Cornwall, HMS Cumberland, HMS Devonshire, HMS Gloucester, HMS Kent, HMS Manchester HMS Liverpool, and cruise liners RMS Queen Elizabeth and RMS Queen Mary.
BUILDINGS
The metropolis of Colombo had as its nucleus the Fort of Colombo first built by the Portuguese, further fortified by the Dutch and British till the fortifications were removed in the late 19 th century. The area encompassed by the Fort continued to serve as the centre for commercial activity in the island and the emerging banking and finance sector. The many departmental stores, hotels, restaurants, and banks all came into existence during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of the buildings in the Fort are of unique Victorian design and architecture representing the lifestyles of a bygone era. Almost all the 19th/20 th Century buildings within the Fort were designed and constructed by Walkers.
Buildings constructed by Walkers during the late 19th century include; the Galle Face Hotel, Australia Building, the Victoria Building, the P& O Offices, the National Bank of India Ltd, the Kandy Post Office, Messrs Cargills Ltd, Whiteaway Laidlaw and Co, Millers Ltd, The Scots Kirk
During the first half of the 20th Century the company built the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, Imperial Bank of India, National Bank of India, the McKinnon McKenzie block, the new Customs House, the Grand Stand Ceylon Turf Club, the new Observer office, the Times of Ceylon building, the YMCA building, the new hostel for YMCA, the Soldiers and Sailors Institute, the Elphinstone Theatre, Pettah Police Barracks, St Bridgets Convent, etc etc. It could be said without fear of contradiction, that most of the significant buildings in the Fort including the 16 storied Ceylinco Building built in 1957 were all constructed by Walkers.
STAFFING
During the 1950s when the company was at its peak, with its workshops in Colombo in full gear meeting the nation’s demand for engineering goods and services, it had a skilled and semi skilled labour force of about 4,000 workers in Colombo and in the Branch establishments. Office staff included some 50 covenanted staff (Senior Executives), 120 Junior Executives; clerical and other office staff of about 500., possibly the largest for any single company in the island. During the 1950s, the Chairman of the parent company in London was Mr Osborne Walker, while the Ceylon operations were controlled by Mr E A Badman.
Most of the Senior Executives were Britishers, but feeling the need for Ceylonisation after Independence was granted to the country in 1948,Mr Badman recruited Ceylonese with outstanding sporting records and a good secondary education as Executives. Most of them were men who were educated at Royal College in Colombo and included Vivian de Kretser who captained the Royal College cricket team in 1945, Mahes Rodrigo who captained the Royal cricket team in 1946, Ashroff Cader who Captained the Royal rugby fifteen in 1949, Lucien de Zoysa who played in the Royal cricket team in 1935/36, and C. Ivers Gunasekera who played cricket for Royal in 1937/36/39.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNES
While it is difficult to pinpoint the source of the decline of the company’s fortunes, given that the history of its finances are not available now, it may not be unreasonable to surmise that the rot began in the early 1960s when the first signs of exchange controls and import restrictions appeared. That, despite the fact that the previous decade saw unrestricted imports following the Korean boom which sent rubber and tea prices spiralling upwards. The country enjoyed the benefits of that boon as did Walkers, but it failed to conserve and consolidate thus exposing itself to future vulnerabilities in the foreign exchange sector.
Walkers was a company largely dependant on imports and import based production and the first restrictions on imports imposed in 1961 saw a total ban on car and other imports which were ‘bread and butter’ lines for the company. Another very significant factor especially when gradual relaxation of controls took place in later years, was the emergence of suppliers from non traditional sources into the national imports basket. Post 1960 imports saw a significant drop in imports from the traditional British suppliers, and a diversification of import sources.
Countries like Japan, Korea, and non British Europe began to assume dominant positions. This was true even in Great Britain, where the domestic market was flooded with imports from the emerging nations of the Far East with access to superior production technologies inspired from the USA. Walkers however, despite these pressures had a reasonable foothold in the estate engineering sector, and also rose up to the challenges by diversification into areas such as fibre glass boat production, and making inroads into the tourism and hospitality sectors.
To add another unexpected blow to the company’s fortunes, the Government of the day in 1971 chose to compulsorily acquire its Head Office buildings in Prince Street, Fort paying the company a meagre Rs 700,000 as compensation. The building was acquired to house the State Pharmaceutical Corporation whose necessity to be located within the Fort was a question that went a begging, but never answered. Matters were compounded by the departure of the last of the Walker family, AC (Johnny ) Walker who handed over the company to Mackwoods Ltd, who were appointed Managing Agents for the Company for a stipulated period.
The attempt to restore financial stability by Mackwoods by selling off some prime real estate of the company was met with some opposition by the work force. The work force went on strike for several months bringing on more financial burdens to the company. In the mid 1970s George Steuart and Co were appointed managing agents for Walkers for three years.. Its Directors Trevor Moy, Scott Direckze, and Trevor Rosemale-Cocq, were appointed working Directors, and the company reached a degree of stability. George Steuarts however declined the opportunity to renew the agreement for a further three years.
In 1978, a new government liberalised import export trading and the possibility of a reversal of fortunes were envisaged by foreign investors looking for healthy returns on investment. The Anglo-Indonesian Corporation part of the Sime Darby Group, headed by John Nightingale, and Charles Berry negotiated successfully with the Walker family who relinquished their controlling interest in the company.
In around 1980 the controlling interest of the company was purchased by the Indian conglomerate the Tata Group which nominated two working directors to manage the company. They both resided in the Hotel Oberoi from where they made their daily visits to the different operations of the company. Kapila Heavy Equipment purchased the company in 1990. In 2009 a Malaysian based company MTD Capital Berhad purchased the Company which now goes as MTD Walkers PLC
While the Company has relinquished its role as a strategic component of plantation development in sri Lanka, and also in its key position in marine engineering, it has since stabilised itself as a major construction company focussing on infrastructure development. It is the market leader in pile driving operations and continues to sustain and maintain the nearly two century old traditions of Walker Sons and Co.
To conclude, it may be appropriate to quote William Walker the Founding Partner of the firm when he visited Ceylon in 1886.” I desire as much to be your friend as your master. I think that the firm with which I have been connected for so long as its head has done good work for Ceylon. We have brought works to the island that were never brought before. We also have paid large amounts in wages every month to the Sinhalese and Tamil workmen. But we think we can go on a step further and do better.
‘’The first thing I will try to do for you will be to afford you medical aid in times of sickness. I wish also that some provision be made for anyone who meets with any accident or in case of protracted illness. The next thing I wish is that something be provided for our men when old age comes on and you are not able to work. If this is carried out, no old and steady worker in the Company’s service will ever have to apply to the Friend in Need Society. (“Ref: Pioneers of Ceylon, Life of William Walker.Bedford publishing Co, Bedford 1897)
The above shows that the founding partners of the firm were inspired to expand its activities but also showed benevolence to is workforce- a sure formula for success.
(The writer worked on the Covenanted staff of Walker Sons And Co as Market Research Manager for five years in the mid 1970s)
Sri Lanka becoming a Macbethian sick state?
The traditional ritual of anointing medicinal oil (or ‘hisa thel gaema’ in Sinhalese, literally, applying oil to the head) is unique to the Sinhala Aluth Avurudda observances. This year, the ritual was performed at the auspicious moment of 9:04 a.m. (Sri Lanka time) on Wednesday April 16. It was observed at appointed venues across the country at the same time. The anointing was done, as usual, mostly by Buddhist monks in their monasteries.
Where they were not available for the purpose, a senior citizen would do the needful. The oil anointing ceremony was held to invoke blessings of good health on all the individuals who subjected themselves to the ritual. Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya was shown participating in the oil anointing ceremony at the historic Kolonnawa Raja Maha Viharaya. There were many social media videos showing similar oil anointing scenes that included even elephants and hippos in a zoo receiving the compassionate treatment; this is not seen as going too far with traditions, for extending loving-kindness even to animals is taken for granted in the majority Buddhist Sri Lanka. Watching this ritual (that used to be so familiar for me in my childhood and youth) from abroad I couldn’t help my eyes filling with tears, feeling kind of homesick, in spite of me having spent more than forty-three years of my adult life living and working away from my Mother Country Sri Lanka.
Though usually Buddhist monks do the anointing, it is not considered a religious practice by the ordinary Buddhists. It is only a part of the completely secular Sinhala Aluth Avurudda festival. The most important annual religious festival for the Sinhalese (especially Sinhala Buddhists) is Vesak, which will be held next month. However, the oil anointing ceremony impresses on the Avurudu celebrants the great importance of maintaining their physical and mental health throughout the coming year, reflecting the high level of attention that our traditional culture pays to that objective.
Prof. Snyder
However, the actual discrepancy that is noticed between the ideal and the reality in the mundane world, as in other countries, is a different matter. Shining beacons like ideals of a long-evolved culture are important for what they are; their importance doesn’t go away because those ideals are only imperfectly realised by the people of that culture. But the values endure.
The news of this happy occasion and my awareness of a deepening political and cultural malaise in my beloved Motherland back home reminded me of a book I read during the Covid-19 lockdown period of 2020-2022: OUR MALADY by American historian and public intellectual, the Yale University professor Timothy D. Snyder published in 2020. The book, whose subtitle is ‘Liberty and Solidarity’, is about the weakness of the American healthcare system that he himself got a taste of, privately.
Professor Snyder came to know first-hand how America failed its citizens in the public healthcare sphere as an inmate of a hospital ward, where he was admitted to the emergency room at midnight on December 29, 2019. He was complaining of a condition of severe bodily ‘malaise’. Doctors later told him that he had an abscess the size of a baseball in his liver. The emergency operation to remove the abscess was done after seventeen hours of his having had to wait confined to a hospital bed!
‘Rage’ is the word he repeatedly uses to describe how he felt during his hospitalisation. He was not raging against God or any particular person or a group or the bacteria that caused his illness. ‘I raged against a world where I was not’, Snyder writes in the Prologue to the book (implying how much he was angry about there not being a healthy enough healthcare system to look after Americans who fell ill like himself. The book grew out of entries he made in a diary that he maintained while recuperating in hospital. Proficient in a number of European languages including English, French and Polish, he adopts a sort of poetic idiom to deal with his naturally dull subject.
He imagined he was not suffering in solitude, though. He thought about other Americans in his situation, and empathised with them. The absence of a sound healthcare system is America’s malady according to Snyder. Probably, the current situation in America is different, having changed for the better. We must remember that the time he is talking about was the last year of the first term (January 20, 2017-January 20, 2021) of the 45th US president Donald Trump of the Republican Party.
Currently, Trump is serving as the 47th US president. The ideas that professor Snyder develops in the book have global topical relevance, I think. They are organised into four Chapters or ‘Lessons’ as he dubs them, which in my opinion, have implications that could be utilised even by the citizens of the Macbethian ‘sick state’ that Sri Lanka has become today, complete with a Macbeth (though a muppet) and a shadowy but more determined Lady Macbeth.
Timothy Snyder offers the four Lessons for his fellow Americans, and by extension, to fellow humans around the world including us, Sri Lankans. Perhaps these are uniquely American issues, with little direct relevance to a small country like Sri Lanka with no stake in the international pharmaceutical industry. But then no country can escape from the implications of the following facts (taken from Wikipedia): In 2023, the global pharmaceutical industry earned revenues of US $ 1.48 trillion, whereas the top 10 arms manufacturing companies earned only US $ 632 billion. In the same year, the global life and health insurance carriers industry, which is the biggest industry in the world in terms of revenue, earned US $ 4.3 trillion.
Our own late medical professor Senake Bibile (1920-1977), a pharmacology expert and a rare philanthropist and compassionate social activist of the Trotskyite Sama Samaja party persuasion who always had the welfare of the suffering poor at heart, met his death allegedly in mysterious circumstances in Guyana where he was attending a UN conference, promoting the domestic drug policy that he had developed for Sri Lanka, as a model for use in other countries and by the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for developing policies for ‘rational pharmaceutical use’.
It goes without saying that Sri Lankans are also highly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of the inhuman excesses of the purely profit oriented international Big Pharma; these harmful consequences get transferred to the innocent citizens magnified several times through the unholy alliance between the local corporate drugs mafiosi and corrupt politicians. Be that as it may, Snyder adds another three equally important related points, covering all four, each in a Lesson that must receive the utmost attention of all adult Sri Lankans: health care for children and children’s education, truth in politics, and the supremacy of the doctors’ role in a malady situation. We will look at these briefly, intermittently taking our eyes off America to reflect on our own country Sri Lanka.
Lesson 1 is ‘Health care is a human right’.
Despite its wealth, professor Snyder complains, America is a sick nation; life expectancy is falling for Americans. Moody’s Analytics suggests that US millennials will die younger than their parents or grandparents, though there is no lack of money spent. What is causing this decline in life expectancy? Snyder’s unsettling answer is that the American healthcare system prioritises profit over people’s lives. America still lacks a universal healthcare system, in spite of being a supporter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and this leads to unequal access to health care, as Snyder asserts.
Exorbitantly priced commercial medicine has a devastating effect on the protection of the health-care rights of the people. It has robbed the American citizens of their health, in Snyder’s view. The American health-care system’s profit-focussed approach and lack of investment in protective equipment for medical professionals jeopardised their safety during the Covid-19 pandemic. In America, 20 million people lost their jobs and over 150,000 died from pandemic. Health insurance became too expensive, and health care unaffordable. Without a diagnosis, many became dangerously ill or unknowingly infected others with the virus.
Though poor, Sri Lanka beats America in respect of looking after public health. It has a better record in providing satisfactory health care for the citizens. The state runs an almost 100% free medicare service for all the citizens. There is a (kind of) parallel paid private hospital system as well, that caters to the better off segment of the population that can resort to it if they prefer to do so. This potentially eases the burden on the free state medical services, which can then focus more on attending to the needs of the economically weaker section of the population.
The maintenance by the state of such a public welfare-based healthcare system is desired and supported by our dominant socio-cultural background that strongly resonates with the humanistic spirit of the Aluth Avurudda that prioritises health over all forms of wealth. This is embodied in the principle Arogya parama labha ‘Good health is the greatest wealth’, the antithesis of the American attitude towards citizens’ health.
Sri Lanka was among the handful of countries that contained the Covid-19 pandemic most efficiently, minimizing deaths, whereas in America, according to Snyder, flaws in the healthcare system were aggravated by the contagion. This led to more deaths in America than in other wealthy nations like Japan and Germany. But the not so well-to-do Sri Lanka escaped with a minimum number of Covid-caused fatalities amidst obstacles mounted by antinationalist ill-wishers as I saw it at the time. That is Professor Snyder’s Lesson 1, which is about the human right of easily accessible health care. Sri Lanka is actually ahead of America in this respect in spite of relative poverty.
by Rohana R. Wasala
(To be concluded.)
I received a video that announced Japan was considering changing to a four-day work week. Suspicious of such news in my cell phone, I googled and found that certain countries had already opted for work weeks of four days and thus three-day weekends. This change too is a consequence of closedowns of work due to the Covid pandemic.
“Several countries are experimenting with or have implemented four-day work weeks, including Belgium, Iceland, Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal. Other countries like Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the US have also shown interest in, or have tested the four-day work week model.”
The video I got was about Japan changing its government work week to four days from mid-April with many projected objectives. One is to improve government employees’ work-life balance and to address the country’s declining birth rate. Also, the hours of the work day are to be reduced so parents can spend more time caring for their kids termed: ‘Childcare partial leave’. Flexible work hours for women to be implemented so choosing between careers and family will not be necessary.
In Germany experimental trials were carried out in 2023-24 involving 43 companies; 73% plan to continue with the new work structure. Noted for productivity and efficiency, Germany has in addition to one day less working, on average only 34 hours per week. A five-day week of 9 to 5 has 40 work hours per week. Fewer hours at work has been found to promote smarter and more focussed effort with employees happier and more engaged.
Long ago in the 1970s Cassandra shifted from employment in the private sector to a semi government job. She was shocked at the laissez faire attitude of her co-workers in an information centre. Most came to work at around 9.00 am: discussed the bus journey and home; had breakfast; read the morning newspapers; did a bit of work and were ready to have lunch by 12.00 noon. Two hours for this and half for a small snooze. Work till 3.30 pm or so when books/files were closed and grooming selves commenced, to depart at 4.30 pm sharp.
The work ethic in a remote government school and a private school in a city were as opposed to each other as the proverbial chalk to cheese. Do minimum against teaching; don’t care attitude to dedication and commitment; take leave to maximum vs hardly taking leave in consideration of the fact parents of students pay fees; non disciplining principals to dedicated pedagogues who set an example.
Cassandra supposes, and correctly, that with the change of government and a system change, even though many offices are overstaffed, employees put in a solid day’s work. The public is better served, most definitely.
Hence how would it be for Sri Lanka to lop off one work day a week? There will certainly be benefits, but aren’t many of us complaining about the presence of too many public holidays; we enjoy 24 to 30 a year including every full moon Poya Day. A travesty!
Pope Francis
The utter mayhem of Poya weekends
Those who lived through the period when the calendar in this overzealous Buddhist country went lunar (sic) and made the four Poya Days of a month and half the pre-Poya Day as the country’s weekend. It was a total mess since many a week had more than five week days in it till the moon changed from one phase to another. Ceylon was completely out of sync with the rest of the world. That was in 1966 with Dudley Senanayake as Prime Minister. Mercifully, in 1970, the Saturday Sunday weekend was reverted to, and sanity regained.
Conclusion is that making our week of four days’ work and weekend three days has to be carefully considered, tested and implemented, or kept as it is. Better it would be if government offices were pruned of excess staff recruited on politicians’ orders and genuinely legitimate officers made to work efficiently.
VVIP Mother in queue
A photograph made the rounds on social media of a frail looking, white haired lady in a queue in Kandy moving slowly to pay homage to the Sacred Tooth Relic. It was said to be President AKD’s mother who was hospitalised just a couple of months ago. Admired is her devotion as well as the fact she came incognito; not informing her son of her intended travel.
But Cass is censorious. Here was a genuine case of needing a bit of stretching of points and helping her to fulfil her desire to pay homage with ease. After all, he is working hard and very probably long hours to get this country on an even keel. He needs appreciation and if he refuses advantages, let a less able person benefit.
A truly honourable Pope
Roman Catholics across the globe mourn the death of the 266th Pope on the Monday after the Easter weekend; and the world respects and reveres him. People comment he must have willed himself to live through Easter, even presenting himself to crowds gathered in the huge grounds of St Peter’s Basilica.
Pope Francis was born Jorge Bergoglio on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was inspired to join the Society of Jesus or Jesuits in 1958 after a serious illness. Ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, he was the Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina from 1973 to 79. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. He was elected in the papal conclave following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI as head of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of the Vatican City State in 1913, claiming many firsts: a Jesuit becoming Pope; first from America, from the Southern Hemisphere. He chose his papal name in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi, kind to all living beings. “Throughout his public life, Francis was noted for his humility, emphasis on God’s mercy, international visibility as pope, concern for the poor and commitment to interreligious dialogue. He was known for having a less formal approach to the papacy than his predecessors.”
We remember his visit to Sri Lanka from January 13 to 15, 2015, when he travelled to the Shrine of Our Lady of Madhu and canonized Sri Lanka’s first saint, Joseph Vaz. He conducted a Mass and bestowed blessings to the multitude at Galle Face Green. As he entered and left the Green, he placed his hands on the heads of infants, children, the very poor, the old and infirm; never mind oil and dirt on heads. A truly great and good person.
The most urgent need for the South Asian region right now, in the wake of the cold-blooded killing by gunmen of nearly 30 local tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir two days back, is the initiation of measures that could ensure regional stability and peace. The state actors that matter most in this situation are India and Pakistan and it would be in the best interests of the region for both countries to stringently refrain from succumbing to knee-jerk reactions in the face of any perceived provocations arising from the bloodshed.
The consequences for the countries concerned and the region could be grave if the terror incident leads to stepped-up friction and hostility between India and Pakistan. Some hardline elements in India, for instance, are on record in the international media as calling on the Indian state to initiate tough military action against Pakistan for the Kashmiri terror in question and a positive response to such urgings could even lead to a new India-Pakistan war.
Those wishing South Asia well are likely to advocate maximum restraint by both states and call for negotiations by them to avert any military stand-offs and conflicts that could prove counter-productive for all quarters concerned. This columnist lends his pen to such advocacy.
Right now in Sri Lanka, nationalistic elements in the country’s South in particular are splitting hairs over an MoU relating to security cooperation Sri Lanka has signed with India. Essentially, the main line of speculation among these sections is that Sri Lanka is coming under the suzerainty of India, so to speak, in the security sphere and would be under its dictates in the handling of its security interests. In the process, these nationalistic sections are giving fresh life to the deep-seated anti-India phobia among sections of the Sri Lankan public. The eventual result will be heightened, irrational hostility towards India among vulnerable, unenlightened Sri Lankans.
Nothing new will be said if the point is made that such irrational fears with respect to India are particularly marked among India’s smaller neighbouring states and their publics. Needless to say, collective fears of this kind only lead to perpetually strained relations between India and her neighbours, resulting in regional disunity, which, of course would not be in South Asia’s best interests.
SAARC is seen as ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and its present dysfunctional nature seems to give credence to this belief. Continued friction between India and Pakistan is seen as playing a major role in such inner paralysis and this is, no doubt, the main causative factor in SARRC’s current seeming ineffectiveness.
However, the widespread anti-India phobia referred to needs to be factored in as playing a role in SAARC’s lack of dynamism and ‘life’ as well. If democratic governments go some distance in exorcising such anti-Indianism from their people’s psyches, some progress could be made in restoring SAARC to ‘life’ and the latter could then play a constructive role in defusing India-Pakistan tensions.
It does not follow that if SAARC was ‘alive and well’, security related incidents of the kind that were witnessed in India-administered Kashmir recently would not occur. This is far from being the case, but if SAARC was fully operational, the states concerned would be in possession of the means and channels of resolving the issues that flow from such crises with greater amicability and mutual accommodation.
Accordingly, the South Asian Eight would be acting in their interests by seeking to restore SAARC back to ‘life’. An essential task in this process is the elimination of mutual fear and suspicion among the Eight and the states concerned need to do all that they could to eliminate any fixations and phobias that the countries have in relation to each other.
It does not follow from the foregoing that the SAARC Eight should not broad base their relations and pull back from fostering beneficial ties with extra-regional countries and groupings that have a bearing on their best interests. On the contrary, each SAARC country’s ties need to be wide-ranging and based on the principle that each such state would be a friend to all countries and an enemy of none as long as the latter are well-meaning.
The foregoing sharp focus on SAARC and its fortunes is necessitated by the consideration that the developmental issues in particular facing the region are best resolved by the region itself on the basis of its multiple material and intellectual resources. The grouping should not only be revived but a revisit should also be made to its past programs; particularly those which related to intra-regional conflict resolution. Thus, talking to each other under a new visionary commitment to SAARC collective wellbeing is crucially needed.
On the question of ties with India, it should be perceived by the latter’s smaller neighbours that there is no getting away from the need to foster increasingly closer relations with India, today a number one global power.
This should not amount to these smaller neighbours surrendering their rights and sovereignty to India. Far from it. On the contrary these smaller states should seek to craft mutually beneficial ties with India. It is a question of these small states following a truly Non-aligned foreign policy and using their best diplomatic and political skills to structure their ties with India in a way that would be mutually beneficial. It is up to these neighbours to cultivate the skills needed to meet these major challenges.
Going ahead, it will be in South Asia’s best interests to get SAARC back on its feet once again. If this aim is pursued with visionary zeal and if SAARC amity is sealed once and for all intra-regional friction and enmities could be put to rest. What smaller states should avoid scrupulously is the pitting of extra-regional powers against India and Pakistan in their squabbles with either of the latter. This practice has been pivotal in bringing strife and contention into South Asia and in dividing the region against itself.
Accordingly, the principal challenge facing South Asia is to be imbued once again with the SAARC spirit. The latter spirit’s healing powers need to be made real and enduring. Thus will we have a region truly united in brotherhood and peace.
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