Features
The Increasing Incidents of Container Ship Fires and Environmental Destruction
by Dr Manique Cooray
Fires at sea continue to pose a significant risk to container shipping and often give rise to long-winded and complex claims between all affected parties. Space does not permit even a cursory examination of the large body of relevant international legal provisions available. Moreover, the rise of containerisation has exacerbated the problem of fire on board ships as we have seen with the MV Hansa Brandenburg, the Jolly Rubino, the Maersk Londrina and recently in February 2017, in the MV APL Austria case where a Liberian flagged container ship caught fire off the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
In the backdrop of the ongoing environmental catastrophe in one of Sri Lanka’s worst ever marine disasters, it is imperative to address two issues that seem to be of central importance pertaining to the cargo ship carrying tonnes of chemicals which now lie in the seabed off the west coast of the Island. The Singapore registered MV X-Press Pearl, Super Eco 2700-class container ship was built by Zhoushan Changhong International Shipyard Co. Ltd at Zhoushan, China, for Singapore based X-Press Feeders and its sister ship X-Press Mekong. The 37,000 dead weight tonne (DWT) container vessel could carry 2,743 twenty-foot equivalent units. The ship was delivered on February 10, 2021. It had a 25-member crew including Filipinos, Chinese, Indian and Russian nationals. It was carrying 1,486 containers, among them 81 carrying dangerous goods, which included 25 tonnes of nitric acid, along with other chemicals, cosmetics and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) pellets. Reports indicate the vessel was deployed in the Straits of Malacca to Middle East (SMX) service of X-Press Feeders, from Port Klang (Malaysia) via Singapore and Jebel Ali (UAE) to Hamad Port (Qatar). The return journey to Malaysia was to be via Hazira (India) and Colombo (Sri Lanka). It was reported that the ship’s crew had noticed the leakage of nitric acid from one of the containers when the vessel set sail to the Port of Colombo.
It is common knowledge that under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, no vessel can enter a country’s “territorial water” extending up to 12 miles from the nearest land without approval from the coastal state. Nevertheless, bearing in mind that Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Basel Convention, it is not the aim here to address basic questions on how, why and who authorized a vessel with a container leaking nitric acid to enter the territorial waters of the country carrying hazardous material. This entry into Sri Lankan waters could have been under “Port of Refuge”, a situation wherein a ship deviates to a port due to an emergency which renders the ship unsafe to continue on her voyage.
The ill-fated ship erupted in a fire while anchored about 9.5 nautical miles northwest of Colombo. The Sri Lankan navy believes the fire was caused by a chemical reaction from the leaking cargo loaded from the port of Hazira in India. As flaming containers laden with chemicals fell from the ship’s deck, seawater may have entered the hull that submerged the MV X-Press Pearl’s quarterdeck a day after firefighters extinguished the fire. With such a dramatic turn of events of an overseas registered ship, carrying crewmen of various nationalities and cargo belonging presumably to various parties, and with a vessel located within the territorial waters of Sri Lanka, presents itself a plethora of issues in conflict of laws determining principles of choice of law with recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.
While the local authorities are moving to sue the owners of the vessel to claim damages from the insurer, the suitability of existing Penal Provisions and the Marine Pollution Prevention Act No 35 of 2008 of Sri Lanka raises the question of its adequacy as the principle legislation of the forum state to hear a case of such magnitude of which the main issue is to claim compensation. Insurers of cargo vessels generally require the owners and operators to adhere to internationally recognized guidance concerned with maximizing the overall safety of the vessel, the crew and the cargo. One part of the guidance is the International Maritime Organizations Dangerous Goods Code (IMDG Code), an internationally accepted guideline for the transportation or shipment of dangerous goods or materials by a vessel on water.
Even a cargo that might be quite innocuous in small quantities can display dangerous properties when transported in large quantities, especially if those large quantities of material are exposed to environmental conditions such as moisture or heat, during or prior to loading, or during a voyage. Under the Hague-Visby Rules, the liability regime for the carriage of most cargo, neither the carrier nor the shipowner is responsible for loss or damage arising or resulting from fire unless caused by the actual fault or privity of the shipowner or carrier. To successfully recover for damage to cargo from the shipowner or to defend a claim for general average, the cargo owner must show a lack of due diligence of the shipowner to make the ship seaworthy and safe to receive, carry and discharge the cargo. From a procedural perspective, “(i) the cargo owner must prove their loss; (ii) the carrier or shipowner must prove the cause of loss (i.e., that the fire caused the loss); (iii) the carrier or shipowner must prove due diligence to make the ship seaworthy prior to and at the commencement of the voyage; and (iv) the cargo owner must prove fault of the carrier or shipowner or knowledge of fault or another for whom the carrier or shipowner is responsible.”
The shipowner is not liable for an act or omission by the crew. If the negligence of the crew caused the fire, this is a complete defence for the shipowner unless the cargo owner can show that there was some lack of due diligence by the shipowner, which made the ship unseaworthy. In the case of fires at sea, this would include the shipowner failing to exercise due diligence insofar as the crew fighting the fire is concerned, a lack of adequate firefighting systems, lack of training, or lack of procedural guidance from owner or carriers to the crew. Cargo owners are also likely to be successful in claiming against a shipowner where it is shown that the shipowner or carrier failed to correctly stow dangerous or hazardous cargo (provided that such cargo was correctly declared) in accordance with IMDG guidelines. In the event a shipowner can rely on a “fire defence”, the cargo owner (or their insurers) may be left with a recovery action against the shipper of the miss declared cargo. However, this often involves expensive litigation in a foreign jurisdiction where the “guilty” shipper may be a brass plate company without any assets to satisfy millions of dollars worth of damages to the ship and her cargo and let alone the environmental aftermath. This means that the insurer may be liable, and the affected party could claim compensation from the shipowner.
From the brief facts at hand, it appears to be a total loss for the shipowner even if the vessel stays afloat with what appears to be, if not all, of the cargo, damaged. Although there is much uncertainty over the size of the loss, it is safe to assume that insurers will face cargo and liability claims and the value of the hull and machinery. The value of these claims have not yet been made known. It is highly possible for the fire and explosion losses to be covered under cargo insurance policies among various companies which are party to it. The London Steam Ship Owners Mutual Insurance Association Ltd and its subsidiary, the London P&I Insurance Company (Europe) Ltd, in a press statement on May 26, 2021, stated that as the “liability insurer, it would cover crew injuries and any environmental impact.” A study of previous cases of similar nature indicates that a vessel sinking in deep water perhaps is a better outcome for the insurer than saving it and bringing it back to port with the heavy cleanup costs incurred. Perhaps in this current scenario, the P&I insurer could end up covering the cargo and salvage costs.
The environmental impact of the fire could have a significant bearing on the size of the P&I claim leading to potentially hundreds of millions, as previous cases have shown us. It is well to keep in mind that while the owners of the ship are maybe accountable for bringing the ship to the territorial waters, the local authorities themselves may have a share in their contribution by their bad choice of actions. It is highly questionable whether adequate compensation could be secured given the larger environmental impact (an impact which may be seen beyond the limitation period for such claims to be brought) under the existing lacuna in the local law. Hence, the importance of the forum state to take on such a mammoth legal action against the parties possibly raises the issues of whether recourse should be made to an international maritime arbitration tribunal permitting contractual arrangements.
The second issue to be addressed is whether a special legal regime in the nature of strict liability is needed to cover the irreparable damage caused to the Sri Lankan Sea, marine lives, including the coral reefs and the fisheries industry. There is now an additional danger that fuel tanks of the stricken vessel containing thousands of tons of thick bunker oil could break up under the pressure of the seawater and discharge its deadly cargo into the ocean. The Wildlife Conservation Department of Sri Lanka states that apart from the fish species, the harm done to seagrasses and nesting habitats, sea mammals, and reptiles will also be substantial and that their “initial observations reveal the spill-over effect will last for more than 100 years.” The illustration of the Exxon Valdez’s incident in 1989 and the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 indicates that the oil spill is a severe threat to the maritime environment. A review of this incident may be a good reference to seek a fair understanding of the circumstances and for proper estimation and preparation in encountering massive oil spills.
The harm caused by many environmental incidents are not only contained within the borders of the states, but pollution originating from one state may cause harm to another state. And pollution which damages the Oceans does not belong to one state alone. This type of harm raises a number of acute legal conundrums. Establishing causal connections between effects such as damage to marine life or extinction of species and a particular source of pollution, which could be targeted by a system of liability and compensation rules, may be extremely difficult. In the absence of intergovernmental compensation regimes or where individual states seek compensation for cross border pollution, claims must be made in domestic courts. In such situations, the importance of conflict of laws rules about jurisdiction, choice of law, and recognition of judgments matters. One could plausibly conclude that X-Press Pearl too may find its unfortunate place in legal history for the colossal task it has presented of assessing harm to the environment caused in a line of container ship losses in the maritime insurance industry.
(The writer is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Multimedia University. Malaysia and was the Dean of the Faculty of Law from 2014-2016 and 2018-2021.)
Features
World apart in time and space, they stood apart for honesty and high conduct
Jimmy Carter & Manmohan Singh:
by Rajan Philips
Jimmy Carter, the 39th US President, died on Sunday, December 29, at the ripe old age of 100 years, in Plains, a small, rural town in Georgia, where he was born and lived his pre and post political life. Three days prior and across the world, Manmohan Singh, India’s 13th Prime Minister, passed away in New Delhi. Dr. Singh was 92 years old. Carter served as President for four years from 1977 to 1981, 23 years before Manmohan Singh began his two-term tenure (2004-2014) as India’s Prime Minister.
The two leaders were in office nearly 25 years apart, and they led the world’s two largest constitutional democracies that are also culturally and historically vastly different. Yet their lives and their time in politics are remarkable for what they had in common as political leaders and what differentiated them from both their predecessors and their successors. They both had humble beginnings but went on to excel in education and professional careers before entering politics. And as political leaders, they were simple, sincere, honest and have left behind an inspiring legacy of high conduct.
Jimmy Carter was the son of a Southern Baptist peanut farmer who took over the breakeven family farm, modernized it into a profiting commercial enterprise and became a millionaire farmer. He used his new status to become active in local matters and to leap into politics calling for racial equality and tolerance predicated on his deep Christian faith. He became State Senator (1963-1967), Governor of Georgia (1971-1975), and by 1974 declared himself to be a primary candidate for Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. He was the most religious of all American presidents but always kept his religion separate from the affairs of the state.
Before taking over the family farm after his father’s death, Carter was an Electrical Engineer in the US navy and was among the early corps of officers who were trained in submarine and nuclear submarine programs. As a 28 year old Navy Lieutenant in 1952, Carter was part of a team of American nuclear reactor specialists who were despatched to Canada to deal with at the world’s first nuclear reactor meltdown at the Chalk River nuclear power station in Canada. Carter and his colleagues were lowered into the reactor vessel, taking turns of 90 second duration each to limit exposure to radiation, until they dismantled the reactor.
Jimmy Carter’s election as president in 1976 was justifiably seen as bringing closure to America’s political agony in the wake of the Watergate scandal at home and the Vietnam withdrawal that was a humbling lesson on the limits of American power abroad. Carter’s predecessors were Richard Nixon whom everyone in America wanted out of the White House, and Gerald Ford who succeeded Nixon after his involuntary resignation over Watergate. Carter was succeeded four years later by Ronald Reagan, America’s one and only actor president, who did not have any of Nixon’s political smarts but had grown by default to become the poster boy for the American right, exuding Hollywood charm embellished by scripted eloquence.
In between Nixon-Ford and Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter unfolded his one-term presidency. After losing to Ronald Reagan (who became the Republican candidate in his third try after failing badly against Nixon in 1968 and coming up close to Ford in 1976), in 1980, Jimmy Carter co-founded with his wife Rosalynn a new life of humanitarian and human rights activism that had lasted the full 44 years of his post-presidency. The institutions the Carters set up will continue long after them in Georgia and around the world in true testament to their conjugal partnership of faith, love, labour and service that lasted 77 years, well past the biblical milestone for individual human life.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of his post-presidential service is the near eradication of the scourge of guinea worm in many parts of the world purely through the systematic spread of clean living practices without the miracle of a vaccine. The Carter Centre has to-date monitored nearly 115 elections around the world and Mr. & Mrs. Carter have physically contributed to the building of homes for the homeless in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
Carter as President
A commonplace observation has been that Jimmy Carter was a successful ex-president after being a not so successful president. In fact, at the time of his defeat in 1980 the Carter presidency was seen as a failure. Fortunately for him, President Carter lived long enough to see biographers and historians revisiting his presidency and presenting it in a far more favourable light in the long sweep of history and amidst contemporary exigencies.
Carter presided over many bold initiatives – on social welfare, civil rights, diversity, resources, energy, education, and pragmatic (not ideological) deregulation. On the economy, it was Carter who started the fight against inflation and signalled his intentions in July 1979 by appointing Paul Volcker to head the Federal Reserve. Volcker was a hawkish advocate for raising interest rates, and his treatment worked as inflation that rose to 14.8% in 1980 fell to below 3% within three years. Reagan kept Volcker on the job and claimed credit for lowering the inflation.
On the external front, Carter made human rights the corner stone of his foreign policy, facilitated the Camp David Accords that cemented a lasting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, successfully negotiated the hitherto elusive Panama Canal Treaty, and established formal diplomatic relations with China and forged a personal rapport with China’s post-Mao reformist Deng Xiaoping. His Achilles’ heel proved to be the Iran hostage crisis that began in November 1979 when Iranian militants seized the US embassy in Tehran and held as many as 60 US officials hostages for 444 days.
The immediate provocation for hostage taking was the admission of the deposed Shah of Iran to the US for medical treatment. It is known that Carter only reluctantly agreed to allow the Shah to enter the US for medical treatment, and that he (Carter) had been the target of Republican and media criticism in the US for his Administration’s reluctance to support Shah against the Iranian revolution.
On the day President Carter died, The Times of Israel published a vitriolic article by Efran Fard, recounting a whole litany of contemporary criticisms of Carter’s Iranian policy. None more critical than Ronald Reagan who called Carter’s policy “a historical stain in American history.” Some history, some reading! Yet it was Reagan who once again was enabled to declare victory by the revolutionary Iranian government that chose to free the American hostages on January 20, 1981, the day Carter left office and Reagan began his presidency.
It was the Carter Administration that had negotiated the terms for releasing the hostages with Algerian mediation. But Tehran would rather have Carter defeated in the November 1980 election and Reagan elected as President. In his unfriendly obituary article, Efran Fard rekindles old dichotomies, calling the Obama presidency vis-à-vis Iran as “Carter 2”, and the Biden presidency as “Carter 3.” He ends his piece with the wish that Carter’s death “will mark the end of these misguided policies,” and the assertion that “the world first faced the rise of Islamic radicalism during Carter’s era, and the battle against terrorism continues to this day.”
Fard’s article makes no mention of Trump who ended Obama’s ‘Carter 2’ and is now set to deal with Biden’s ‘Carter 3.’ Trump was a fierce critic of Carter during the campaign for the November election, mockingly comparing the rise of inflation under Carter then and under Biden now, as well as taking Carter to task for the Panama Canal agreement he signed. Unlike Fard, however, Trump has been gracious about Carter after his death, offering Carter his “highest respect,” and is planning to attend the state funeral for Carter that President Biden has ordered.
Before the November presidential election, President Carter has made it known that he would cast his vote for Kamala Harris in spite of his physical condition. His death during the last days of the Biden presidency gives Democrats the chance to celebrate Carter’s life and relinquish office on a high moral note. Truth be told, the positions that Trump is articulating now – on inflation, immigration, abortion, education, the environment, and foreign policy including the Panama Canal Treaty – are all echoes of the positions articulated by Ronald Reagan in his campaign against Jimmy Carter.
Reagan was certainly far less coarse and far more charming than Trump. There is nothing compassionate about Trump and he never pretends to be what he is not. And Carter did not have to pretend that he was compassionate about others. That was his nature and nurtured it to perfection to the very end. His long tenure as ex-president makes him almost impossible to be emulated by any presidential aspirant. But he will remain the lodestar of American politics, exemplifying the power of a positive example and not the example of power.
(To be continued)
Features
Gaddafi’s armed bodyguards create a scene at the Non-Aligned Conference
(Excerpted from the autobiography of MDD Peiris, Secretary to the Prime Minister)
I shall not deal with the day to day work of the Non-Aligned Conference in plenary sessions and in committees and the substantive issues that were discussed and debated. I was not directly involved in these aspects, and there would be others more competent than I to write about such matters. My job was one of co-ordination, troubleshooting, and the prevention or resolution of any issue that could mar the proceedings of the conference.
Additionally, I had to schedule the large number of one on one meetings between the Prime Minister and Heads of State and Government, Foreign Ministers and other Heads of Delegations, and sit in at many of these. I had already referred to the able team that assisted me in these matters.
At 8 p.m. on August 16′ was the dinner hosted by the Prime Minister to the Heads of State and Government and other distinguished guests, which included the Secretary General of the UN Kurt Waldheim and Mrs. Waldheim, at the Hotel Lanka Oberoi. Some 240 guests sat for dinner, including Cabinet Ministers and Senior Officials. Given the issues involving protocol, geopolitics and other sensitivities, drawing up a table plan for such a large number of distinguished personalities was extremely complex and difficult.
This was nevertheless, attended to with great distinction by Mr. M.M. Weerasena, who functioned as Social Secretary in the Prime Minister’s office. Mr. Weerasena has had long experience of these matters in the Prime Minister’s office and did an excellent job. Manel (Abeysekera), the Chief of Protocol and I were consulted, and the Prime Minister shown the draft table plan. There was very little to alter, due to the experience and ability of Mr. Weerasena.
The Summit continued its work on the 17th and 18th of August. On the 17th, while the Plenary Sessions were going on and the Heads of State and Government delivering their addresses, a couple of senior police officers, who were part of a group covering the main hall, came to me and breathlessly said that there was a problem. Two of President Gaddafi’s security men who were outside, had suddenly barged in and entered the main hall. The officers thought they were armed.
They wanted to know what to do, and whether they were to eject them. This was no time for lengthy deliberation. Something clearly had to be done, and fast, and one had to take the consequence of that decision. I therefore told them that the Plenary session could not be disturbed. It could turn out to be a major incident, where subsequent headlines would be about the incident and not the conference.
Forcible ejection was not an option. It could be very dangerous, if they were armed. One could not contemplate a shoot-out in the hall where Heads of State and Government, Foreign Ministers and others were seated. Under these circumstances, I told them that the best thing to do was for two or three of our security people to stand by the side of each of them, fully alert and watchful until the Plenary session was over.
I also told them, that what had happened constituted a serious lapse, and that it must never happen again. They were thankful for my advice, and acted accordingly. I myself spent a very tense period of time until the Plenary session was over. Mercifully nothing happened. Our security people also learned from the experience. They seemed to be different people and were ruthlessly tough thereafter.
Both on the 17th and 18th August, I could not reach home till well past 3 a.m. The 19th was the final day of the summit, which finally ended at 1.30 a.m. Afterwards, the Prime Minister took us to the restaurant for a snack. Shirley Amerasinghe, Neville Kanekeratne, Elmo Seneviratne, Susantha de Alwis, Kathirimalainathan and others were there. All our tensions and pent up feelings were relieved in conversation which attracted lots of good humour and laughter. By this time, however, everyone was exhausted. The momentum of events had kept us going and now we legitimately felt very tired and could admit to it. But there was follow up work to be done, and among other matters, was a call by the Prime Minister on President Tito and his wife on board his ship the next day. According to her wishes, Minister Felix Dias Bandaranaike and I accompanied her. The President was in a jovial mood and happy with the progress of the Summit. We discussed the main issues addressed by the Summit and what the Prime Minister should stress, when she addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, later in September. The President and wife were also very hospitable, and regaled us with food and drink. Serious and important issues were discussed, but in a light hearted tone and manner.
Visit to the UN, Britain and Norway
1976 was a year of travel, although I did not travel with the Prime Minister every time. She decided who would go with her on each visit out of the country. For instance, I did not attend a single conference of Commonwealth Heads of State or Government, during my entire period of seven years as Secretary to the Prime Minister. For those meetings, among others, she took along the Foreign Secretary.
I also did not accompany her on her visits to some countries. On those occasions, my job was to act for the Secretary Ministry of Defence and Foreign Affairs, in addition to my own duties. The Prime Minister as the recently elected Chairman of the Non-aligned Movement, had now the duty and the responsibility of addressing the new General Assembly sessions of the United Nations in New York in September and laying before them the main issues and the conclusions of the Fifth Summit Conference of Non-aligned Heads of State and Government.
During this visit, she intended to be in Britain for a few days, where she was going to meet the British Prime Minister. There was also a short state visit to Norway on her schedule. I was part of this delegation. Mackie Ratwatte, her Private Secretary and Sunethra, her elder daughter and Coordinating Secretary were the other members. Superintendent of Police Lucky Kodituwakku left for New York earlier in order to co-ordinate security arrangements there, and Captain Lankatillake of the Army accompanied the Prime Minister, as security officer.
Mr. Leelananda de Silva was to join us in New York, where the Prime Minister also had the services of two outstanding diplomats in Ambassador Shirley Amerasinghe and Neville Kanekeratne, the first, our Permanent Representative at the UN and the second, our Ambassador to the USA. Elmo Seneviratne, a senior and experienced officer of our Foreign Service was working in our mission in New York at this time. and we were fortunate to have at our disposal his wide experience as well.
Features
A statesman and his stance on the merits, if any, of British colonialism
I overcame the thought it was inauspicious to write about a death as Nan’s first column for the New Year. But it is a tribute to a great man and a life lived well and successfully, turning a huge country from economic depression to prosperity. Hence, presenting an inspiring human beacon to be followed to our country, now struggling to get out of economic difficulties with new leaders at the helm, is good. May there emerge statesmen from among them (of either gender) in the year 2025 and after.
Thirteenth PM of India Manmohan Singh
was born on September 26, 1932, to a Sikh trading family in Gah in the Punjab, which area fell within what is now Pakistan. His mother died when he was very young and he was brought up by his paternal grandmother. They moved during Partition in 1947 to Haldwani. His grandfather was brutally killed which traumatized him for life and thus his refusal to invitations to visit his birthplace.
He started his education in Urdu and Punjabi in a local school and then in a government primary school where he continued studies in the Urdu medium. When he was 10, the family moved to Peshawar and he entered a high school. Even as PM he wrote his Hindi speeches in Urdu script. In 1948 the family relocated to Amritsar where Singh attended Hindu College and later the Punjabi University reading economics for his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1952 and ‘54. Joining St John’s College, University of Cambridge, he earned his Economics Tripos in 1957. In 1962 he earned his DPhil from Nuffield College, University of Oxford. The same university awarded him an honorary degree in 2005.
Career
Singh worked for the United Nations during 1966 to 1969. A friend of mine said he knew Singh very well and noted he was a thorough gentleman. He also said that Singh admired and worked with Gamani Corea. He was then hired as an advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and thus served the government of India during the 1970s and 80s holding the prestigious posts of Chief Economic Advisor, Governor of the Reserve Bank (1982-8) and head of the Planning Commission (1985-87) ; these posts under Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, Moraji Desai and Rajiv Gandhi.
In 1991 as India faced a severe economic crisis, the newly elected PM, P V Narasimha Rao, co-opted the apolitical Manmohan Singh to the Cabinet as finance minister. He introduced many reforms and liberalized India’s economy, albeit against protest and sharp criticism. He turned India around and became an internationally recognized economist. However, Congress fared poorly in the 1996 election and Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Janata Party became PM, 1998-2004. Manmohan Singh however, was now fully in politics, and was elected leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
In 2004, the Congress Party leading the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power. Its chairperson, Sonia Gandhi declined the prime ministry and the office went to Singh. Many progressive steps, mainly to help the rural poor, were taken; so also the Right to Information Act was passed. In 2008, opposition to a historic civil nuclear agreement with the US nearly caused the collapse of Singh’s government. A year later BRICS, probably the brainchild of Manmohan Singh, was established with India as a founding member. India’s economy grew rapidly.
In the 2009 election the UPA won more seats and Manmohan Singh was again PM, the only PM alongside Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected consecutively for a second five-year term. . He opted out when his term ended in 2014. Corruption had sprouted and he would have none of it. He was never a member of the Lok Sabha, but served in the Rajya Sabha for 33 years representing the state of Assam from 1991 to 2019 and Rajasthan from 2019 to 2024.
He is cited as Indian politician, economist, academic and bureaucrat who was the fourth longest serving PM after Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi; and the first Sikh to hold the post. The message conveyed during the state funeral given him on December 27 was that he was popular and greatly revered in India and recognized internationally as an economist and statesman. He leaves his wife and three daughters and their families.
The eldest daughter Upinder is history professor and Dean of a Faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana; also author and winner of the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences. Second, Daman, author, wrote a biography of her parents. The third Amrit is a well-known HR lawyer and Professor at Stanford Law School. The funeral pyre was set ablaze by Upinder Singh, Sikh rules not recognizing gender bias.
Dr Singh on colonialism
My friend mentioned earlier, retired Ceylonese government servant and then having worked for the UN, told me that Manmohan Singh had made an address in Oxford University touching on colonialism. Sashi Tharoor, invited by the Oxford Union as commentator at a debate on British colonialism, made scathing accusations against the British Raj and pronounced that colonialism was all evil. I listened to it and did not agree. My friend and I see more good than bad in British colonialism in Ceylon, admittedly much milder than what the British Raj did in India. Thus my search for Dr Singh’s address. What I retrieved was his acceptance speech when Oxford Union awarded him an honorary doctorate on July 8, 2005.
Excerpts from Dr Singh’s address at Oxford University
“There is no doubt that our grievance against the British Empire had a sound basis. As the painstaking statistical work of Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India’s share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700 (Europe at 23.3%) to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed at the beginning of the 20th century, ‘The brightest jewel in the British Crown’ was the poorest country in the world…” but he pointed out that despite the economic impact of colonial rule “the relationship between individual Indians and Britons, was relaxed, and I may even say, benign.”
To substantiate this he quotes the Mahatma who was in Britain for the Round Table Conference in 1931. When asked whether he would cut off from the Empire, he replied: “From the Empire completely, from the British nation not at all, for I want India to gain and not grieve. It must be a partnership on equal terms.” Nehru too had been of like opinion. He urged the Indian Constituent Assembly in 1949 to vote for India’s membership in the Commonwealth. “I wanted the world to see that India did not lack faith in herself and that India was prepared to co-operate even with those with whom she had been fighting. We have to wash out the past with all its evil”
Dr Singh listed the positive side of colonialism thus: “What impelled Mahatma to take such a positive view of Britain and the British people even as he challenged the Empire and colonial rule, was undoubtedly his recognition of the element of fair play that characterized so much of the ways of the British in India.”
He continued with his own opinion. “Today, with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Minister to assert that India’s experience with Britain had its beneficial consequences too. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories have all been fashioned in the crucible where an age-old civilization of India met the dominant Empire of the day. These are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served our country exceedingly well. … Our Constitution remains a testimony to the enduring interplay between what is essentially Indian and what is very British in our intellectual heritage…. The ideas of India as enshrined in our Constitution… has deep roots in India’s ancient culture and civilization. However, it is undeniable that the founding fathers of our Republic were also greatly influenced by the ideas associated with the age of enlightenment in Europe. The idea of India as an inclusive and plural society draws on both these traditions. … Both Britain and India have learnt from each other and have much to teach the world. This is perhaps the most enduring aspect of the Indo-British encounter.
“It used to be said the sun never sets on the British Empire. I am afraid we were partly responsible for sending that adage out of fashion! But if there is one phenomenon on which the sun cannot set, it is the world of the English speaking people, of which the people of Indian origin are the single largest component. Of all the legacies of the Raj, none is more important than the English language and the modern school system. That is of course if you leave out cricket!” He mentions that English of India is different in pronunciation and syntax from British English “but nevertheless, English has been enriched by Indian creativity as well, and we have given you back R K Narayan and Salman Rushdie. Today, English in India is seen as just another Indian language.”
Dr Singh ended his all encompassing address on a nostalgic and humane note: “I always come back to the city of dreaming spires and of lost causes as a student. Mr Chancellor, I am here this time in all humility as the representative of a great nation and a great people. I am beholden to you and to my old university for the honour that I have received today.”
-
Features5 days ago
The recovery has begun
-
Business6 days ago
Sri Lanka budget deficit decreased by Rs. 487 bn in first 10 months of 2024
-
News6 days ago
Sita Ratwatte passes away
-
Business6 days ago
Digital marketing in high gear to increase tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka
-
Editorial6 days ago
Flashbacks to war
-
Features4 days ago
AKD faces challenging year ahead
-
Editorial5 days ago
Bashing bureaucrats
-
News5 days ago
FM circular violated, Rs. 4 bn paid to CPC workers