Features
DS Senanayake, the all time great: “If he did not live, Ceylon would have been very different”
(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)
One morning in March 1952, Don Stephen Senanayake, Ceylon’s first Prime Minister, fell off the horse he was riding on the Galle Face Green in Colombo and died 33 hours later. He was in his 68th year and was probably the victim of a stroke which made him lose control of the horse. He was found laid out on the turf with his face downwards and bleeding from his nose. The nation mourned the man who had led it to independence and had made the parched lands of the Island bloom.
Those who knew Mr. Senanayake or only saw him, will recall his burly figure, infectious smile and unfailing kindness. A generation born since his death has now reached adult status. Only a few of his age group are still around. Forty eight years have elapsed since he entered upon a political career as the elected Member for Negombo in the Legislative Council. A fresh look at his life and work, 21 years after his death (when this article was written) can shed useful light on many of the problems with which the country is beset today.
The years in which Mr. Senanayake was the acknowledged national leader are important not only for his achievements in gaining independence after centuries of Colonial rule and in introducing a new dimension to agricultural development. They mark a shift in values affecting the structure of our society. Under the impact of adult franchise and free education, which came when he was Prime Minister, the outlook and expectations of the common people changed significantly and irretrievably.
He may not have spelt all this out in his own thinking. He was born in the Victorian age when, in the Colonies at any rate, the people’s wishes counted for little. Although he lived in the town, Mr. Senanayake’s heart was in the country. Political reform had no meaning for him other than as a means of providing the rural folk of the country with a new and more abundant life. He had his misgivings about foisting an inferior type of free education that took no account of the needs and conditions of the country. Nevertheless, the effect of the two changes referred to is being now felt at every level of the social and political life of the people of Ceylon.
Mr. Senanayake took up politics seriously after the riots of 1915 when several Buddhist leaders, like himself and his two brothers who were in no way connected with the disturbances, were incarcerated. The conviction was then forced on him that, until the Ceylonese became fully responsible for the Government, there was no way of preventing such abuses of power and of solving the political and economic problems of the country.
In the earlier stages of the campaign for freedom he was more a camp-follower than a pace-setter. But after he became a Member of the Legislative Council in 1924, he knew what he wanted for Ceylon and was determined to get it. After he succeeded Sir Baron Jayatilaka as Leader of the State Council, in the early stages of the last war, he had the reins in his hands. Six years of agitation and negotiation produced the desired result, namely, political independence for Sri Lanka as a member of the Commonwealth.
He grasped firmly the substance of independence, leaving it to those who came after him to do better if they could. The smug comment is sometimes heard that Ceylon gained her independence too easily. Other countries in the Colonial Empire did not get it without bloodshed, civil war and non-co-operation. Mr. Senanayake’s tactics ruled out such measures. His own warm personality helped, and confidence begat confidence. On appropriate occasions he could act on the principle that “the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.”
Summing up Mr. Senanayake’s achievement, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, said: “We of this generation, wherever we may live, have passed through this great period of transition and have seen the face of Asia change in this process. The change continues. Leading personalities in different countries become the symbols of this period of transition and thus become in some ways agents of historic destiny. In Ceylon, Don Stephen Senanayake was such a personality, who impressed himself not only in Ceylon, but on a wider sphere. He should be remembered as a person who helped about the transition to freedom and then to consolidate the freedom that had come.”
After the dusty and sometimes bitter conflicts over communal representation in the legislature had ended, Mr. Senanayake led a united people to the goal of independence. He was able to persuade the State Council, with the exception of two members who represented Indian interests and a Sinhalese ‘independent’, to accept the Soulbury Constitution which, as Sir Ivor Jennings has pointed out, was largely his Constitution.
“The belief that the Soulbury Commission produced the Constitution,” wrote Sir Ivor, “is due partly to the fact that people doubted whether Mr. Senanayake had the capacity to produce a Constitution. After all he had never passed the Matriculation. This is, however, seriously to underrate Mr. Senanayake’s intellectual capacity. Naturally he relied heavily on his advisers; any Minister who does not is bound to fail. What is more, he left insignificant detail to his advisers. Nevertheless, he had an excellent grasp of fundamental principles, and he quickly seized the essence of any problem that might become controversial.
“If after explanation he began, “As a matter of fact” or “Actually,” his advisers at once knew that something was wrong. If they were unable to convince him, they were told in the nicest possible way that they had better get away and think again. Mr. Senanayake could not have foreseen the full impact of the forces he helped to release. Those who advised him, and he himself, had an almost mystical faith in the British parliamentary system which, as we know, functions best with a homogeneous population.
“He envisaged a united people entering upon a heritage that had eluded them too long. Though he succeeded in winning over the leaders of the minorities to his way of thinking, he did not perhaps pay sufficient attention to the fears and emotions of those they represented, which fact in due course gave momentum to the formation of the Federal Party by a section of the Ceylon Tamils.
“He believed that, given a fair field and the rules of the game, the industry and inherent ability of the Tamils and other minorities would see them through in any competition. He was careful to do nothing to widen the gaps or emphasize the differences, as the following incidents demonstrate. One day a leading Buddhist layman and two influential prelates called on him. He welcomed them with his usual courtesy and listened patiently to what they had to say to him. They asked that Sinhalese should at once be made the country’s official language and Buddhism the State religion.
“He thanked them and with good grace told them that he could not consider their request until the more urgent problem of food, shelter and employment had been resolved. On another occasion a deputation of backbenchers of his party represented to him that the new industries like cement, chemicals and paper were located in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in which the Sinhalese were in a small minority. He replied that it was his responsibility to attend to the needs of all sections of the community and a united nation could be built up only by the majority being generous to the minorities.
“He was indeed the friend of all communities. Mr. S. J. V. Chelvanayagam, the leader of the Federal Party, in a tribute to Mr. Senanayake, said that “it was the personal qualities of the man that helped him to achieve so much success in the very high office that he filled in the affairs of this country. Differences of opinion did not in any way diminish my respect or regard for Mr. Senanayake. I admired the love he had for his people. He had a shining faith in their future greatness and, according to his lights, he worked for its achievement untiringly and consistently. Many a time I had wished that in the ranks to which I belonged there were to be found one like Mr. Senanayake, so consistently loyal and so full of hope and ultimate success.”
It would take a longer article than this to do justice to Mr. Senanayake’s achievements in agricultural development. He was Minister of Agriculture for the 14 years of the two State Councils. During those years he transformed the pattern of peasant agriculture. He built or restored large and small tanks, which feed several 100,000 acres, set up colonization schemes, established new towns, started research stations, promoted rural credit and co-operative marketing, encouraged extension work and sent trained men into the field to help the peasant farmer to improve his crops by the adoption of scientific methods.
As one of his colleagues in this work, Dr. R. L. Brohier has written, “he saw the necessity for improving the quality of crops, for growing a wide range of varieties to ensure balanced dietary intake, and the need for inculcating animal husbandry. He also visualized that there must be Government financial assistance for the colonist to set himself up, technical guidance and a system of easy and orderly marketing.”
Mr. Senanayake was justly proud of the progress made in agricultural development during the years when he bore the main responsibility for its direction and accomplishment. But he saw many years of work ahead. He did not talk about his achievements but rather loved to show what had been done and how it was done. On one occasion when he was needled by a Marxist critic in Parliament for spending too much on his irrigation schemes, he was compelled to say, more in sorrow than in anger, “During the
period of my Ministry, that is 14 years, I have had tanks built and natural sources tapped which will make it possible with a little development to have at least another million acres to cultivate when we have the manpower.”
He was of course a convinced anti-Marxist and did not agree that human nature could be changed by changing institutions. When in December 1947, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, had lectured him in Parliament on how the country’s agriculture should be developed, Mr. Senanayake, who had spent more years as a practical agriculturist than the life span of his critic, rejoined:
“My good friend the Member for Wellawatte-Galkissa, for whom I have the greatest admiration, is so much above his associates in intellect and all those things, that he is under the impression that there is nothing in this world that he does not know. I have a great admiration for his ability, but I wish to tell him that he does not know everything in this world. There are more things in heaven and earth than enter into his philosophy. He spoke of agriculture. That reminded me of a story that I had heard sometime ago.”
Mr. Senanayake then proceeded to relate the story. There was a farmer in the village who was suddenly afflicted by a gripe. Suffering agonies he shouted to his young son to run to the doctor and get him some medicine. The boy went to a house which had a board with the name of “Dr. So and So” on it. Meeting the doctor, the boy told him about his father’s illness and the suffering he was
undergoing. The doctor replied, “Well, I am only a veterinary surgeon, I would give a horse a pound of Epsom Salts in a bucket of water. I suggest that you give your father half that and I think it would settle his stomach ache. The next day the veterinary surgeon saw the youth and asked him how his father was faring. The boy replied, “Oh, you are a wonderful doctor. You know, even after his death he purged three times.”
“So, I would tell my veterinary friend,” added Mr. Senanayake, “that of human beings and human problems, he knows nothing. He may be a great man and a well-read person who knows a lot about Russia. But, although I do not compare myself with him, I can assure him that I know more about soil and cultivation than he knows and will ever know.”
He was a formidable debater, relying more on his experience of human nature and a native shrewdness than on dialectical prowess. The best tribute to him in this capacity was paid by Dr. N. M. Perera whose specialty is parliamentary institutions. “In a sense,” said Dr. Perera, “he filled the Council by his very presence. I have never known a man more devoted to his duty or more consistent in his attendance. He followed every debate closely. He never missed a good point, however humble the quarter from which it emanated. This was a remarkable performance for one so overburdened with the innumerable cares of office. His astuteness and shrewdness as a parliamentarian – I use the words in no
disrespectful sense – were almost uncanny.
“When one recollects his early life, this is indeed a remarkable achievement. He was quick to sense and grasp a situation while others were hesitant and groping. Others may have been more learned, but he was more knowledgeable. As a debater he was the equal of the best in the land. He may not have indulged in sonorous language, his phraseology may not have been elegant, his diction may have been imperfect, but his quick-wittedness was remarkable. Quick to pounce upon his opponent’s weak points, he knew the art of getting at the heart of a debate…. He had a remarkable capacity to understand all the things that went on in his Government. There was no Department that he did not know intimately.”
Mr. Senanayake had no difficulty in meeting people, whatever their station in life, at a human level. No townsman or villager, who went to him with a personal problem was turned away from the little downstairs room at Temple Trees where he relaxed. If the visitor had been waiting for him, he would ask Carolis, his faithful man servant and companion, to fetch him a drink, usually of orange juice, white he, himself went in to divest himself of his office clothes. The Prime Minister would sometimes cool himself by pouring water on his head, the noise of which could be heard, and he would then emerge dressed in a sarong and a singlet.
Sir John Kotalawala made a just comment when he said, “No man was too small for his attention if he had the time, and somehow he would find the time. No man who went to him can ever forget the sincerity with which he promised to look into his grievance.” When Mr. Senanayake died, an
Indian labourer on a tea estate went to his European master and said, “Aiyo, periyah manushan, mickam nalla manushan” – “Oh, he was a great man and a good man.”
He never missed the opportunity to get closer to the people – speaking to them about their crops, their children and their livestock – when he visited the colonization and village expansion schemes, which he frequently did. Relaxing in a resthouse in the evening he would chat with and inspire the young officials who accompanied him. There was never any lack of communication between him and those who worked with him and those for whose benefit they both worked.
In what I have written above, I have spoken of Mr. Senanayake as the man who led his country to freedom in what was then described by a London newspaper as “the most untroubled country in Asia,” as the pioneer of land development, builder of tanks, as parliamentarian and administrator. What impact did he make on the world outside Ceylon? On receiving the news of his death, Mr. Winston Churchill said, “The Commonwealth is the poorer without him and the wise counsel he always gave.” Mr. Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister, during whose term of office Ceylon became an independent nation said, “He was a man of great personal charm. Ceylon was extremely lucky to have had such a man to inaugurate a new era of full equality in the Commonwealth.” Sir Robert Menzies, the Prime Minister of Australia said, “D. S. Senanayake was a man of enormous breadth of vision and of singular personal attraction. He pursued his objectives – and he had a wonderful capacity for defining them precisely – with sincerity and forcefulness, yet always with a due regard for the rights and feelings of others.”
Mr. Senanayake had indeed won respect and admiration not only among his own people but far beyond these shores and he held an honoured place among the leaders of the nations. “History,” wrote Lord Soulbury, “is the impact of the individual man of mark upon his contemporaries. In short, it is the great men who make history: D. S. Senanayake was a great man and if he had not lived Ceylon would have been very different.’
(From D.S. Senanayake’s Place in the History of His Country, 1972)
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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