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Two admirable Women of Nerve

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Leelananda de Silva lent me the copy of Nerve he had been gift-posted by one of the book’s authors with the inscription ‘To Leelananda and Rukmal: two people who have known me from the time I was a child! For your love and support – Thank you!’ signed Indira, dated Sept 2021.

Martha Piper and Indira Samarasekera authored this book titled Nerve – lessons on leadership from two women who went first published by ECW Press, Toronto, in 2021. It carries a Foreword of three pages by The Right Hon Kim Campbell, 19th Prime Minister of Canada. (Avril Phaedra Douglas ‘Kim’ Campbell QC, was PM from June to November 1993, and is politician, diplomat, lawyer and writer, only woman PM of Canada so far). 297 pages of text are followed by fairly extensive Notes and Index. It is a truly wonderful book containing loads of advice to women of all ages – mainly career women. They differentiate between men’s and women’s attitudes in going far and forward in careers; present general opinions on various issues while quoting from what has been said and written about such issues. Much autobiographical details of both Piper and Indira delightfully personalize the book and ensure avid reading. Style of writing too contributes to this plus factor of the book.

Martha C Piper, Canadian academic and administrator, was 11th President and Vice Chancellor of the University of British Columbia from 1997 to 2006 and innovatively guided the university to be one of the best. She was the first woman President of UBC.

Indira Samarasekera was on the Faculty of the university and was nominated by Martha to the post of Vice President /Research. She considers Martha to be one of her chief mentors. From UBC she moved to the University of Alberta as 12th President and Vice Chancellor in 2005. In 2015 she left her post but has served on several prestigious committees and boards.

The book – Introduction

The Introduction, written by both authors we presume, starts with the sentence “Women are notoriously ambivalent when it comes to leadership. They often ask us ‘Should I seek or accept this leadership opportunity or should I forego it?’” The authors then proceed to clarify what they have to say. “. …for women there is a recurring thread connecting these three phases of leadership: nerve – developing your nerve to lead, drawing upon your nerve when leading and finding the nerve to reinvent yourself when you no longer are leading. Nerve is the personal attribute that we believe is not only required to lead but also is often missing in women… Nerve to be true to yourself, nerve to take a path less traveled; nerve to go first, nerve to act decisively, nerve to redefine yourself.” Toward the end of the Intro they write: “We propose that nerve not only needs to be acknowledged but also actively cultivated by woman leaders. Without nerve, women worry about being liked and keeping everyone happy. Without nerve, women are prone to avoiding the tough decisions and to forgoing their principles in the face of adversity.”

The final paragraph clearly sums up their intention and aim in collaborating on authorship. “This book is a reflection on leadership, how it differs for women and men and what it takes for women to excel as leaders. It is also part memoir… It is our hope that by sharing our experiences as women leaders who went first, we will encourage the next generation of women to find the nerve to step up and lead with confidence, strength and conviction.”

Format

Martha and Indira have adopted a unique style of arrangement of the text. It is in three parts under the titles; Developing the nerve to lead; Leading with nerve and Life after leading: the nerve to redefine yourself. Each of these is sub-sectioned to chapters; Part 1 having 5, Part 2 and 3, 6 chapters each; all sequentially numbered 1 to 16. In each chapter you get a general section: opinion of both etc. Then each tells the relevant section of her life under subtitles Piper, Samarasekera. This scheme is often repeated in each chapter. Finally is a Lessons Learned section, which carries guidance, directly and indirectly.

Content matter is excellent and completely relevant to the stated aim of the authors – to help women to develop sufficient nerve to progress and reach heights not only in their careers but in life and living too. The most outstanding fact is that they don’t make taking career risks and going forward easy or simple. They deal with risks and throughout the book compare men and women in their attitudes, ease of upward mobility (no ease but difficult all the way for women). They instruct too but certainly not as prideful women who succeeded through brains, experience and qualifications, and having plenty of nerve of course, but as two women with attendant frailties, admittedly far less in them than in most women.

To me, now past going up the hierarchical ladder of career success and all that, the autobiographical sections were most eagerly read and appreciated. They reveal trials and tribulations met and crossed; obstacles over-reached and worries overcome; never mentioning their superior natural attributes. Career development and raising and caring for families and support of husbands go hand in hand. However, they do admit to serendipity shedding winning surprises. Martha Piper had and is in a very happy marriage with two children. Indira had marital problems through insidious incompatibility though on the surface her husband and she – brainy, academically qualified persons – seemed ideally suited to each other. She truthfully tells us how she made a trip to Sri Lanka to consult her parents and grandmother when contemplating divorce; the father advised giving preference to personal and career advancement; her grandma hinted an unhappy marriage was not worth continuing. But not by even one sentence does Indira blame her husband or belittle him. Fortunately their divorce was amicable and they continue to maintain strong family ties as parents with their two children and their families.

The authors make clear distinction between issues, terms and of course men and women in careers and life. For example in Part I the terms ‘mentor’ and ‘sponsor’ are clearly explained and demarcated.

Each chapter is prefaced with a quotation. I personally love quotations. Those in the book are culled from various sources ranging from William Shakespeare, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henrik Ibsen, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Jobs, Bill Clinton and several others.

Style of writing

The manner in which they write is excellent and thus makes for eager, absorbed reading. It is conversational, never pedantic or ‘written from above’. Though vocabulary of both is extensive, the use of the correct word or term does not deter a near beginner-of-understanding- English, to read with full understanding. Many instances of using standard expressions (I avoid the word clichés) enrich the language. Examples abound: “The feminine revolution was in full swing”; “I was over the moon.”

In their Lessons Learnt sections in each chapter they advice but with not even a trace of preaching or indicating they had no issues to struggle against. They don’t really write from a distance but speak one to one, like older and more experienced sisters speaking to younger ones.

Both authors make much of the term serendipity, particularly Indira whose entire future career materialized from a chance meeting with a friend of a friend of her father’s. The most used word in the book is ‘nerve’. Not very far behind is ‘serendipity’.

The Sri Lankan author

You can read plenty on Indira Samarasekera in Internet. I will briefly sketch her bio. Born in Colombo on April 11, 1952, to ENT specialist father – Dr A C Arulpragasam, she was the first of four siblings. Her great-grandfather is Dr S C Paul, first Ceylonese surgeon practicing in Ceylon. The family moved to London when her father went over for further qualifications. She was three years old and loved school there. In 1958, on return to Ceylon they were confronted with racial turmoil and shifted to Jaffna. She schooled at Chundukuli briefly and then went to Vembadi Girls’ School; in 1973 moved to Ladies’ College, Colombo.

She excelled in math and physics and entered the Engineering Faculty, University of Moratuwa and graduated brilliantly. Winning a Fulbright Scholarship she moved to Davies, University of California, now married at 23 to co-doctorate student “Sam” Samarasekera. She met a friend of a friend of her father’s who invited the couple to Canada assuring Sam employment. This meeting they almost missed saying they were too busy to go out for lunch. She studied metallurgy, and did ground breaking research in steel. I need not say she reached the pinnacle of academia; it’s obvious from the little I have written. She is a grandmother now, ‘reinvented’ with nerve.

The two authors selected to quote Kamala Harris in their concluding chapter: “While I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last.” Their example and advice is to those others and all women. Nerve is a must read, particularly by our career conscious girls and women, not only because it is most interesting and instructional but because one of the authors – a brilliantly successful woman – is one of our own.



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The Truth will set us free – I

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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.)

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Four-day work week; too much rigidity; respectful farewell  

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Large crowds attracted by the Dalada Vandana in Kandy. (Image Courtesy Hiru News)

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.

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Kashmir terror attack underscores need for South Asian stability and amity

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Security forces in India-administered Kashmir following the recent terror attack on tourists.

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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