Features
The founding of Buddhist Ladies College
Excerpted from Chosen Ground: The Clara Motwani saga
by Goolbai Gunasekera
When Mother left Musaeus College, it was again because of her displeasure over the Board’s reaction to her dictates. Each side believed the other to be wrong. The story was this.A young girl of the Southern Province had repulsed a night-time intruder by slashing him and almost killing him, (or perhaps she actually did kill him) with a sword which happened to be owned by her father. She became quite a heroine. Those were the days of total non-violence, and the newspapers played up the incident for about a week. When the ‘heroine’ was asked what she would like in recognition of her bravery, she replied that it was her ambition to study at Musaeus College. The School Board decided to grant her request.
She was brought to Colombo by the Manager of the school (who was then Chief Justice of Ceylon, Mr. Hema Basnayake), and eventually sent to the Hostel. She proved to be an abysmal student and never fitted into the atmosphere of Musaeus. After two years of trying to do something with her, Mother felt it was time she left. Accordingly, she sent her back to Mr. Basnayake’s home. He promptly returned her to the hostel.
Feeling that her authority had been flouted in a tactless and arbitrary manner, Mother took issue with the Board. There was no question on whose banner victory would perch, and Mother was asked to leave. She was not given the option of resigning, and I have often wondered what could have caused seemingly educated men to behave so unceremoniously towards a person as gentle as Mother.
Of course it would be foolish to assume that this minor disagreement caused her dismissal. It was actually the straw that broke the camel’s back. Disagreement had been simmering for quite a while. Mother did not enjoy having the Board breathing down her neck at all times and countermanding orders which she felt were necessary to give.
The inability of the School Board to deal with strong Principals was noticed a few years after Mother left when yet another highly popular Principal, Mrs. Dulcie de Silva, was arbitrarily sacked . Dulcie did not accept her unfair dismissal gracefully. She fought back.
Su and I felt that Mother’s American attitudes did not work in her favour when dealing with Asian men who expected a docility from women which Mother just did not have. As far as personal relationships went Mother was totally non-combative, but in school she could be almost authoritarian. She could have got whatever she wanted had she approached the gentlemen of the Board in the customary oblique fashion of Sri Lankan ladies. Her American directness was not a quality those in authority over her appreciated.
Mother’s dismissal caused a reaction that the Musaeus College Board had not foreseen: the entire school went on strike. It made headline news in the papers. Reading of these exciting goings-on, Mr. Mohandas de Mel, an affluent lawyer from Avissawella, decided the time was ripe to fulfil a dream of his own. He got in touch with Mother – and a new school was born.
It was April when Mother ended her days as Principal of Musaeus. In May of the same year, Buddhist Ladies’ College opened. I was away in University at the time but I was told that BLC, the new, fledgling school, opened with nearly 400 girls on the Registers while Musaeus had an extremely depleted student body for a short while.
There was scarcely a hiccup between Mother’s leaving Musaeus one month, and beginning a brand-new school the very next month. It was a time of frenzied activity and excitement. Buildings had to be bought, furniture ordered, the entire hostel organized and playing fields got ready. The fact that everything was ready in a country like ours, where ‘tomorrow’ is an accepted norm of work, says much for the energy of Mr. de Mel and Mother.
But there was another factor – an unexpected factor – that played an important part in the founding of this new school. Upon Mother’s summary dismissal, outraged parents with children at Musaeus voiced their protests, but to no avail. Several hundred students camped in front of the home of the Manager, Mr. Basnayake, whereupon he locked the door on them, refusing to change his decree.
Parents then took the drastic step of removing their children from a well-established school to install them in a new and untried school of which Mother was the Head. The parental trust in Mother that was evidenced in this way was almost humbling to her. Certainly she was touched to the heart. Teachers followed suit: they gave up regular jobs without even seeing their new contracts, such was the affection and confidence Mother inspired.
Mr. Gunasena de Zoysa, civil servant and later Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Britain, was a parent whose daughter, Ranji, was thus transferred. Srikanthi Salgado, daughter of the Director of the Coconut Research Institute, was similarly transferred. Musaeus opened the following term with one eighth of its former student strength. Children were removed from Musaeus overnight. Sunila, wife of Tilak de Zoysa, Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Associated Motor Ways (AMW), says she remembers her father scooping her out of bed in the Musaeus hostel, saying: “You are going to Mrs. Motwani’s new school!”
For this mass withdrawal of students from Musaeus, the Head Girl of that school, Lalitha Thilakasena (now Gunawardena, and also a professor at one of one of the Sri Lankan universities) was responsible. She spoke so persuasively at meetings of the parents and students that she pretty much led the cross-over. Mother was unaware of all these meetings and organized protests until the shifting student population began registering at Buddhist Ladies’ College. Naturally, Lalitha continued her Head Girlship in the new school without a break, and entered the University of Ceylon at Peradeniya in a blaze of glory.
To the fury of the Musaeus Board of that era, Buddhist Ladies’ was a full blown school from day one. Thankfully, attitudes have since changed. Today’s Chairman, Mr. Ajitha de Zoysa, has no recollection of that time at all – hardly surprising, since he must have been barely out of diapers himself!
So life at BLC began…
One incident springs to mind. Just round the corner from BLC was ‘Bake House’ a popular bakery that had the creamiest eclairs and the softest bread to be found in Colombo. Hostellers of schools were not allowed to go outside the school unaccompanied, so no one would dream of asking if they could run up the road for an ice cream at Bake House. As far as Mother was aware, no one in the school boarding would dare to ask permission for such an unlikely jaunt.
One evening, the Prefects of the school decided that they would really live life on the edge. They planned to visit ‘Bake House’, timing their expedition for an evening when Mrs. Blake, the Hostel Matron, had her weekly day off, and Mother had left the school for home. Feeling terribly adventurous, the group had a great time. They ate all they possibly could, and got back to the hostel over a conveniently low section of the surrounding wall. Alack and alas, they were spotted by a neighbour who decided to alert Mother.
The next day Mother summoned her Head Girl, one of BLC’s most popular senior Prefects, Janeswari Wijesekera.
“Janeswari,” she said while Janeswari trembled, “is what I hear true?”
“No, Mrs. Motwani,” Janeswari replied, but she looked so guilty that Mother needed no further evidence.Mother looked Janeswari straight in the eye.
“If you tell me you did not break out of the hostel last night,” she said, “I will believe you, and I will drop the matter.”
Quaking, Janeswari gave her word that she and the other Prefects had been safely within the enveloping wall of BLC all evening. Mother let her go.
For the rest of the day and the whole of the next, Janeswari was the sorriest being ever to walk the corridors of BLC. Finally she could bear it no longer. On the third day, she was waiting in Mother’s office to confess. Pleased that her faith in Janeswari had been vindicated, Mother said no more about the matter to anyone outside the Prefect body, but to this day Janeswari and the Prefects remember what Mother said to them that day.
“I tried never to lie about things like that again,” she told me recently.
The morale of the new school was high, and a spirit of closeness and camaraderie pervaded it that touched the entire student and teacher body. There was a kind of pioneering air about the whole experience, which I personally found quite heady when I returned from University two years later to be a teacher myself in Mother’s new school.
The founding of BLC is something that those who were actually the pioneering teachers and students of the school never forgot. Years later, in far away America, I would meet middle-aged ladies who would say to me with a distant look in their eyes and pride in their voices;
“I was one of those who crossed over with Mrs. Motwani.”
Mother now set about turning this new school into as fine an institution as she could. Mr. de Mel had leased “Calverly”, a large property belonging to the Virasinghe family. Classrooms were soon built, and Mother began the Lady Irwin Home Science course, which was a usual feature of any school she happened to be heading.
The Buddhist Ladies’ hostel was governed with a stern but extremely kind hand. Mrs. Blake, a smart and highly efficient Matron, came to Mother at a time when she was most needed.
“I really do not know how I could have managed without her,” Mother used to say.The boarders had a great time, with Matron turning a blind eye to midnight feasts and all the other things hostelers dream up during the day.
Sriya Radalgoda, a former pupil of Musaeus, was Mother’s secretary at BLC, and had the responsibility of dealing with correspondence in the new school. She spent many agonized moments trying to comprehend Mother’s tendency to elide certain vowels. ‘Turret Road’, for instance, became ‘Trrt Road’, and poor Sriya had not the vaguest idea what Mother meant. She came to me for clarification.
“Just add vowels of your own and you’ll be just fine,” I told her, and presumably she managed.
Since Su had opted to go to Lady Irwin for her Home Science degree, Mother was able to keep an eye on her doings in New Delhi. Examiners were coming out annually to Sri Lanka from Lady Irwin College, to check the course work of the BLC entrants and also to hold the Home Science exams. Su was not happy with this personal relationship her mother had with her university.
Su collected boyfriends as some people collect books. She always managed to come up smelling of roses even when two hot-headed Arab students tried to scale the walls at Lady Irwin one memorable night, in the hope of seeing her. Su just disclaimed all knowledge of them and their questionable passion, although she privately told me, her envious sister, that the young men in question were ‘absolutely cute’. They were deported by the way.
At Lady Irwin with Su were several other Sri Lankans. One was Vinita Warasuvitharna (now Gunaratne) a shining light of the College, and Chitra Kanadavanam, with whom I have lost touch.
On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, Su’s luck deserted her. As usual she got into trouble over some young man. My parents heard about it and made agitated calls to Sir Richard Aluvihare, our High Commissioner in Delhi. Poor Sir Richard had no idea that Father expected him to keep a beady eye on Su. The earlier High Commissioner, Sir Edwin Wijeyaratne, was a friend of the family, and his wife often had Su over for tea. Su spoke beautiful Sinhala and Lady Wijeyaratne enjoyed talking to her. She would send glowing reports to Father on Su’s progress though, how she knew what was happening at Lady Irwin was obviously what Su felt was on a need-to-know basis only.
Su was finally returned to the bosom of her enraged family as insouciant as always and quite impenitent.
“What can I do if I’m pretty, and boys like me?” she asked airily.
Father was speechless. Mother was more understanding with her independent and unconventional daughter.
At BLC, I began my own teaching career. Armed with a brand-new degree, I thought I knew all there was to know about teaching. Mother disabused me of that idea soon enough. Truth to tell, I could not have had a better start to what eventually became a full-time career for me. It is one of my lasting sorrows that Mother never saw the building of the Asian International School by its Founder/ Chairman, Mr. W P. Perera. She would have been so proud, and her praise would have been sweet indeed: all the more so because she had not greeted my choice of a teaching career with enthusiasm.
She expected her teachers to be like Chandra Godakumbure or Dr. Dharma Ponnusamy — dedicated, thoroughly versed in the subjects they taught, and willing to work far beyond the call of duty. She did not quite see me bathed in this rosy aura. She told me (very unenthusiastically) that she would give me a try.
“I really don’t see why you seem so doubtful, Mother. I’m a chip off the old block…..both of them,” i would boast.
“You’ll need to be more than just a chip darling. If you don’t want to incur criticism and even critical comparisons, you will need to be a fully hewn model from the old blocks.” Guardedly, she gave me a job, starting with English teaching in Grade Six.
As the daughter of the BLC Principal, I was given a far heavier timetable than my contemporaries. I was rarely allowed any medical leave. “Take an aspirin and get to school,” was all the comfort I got, even when I really did have a temperature. On the day I got engaged to my husband ‘Bunchy’, Mother graciously granted me the last two periods of the day off. I might say that in those less stressful times the average teacher got at least two days off on her engagement, and a further ten days in which to get married and go on her honeymoon.
Predictably, Mother saw to it that I married in December … a holiday month. Not only was no leave needed, but I did not need to honeymoon on school time. Finding an auspicious time for the wedding was not on Mother’s agenda.
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.
-
Business7 days agoDIMO pioneers major fleet expansion with Tata SIGNA Prime Movers for ILM
-
News6 days agoFamily discovers rare species thought to be extinct for over a century in home garden
-
Features4 days agoRuGoesWild: Taking science into the wild — and into the hearts of Sri Lankans
-
Foreign News7 days agoChina races robots against humans in Beijing half marathon
-
Editorial7 days agoSelective use of PTA
-
News4 days agoOrders under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruptions Act No. 9 of 2023 for concurrence of parliament
-
Features5 days agoNew species of Bronzeback snake, discovered in Sri Lanka
-
Features6 days agoThe ironies of history