Three decades of a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka have left a hundred thousand dead and hundreds of thousands abused, tortured, detained, and displaced.  A hidden cost but one that runs deep is the psychological impact of this war on people in the conflict zones, particularly women and children. As regards children it is estimated that the war killed 35,000; one in every four children in conflict areas lost one or both parents; and 300,000 were displaced. Given the lack of psychosocial support systems, the wounds of war will remain unhealed and lives will continue to be destroyed even as conflict has abated.

One woman has heroically devoted her life to meeting this problem. GETHSIE SHANMUGAM had an otherwise unexceptional beginning: a member of the country’s minority Tamil community, daughter of a clerk in a British tea estate, she attended a private girls’ boarding school and chose to become a teacher and counselor.  Teaching at St. Joseph’s College in Colombo she pursued an interest in psychology and worked as a volunteer counselor at the Family Services Institute and Subodhi Institute of Integrated Education, at a time when professional psychosocial work was still in its infancy in Sri Lanka.  In 1983, after retiring from St. Joseph’s, she did psychosocial work for adults and children displaced by war in Sri Lanka’s Northern and Eastern provinces, and became more intensely involved when she worked with Save the Children Norway (SCN).

Braving bombings, searches, and threats of arrest in the conflict zones, GETHSIE crossed the Sinhalese-Tamil divide as she did counseling work, collaborated with colleagues, and trained teachers and NGO workers.  As the Tamil-speaking expert within SCN, she took a leading role in designing programs and doing research, training, and counseling in projects aimed at building capacities for psychosocial support in war-affected schools and at helping war widows, orphans, and traumatized children.

After she left SCN in 1996, she continued to be active as consultant and volunteer in organizations working with women and children suffering not only from war trauma but also domestic violence, alcoholism, and sex trafficking.  As psychosocial consultant and child rights advisor to Eastern Self-Reliant Community Organization she led in establishing a pioneering temporary home for young people victimized by abuse and in trouble with the law.  When Sri Lanka was ravaged by the horrendous 2004 tsunami, which left 31,000 confirmed dead, GETHSIE trained eighty school teachers in a government pilot program to provide a supportive environment for traumatized children. Learning various approaches and methodologies from training experiences in different countries, she experimented with small, simple ways to build psychosocial resilience adapted to local conditions and the lack of trained professionals; and actively disseminated her learnings through publications and the mass media.

Despite extreme difficulties and the challenge of balancing her work with her responsibilities to her own family, GETHSIE, even in her advanced years, has continued to work in the field, using what resources are available and working even without compensation, in her individual capacity or with organizations.  Her deepest reward, she says, is seeing children she had helped grow to become better, happy persons.

Working quietly but relentlessly, she trained hundreds of psychosocial practitioners and thousands of teachers, and helped change the lives of countless women and children.  From working one-on-one with children to building the capacity of Sri Lanka’s psychosocial sector, she is truly amma (“mother”) of her nation’s children.  Calm, wise, and self-effacing, she says, quite simply: “I did not do so much, just a drop in the ocean.  But those drops are important, and I hope there will be many more to help society grow.”

In electing GETHSIE SHANMUGAM to receive the 2017 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes her compassion and courage in working under extreme conditions to rebuild war-scarred lives, her tireless efforts over four decades in building Sri Lanka’s capacity for psychosocial support, and her deep, inspiring humanity in caring for women and children, war’s most vulnerable victims.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award affirms the spirit of humanity that endures even under the most difficult of circumstances. My work with children and adults living with war, disaster, and other hardships has shown me that even in the context of terrible violence, loss and suffering, there is always the possibility of growth, caring, and hope. Life cannot only continue despite pain and hardships, but can take on new meaning and purpose. Working in war-affected Eastern Sri Lanka in the mid-1990s, I saw how, with encouragement and assistance, children on the small tidal island of Nasivantheevu found the courage to negotiate with the warring parties to allow safe passage for the bus that took them to school, enabling access to an education that would transform their lives. I met a soldier who had lost both his legs in combat, who had thrice considered suicide, and could hardly bear to sit with a member of another ethnic group. I witnessed how, through personal contact, this young man was able to set aside his anger to care for an older woman from a community he deeply mistrusted. Working with widows suddenly thrust into new roles in a society that stigmatized them, I saw how women’s determination and hard work enabled them to overcome challenges to secure a life for themselves and their children. Whether working with children or adults, with individuals or groups, my 4 decades of experience has taught me that healing and transformation always starts with the person. For people who are in deep pain to begin to heal, it is essential for them to gain self-awareness and acceptance, which in turn shapes their capacity for healthy relationships with others or even towards themselves. This kind of personal growth is often something people overwhelmed by suffering find difficult to do for themselves, but with support and loving care from another human being, like the beautiful lotus that emerges from the mud, these people can be helped to bloom despite the pain they have experienced. As individuals, we often feel that we can’t do big things. But we can do small things. All change starts with a person. When one person becomes brighter and relates to others with genuine love, then small groups of individuals can form around them, creating small ripples of change in the world. I believe that each of us is a tool for the healing of ourselves, for the healing of others and for the healing of the societies we live in. No matter who or where we are, we can play a role in making the world a kinder and better place. This is the message that I would like to share with you all.

No one is ever truly prepared for a natural disaster. The humanitarian interventions that follow are inevitably improvised and hasty, as relief workers make urgent arrangements to provide water, food, shelter, and sanitation and to relocate the displaced survivors. Such was the case in Sri Lanka when the great tsunami of 2004 left thousands of people dead and tens of thousands homeless. But as ANANDA GALAPPATTI knows, survivors of catastrophes like this one are also burdened by shock and grief, and by fear, insecurity, depression, rage, and wrenching social problems-psychosocial consequences of trauma similar to those of war. As a young medical anthropologist, he is devoting himself to these neglected needs.

ANANDA GALAPPATTI was born thirty-three years ago in London and spent his early childhood in Sri Lanka. After attending high school in Dhaka, Bangladesh, he studied psychology at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. The Sri Lanka to which he returned in 1996 was torn by bloody civil conflicts of many years running. The following year, he assisted Dr. Gameela Samarasinghe in a psychosocial epidemiological survey of Sri Lanka’s conflict zones. This revealed that 40-65 percent of those in the affected areas displayed signs of post-traumatic stress linked to war and violence. Yet, in all Sri Lanka there were fewer than ten psychologists specializing in trauma. To help fill this gap, Galappatti and Samarasinghe formed the War Trauma & Psychosocial Support Program (PSP).

Through PSP’s capacity-building program, twenty-four-year-old GALAPPATTI trained twenty psychosocial workers to serve the towns, villages, hospital, and refugee camps of Vavuniya, a war-demoralized district six hours from Colombo, and otherwise enabled the area’s primitive psychosocial sector with skill-building seminars, new intervention strategies, and resources such as databases and procedure manuals. In Vavuniya, GALAPPATTI observed that psychological suffering cannot be separated from the real-world circumstances of its origins, including war itself and “deeply rooted political divisions.” His approach adapted lessons from Western psychology to Sri Lankan conditions and religious practices.

Then, on December 26, 2004, came the tsunami. Among the hardest hit was Batticaloa on Sri Lanka’s east coast, a district like Vavuniya already traumatized by years of war. In January 2005, GALAPPATTI joined in founding The Mangrove, a network of organizations and individuals in Batticaloa dedicated to coordinating psychosocial aspects of the relief effort. Not wanting to be a “fly-in, fly-out” expert, GALAPPATTImoved directly to Batticaloa. As The Mangrove’s volunteer coordinator, he lobbied incessantly for better psychosocial services. He liaised with local, national, and international agencies; convened meeting after meeting for aid workers and psychosocial practitioners; and briefed newly arrived aid organizations. He set up a rapid assessment system to assist children in camps, organized training workshops, and mediated quarrels between aid organizations. Constantly networking, GALAPPATTI spread word of “best practices” and warned of harmful ones. Meanwhile, he and his collaborators made countless humane interventions, insisting that women in refugee camps have private places to bathe and sleep, that anxious students have their examinations postponed, that orphans be placed with relatives or familiar caregivers, and that families be granted privacy when identifying their dead.

In time, political violence and instability in Batticaloa forced The Mangrove to scale back its work and GALAPPATTI embarked on his doctorate in Scotland. Today, with his wife and small child, he is again living and working in crisis-torn Batticaloa. Despite his Western education, his colleagues say that he “thinks and acts as a Sri Lankan,” embracing his country’s pluralism and also its dangers. As a leader, they say, “he works with the group as one of them” and “gently and firmly gets them to think and act.”

In electing ANANDA GALAPPATTI to receive the 2008 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership, the board of trustees recognizes his spirited personal commitment to bring appropriate and effective psychosocial services to survivors of war and natural disaster in Sri Lanka.

The Honorable Chief Justice, Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, distinguished guests, fellow Awardees and friends.

I used to associate the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award with the public achievements of women and men who are household names across Asia. Therefore, I was stunned to hear that I too had been elected to receive this award. I soon learned that the Foundation’s Trustees sometimes choose to recognize work which takes place on a smaller scale. It was then clear to me that my responsibility in accepting this award is to draw attention to the enormity of the suffering caused by war and disaster and to the concerted efforts required to address it. I believe this Award to be a wonderful symbolic acknowledgement of the quiet work of so many committed colleagues who provide mental health and psychosocial services. It is also a reminder of our moral obligation to ensure that the support we offer is the best that it can be.

Effective psychosocial support work is usually low key. This means that workers can often be isolated and inadequately supported, whilst they try to respond to the needs of individual clients or entire communities. Yet, all the success in this field ultimately depends on the quality of the services that are delivered by these frontline workers. My experience is that creating practical and ethical communities of practitioners not only bolsters individual workers, but also creates opportunities for innovation and improvement in systems. In my work, I have also witnessed the potential that can be released when we collaborate across the boundaries of professional, institutional, geographic or social divides. When conditions are right, and enough goodwill is present, the capacity of joint efforts to transcend the limitations of individual actions is quite extraordinary. To me, collaboration is not merely desirable, but absolutely necessary.

As we have better understood how material and social conditions affect people’s wellbeing, the field of post-emergency mental health and psychosocial work has been compelled to seek alliances with others. We increasingly acknowledge the need to work with institutions that build shelters, manage refugee camps, rejuvenate local markets, provide education, deliver healthcare, give protection and advocate for justice. We also recognize that suffering caused by conflict and disaster is often shaped by a larger context of poverty and social inequity. The challenge in our work is to develop comprehensive services and social care systems that can take account of this.

But even when we provide excellent services, the burden of living through the pain and loss wrought by violence remains squarely on the shoulders of those directly affected. Whilst humbled by the capacity for survival and resilience demonstrated by families and individuals I have come to know, I am also aware of the enormous effort that it takes for them to cope. For all their strength and resourcefulness, and despite our best efforts, for survivors, coping is hard work and often a daily struggle. I vividly remember a woman I met when I first started working in 1996. Nearly seven years earlier, her husband had been taken away by a group of armed men in the middle of the night, and was found murdered close to their house the following morning. Since then, she’d had to learn to provide for the family as a newly widowed woman, in addition to successfully raising and educating her young son and daughter. Despite the years that had passed, she and her two children felt unable to trust their own community from which her husband’s killers had come. Lacking opportunities or resources to move to another area, they remained isolated and lonely in the village. She described how still on some nights she and her children just held each other and cried, thinking about what had happened to their lives. Like the firing of the bullet that killed her husband, brief events such as the bombing of a bus, the sudden arrival of a massive wave, the torture of a captive or the displacement of a village all have repercussions that last entire lifetimes and have implications across generations.

The responsibility of our societies and our governments, therefore, is not only to ensure that survivors are provided with the best possible support and care after tragedies, but also to do everything in our power to minimize or avert these in the first place.

Thank You.

Where music is concerned, no fine line can be drawn to separate Sri Lanka from India and the rest of the world. In fact, through the ages, all of Sri Lanka’s fine arts evolved as part of the Greater Indian Tradition. In modern times new art forms came from the West, so that Portuguese lullabies and Christian hymns joined North Indian ragas and Buddhist chants as part of the island’s musical heritage. All the while, Sri Lanka’s village folk created songs and dances reflecting their own more isolated lives.

So what, exactly, is Sri Lankan music? This question began to matter in 1948 when Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, emerged as an independent nation. Happily, this is about the time that W.D. AMARADEVA began his musical career. For many Sri Lankans, he has provided the answer.

Born Albert Perrera, AMARADEVA came early to music. His father, a carpenter, played the violin. By the age of seven, young Albert was playing the violin too. He quickly mastered the Bengali tunes then in vogue and from his older brother learned the rudiments of the classical North Indian raga. A prodigy, he became a star at local recitals and gained early renown as a singer of Buddhist devotional songs. By thirteen, he was performing on the radio. By nineteen, he was playing the violin, singing, and composing incidental music for the film “Asokamala.” Little wonder that he left school to pursue a life of music.

Finding work at Radio Ceylon, Perrera emerged as a brilliant innovator in Sinhalese music and was soon welcomed into the company of leading artists and intellectuals. Sensing the young man’s genius, some of them raised a fund to send him to India for classical training. At the Bhathkande Institute of Music in Lucknow, Perrera sat at the feet of India’s music masters and won first prize in an all-India violin competition. He returned to Sri Lanka in 1958 as AMARADEVA, the name he would make famous.

Issues of national identity now preoccupied many Sri Lankans. In the spirit of the times, AMARADEVA began arranging and performing indigenous folk songs, embellishing them with Indian ragas and thus elevating them from simple tunes to more sophisticated compositions. In other innovations, he experimented with Western harmony and counterpoint and with South Indian and Tamil musical forms. With lyricist Mahagama Sekera, he explored ways to wed the cadences of classical Sinhalese poetry to the new music. In time, AMARADEVA’s music came to reflect an entire spectrum of borrowed and indigenous influences, a uniquely Sri Lankan synthesis.

A prodigious creative artist, AMARADEVA has composed music for ballet, film, the stage, and countless radio and television programs. He has written over one thousand songs-melodious, lyrical, haunting songs of patriotism, beauty, faith, passion, and love. For over fifty years now he has also been performing his songs over radio and television, in concert, and on gramophone records, audiotapes, and CDs. AMARADEVA’s fluid, resonant voice long ago overshadowed his violin. Today, Sri Lankans need only turn on their radios to hear it daily. “He sings so beautifully,” says one admirer, “one has to stop everything and listen.”

“Music”, says Pandith AMARADEVA, “is the finest of the fine arts.” His music is both very fine and widely loved. Sri Lankans say it is music that transcends ethnicity, class, and age. Or as his friend Ediriweera Sarachchandra put it, it is music that “speaks to the soul of the nation.”

In electing W.D. AMARADEVA to receive the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the board of trustees recognizes his life of dazzling creativity in expression of the rich heritage and protean vitality of Sri Lankan music.

Your Excellency President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, members of the Magsaysay family, distinguished guests, trustees, fellow awardees, ladies and gentlemen, Mabuhay! 

I am deeply honoured as a Sri Lankan to be conferred the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award tonight — an award which in turn, honors the name of one of the most outstanding statesmen of Asia, a humanistic leader and a staunch champion of liberty of whose services the world was tragically deprived 44 years ago.

I still have pleasant memories of my first visit to Manila way back in 1966 to attend the International Music Symposium.

The last recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award from my country was Prof. Ediriwira Sarachchandra, the father of modern Sri Lankan drama, with whom I was privileged to enjoy a fruitful partnership of over four decades until his demise five years ago. I collaborated with him in his musical plays and it was indeed a rich and rewarding experience.

If Dr. Sarachchandra’s pioneering role was to adapt the traditional drama to the modern stage, I in my own humble way have sought to undertake a similar task for my country’s music.

What I have tried to do is to blend the North Indian classical tradition which is inseparable from the great tradition in our part of the world, with the folk music of Sri Lanka to make of it what I hope is a distinctive idiom of music. While recognizing this great tradition, I have also been fully exposed to other influences, both occidental and oriental, believing with Mahatma Gandhi that, I quote — “I want cultures of all lands to blow into my house as freely as possible but I refuse to be blown off my feet”, unquote.

Critics have been kind enough to say that I have been able to create a national idiom of music without merely theorizing on the need for one. What, then, has been my approach to music?

Basically, what I have tried to do is to build on the work of masters both in India and Sri Lanka while not adhering slavishly to either the classical tradition or the folk tradition.

My life’s mission has been to refine this folk tradition and synthesize it with the Indian classical tradition, which I consider to be part of our heritage, without diluting its quality but adding a new dimension to it.

I thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for this honor conferred on me personally and on Sri Lanka in general, and hope that this will be a source of inspiration to my country’s new generation.

Maraming Salamat!

In much of Asia colonial rule weakened the traditional arts. Ruling classes and educated urbanites often favored Western ways. Old forms of drama, music, and dance withered, and powerful cultural moorings were lost. In Sri Lanka this process occurred over four centuries. By the 1950s only the villages kept the old traditions alive. VEDITANTIRIGE EDIRIWIRA SARACHCHANDRA rediscovered them there.

SARACHCHANDRA first encountered the rich cultural life of Sri Lanka’s villages as a youth, moving from place to place with his father, a postmaster. Later he was inspired by India’s independence movement and by the works of Rabindranath Tagore, India’s great writer and poet. He qualified in Sanskrit, Pali, and Sinhalese at the University of Ceylon, and in Western philosophy at the University of London. In 1949 he received his doctorate in Buddhist Philosophy.

Theater has been his lifelong passion. As a young professor at the University of Ceylon, SARACHCHANDRA produced Sinhalese adaptations of Anton Chekov, Oscar Wilde, and Moliere. But Western plays, he decided, “never got to the roots of our people.” He searched the villages for dramatic forms that did.

His 1953 book, The Sinhalese Folk Play, led to a fellowship to study the dramatic arts elsewhere in Asia and the United States. Witnessing the vitality of Noh and Kabuki theater in Japan, he yearned to resurrect classical Sinhalese drama for modern audiences.

In his 1956 play Maname, based on a well-known Buddhist myth, characters sing and speak rhythmic prose. A narrator and chorus comment on the story. Drums, cymbals, songs, and dances are used throughout. There is no set. Maname’s sensational reception established SARACHCHANDRA’s “stylized play” as a popular genre. A stunning revival of Sinhalese theater followed and Sinhalese dance and music were given new life.

SARACHCHANDRA continued experimenting. His 1961 masterpiece, Sinhabahu retells the Sinhalese origin myth. Pemato Jayati Soko, of 1969, is an opera set to North Indian-style music. Altogether he has written more than twenty-four plays. Maname alone has been performed some three thousand times.

Renowned as Sri Lanka’s premier playwright, SARACHCHANDRA is also a prolific literary critic who has set new standards for Sinhalese writing. His own novels and short stories offer trenchant commentary on contemporary life. On social and political issues he speaks his mind fearlessly and often. From 1974 to 1977 he was Sri Lanka’s ambassador to France. This experience prompted his English-language novel, With the Begging Bowl, depicting the plight of money-poor Third World diplomats.

Formally retired from the university, today seventy-three-year-old SARACHCHANDRA is director of the Sarvodaya Research Institute. A commission of scholars under his leadership is now investigating the deterioration of Sri Lanka’s social fabric since independence.

SARACHCHANDRA believes that his society’s most fundamental values remain endangered. The norms of today’s marketplace, he points out, are incompatible with Buddhist teachings and work against the survival of once hallowed traditions. Yet a healthy nation must live harmoniously with its past. SARACHCHANDRA, therefore, writes plays in form and content that transcend the present and speak to the permanent experience of his people.

In electing VEDITANTIRIGE EDIRIWIRA SARACHCHANDRA to receive the 1988 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his creating modern theater from traditional Sinhalese folk dramas and awakening Sri Lankans to their rich cultural and spiritual heritage.

On this occasion, which is indeed the most memorable in my life and career as a writer and academic, I recall that when I first set out in 1955 in my search for a native idiom in the theater, or at least an Asian model, the first country that I visited was the Philippines. Here I got acquainted with the experimental work of Severino Montano whose Arena Theater movement was evoking great interest among theater-lovers, and I had the opportunity to get to know something of Philippine folk theater forms like the moro-moro. I was also fortunate to have made friends with several young writers who have since become distinguished personalities in the literary world. At that time I did not imagine, even in my wildest dreams, that I would return after these many years, to be honored by this most prestigious award for the work that I began then, and be welcomed so warmly by a nation that, inspired by the spirit of that great leader, President Ramon Magsaysay, has shown such heroism, unity, and determination in the fight against despotism and has earned, thereby, the admiration and respect of the whole world.

One of the most difficult and, to my mind, the most important of the problems that the countries of the Third World have to face, particularly if they have a history of colonialism, is how to reconcile their system of traditional values with the values of industrial civilization, which are materialistic. Most programs of development that the governments of the Third World are embarked on result, either as a by-product of their endeavors or as an avowed aim, in the transformation of their societies into consumer societies and the initiation of their people in the lifestyle of the people of the affluent industrialized nations.

The values of the consumer society are, in many respects, diametrically opposed to the values of traditional societies and the values of all the higher religions. I think you will admit that it is, to say the least, inadvisable for any program of development to ride roughshod over the values that have guided a society for centuries and have contributed to its cohesiveness. We have seen how such a neglect of traditional values has resulted, in some instances, in moral chaos and in the total upheaval of societies. Industrial civilization inculcates, as its highest value, the pursuit of pleasure. Apart from the fact that experience shows hedonism does not bring total satisfaction to people, it is relevant to ask ourselves whether the resources of our countries or of the world will ever permit any but the very few to enjoy the lifestyle of the people of the affluent nations. Politicians are often not aware of such problems or do not wish to give weight to such considerations because they want quick results. Hence, they concentrate on material development without realizing that material development must be geared to the values of a culture. It is these values that will dictate what kind of development would produce wholesome results, that would bring about a pattern of life that would give material as well as spiritual satisfaction to a people. In order to achieve this, there must be a constant dialogue between intellectuals and politicians.

Today, when my lifework has been deemed worthy of recognition by such a highly esteemed body as the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, I like to look back for a moment and ask myself what were the motives, both conscious and unconscious, that have inspired me.

I drew material for my plays from a body of myth and legend that has been current among my people for some two thousand years and has influenced their attitudes and actions. I was hoping to get at the roots of our culture, at the roots of people’s thinking, at the racial unconscious, so to say, and to remind people of the fundamental values that have formed the basis of our culture, values that four centuries of colonization have nearly wiped from memory. But I have not advocated in my plays an uncritical acceptance of these values. The subtext, which is often not apparent to the average playgoer, suggests that some values of a feudal culture are not consistent with modern man’s attitudes and should be discarded. As an example, I would like to mention the attitude toward women that finds expression in some of these legends. The values that are valid for all time are sympathy for human suffering, sympathy for the oppressed and downtrodden, and a sympathetic understanding of the human condition. These are values that transcend all limitations of time and place.

Hymns, martial anthems, lullabies, songs since the beginning of recorded time have allowed man to express his deepest emotions. And a people’s culture often finds its most universal bond in shared singing. Probably no other activity can so elevate the spirit and the “humanness” of us all as that special awareness generated by music and song.

Among the ironies confronting science is the inability to explain, within the Darwinian concept of evolution, man’s acquisition of the ability to make and appreciate music. Never was man’s survival furthered by music on the long evolutionary path to homo sapiens. Yet, by some divine means man acquired this gift, so distinct from that of all other creatures. With the emergence of each civilization has come its particular expression, through its own instruments and voice, of a people’s yearnings, love and triumph over adversity.

Born 82 years ago into the family of a farmer and herbal physician in Dankotuwa, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), MARCELLINE JAYAKODY at the age of 10 chose the vocation of a Roman Catholic priest. While studying in the English-language St. Joseph’s College he became troubled by the rift between Western-oriented Christianity and Sri Lanka’s predominantly Sinhalese Buddhist culture. Following his ordination in the Oblate order on December 21, 1927, his concern over this rift deepened and finding bridges became his personal quest. His talents and life-view found new dimensions with studies at Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan in Bengal, India, where he added to competency on the violin, piano and organ, mastery of the sitar and tabla, and an appreciation of Eastern music. Travels to the Holy Land, Europe and America enlarged his “world view” of society.

In Sri Lanka Fr. JAYAKODY served for 21 years as a parish priest and has been a teacher off and on since then. In 1958 he launched the Faculty of Eastern Art at St. Peter’s College and 23 years later was still teaching as a visiting lecturer in music at St. Thomas’ College. Today he faithfully spends one day a week at Kala Lanka — the school for training young people from poor families in the performing arts of Sri Lanka — which he established and maintains at his own expense near Colombo.

In 1933 JAYAKODY began writing a newspaper column and composed his first hymn, Sapiri Sama (Full of Grace). His six lyrics, written in 1957 for the first Ceylonese feature film, Rekawa (Palm Line of Destiny), achieved national popularity and still are sung throughout the land.

In all, Fr. JAYAKODY has written the lyrics and music for some 1,000 songs. Although severe religious and ethnic divisions remain in Sri Lankan society, the songs he has given his people to sing have helped bridge these tragic differences. From lullabies to Christmas carols, they have been put on records and tapes and have added joy to daily life. Like his essays and poems, they have also become vehicles for enabling his people to understand the deeper significance of what they see in nature. His Muthu (Pearls) was judged the best book of poetry in 1980.

This silver-haired, singing priest, who stands tall and cheerfully exudes his faith, has helped through music and song to bring to every Sri Lankan an awareness of his heritage. His travel books are alerting his people to the beauty of their country, its sounds, history, the rhythm of the cropping season and their profusely flowering trees. Not neglecting his westernized church upbringing, his radio plays on the lives of Western composers bring a broader dimension to the culture.

Fr. JAYAKODY is a living demonstration that accepting a vocation in the priesthood need never be a retreat from life. His versatile creativity continues to enthuse with spiritual content and philosophical insight the everyday experiences of young and old. As his songs so gladly proclaim, man can take a few steps further along the path where God beckons — to realization of his better self.

In electing Fr. MARCELLINE JAYAKODY to receive the 1983 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his enriching his country’s “world of song and music” with spiritual and human rejoicing.

This colorful ceremony reminds me of a notable passage in the Bible: “The memory of a just man is forever,” it says.

There are men who live the way they wish and, as the Bible says again, “go the way of all flesh.” There are others who live by the rule of God and man and end up as those whom I dare to call saints. I have come to meet the memory of such a just man, Ramon Magsaysay, the late president of the Philippines.

There is a strange law working with these great men; the world does not leave them alone and they do not leave the world alone. Even after death, the world raises them to life, puts up memorials and monuments to them, writes about them, speaks of them. They become more alive than when alive. In turn they do not leave the world alone. They are alive to the problems of the times and keep on inspiring the world, each in his own way.

Here is Ramon Magsaysay searching for those whom he likes, discovering them, encouraging them, rewarding them. He is telling them to add more goodness to the world, imparting his nature to them. His hands have been long enough to stretch across the world and touch whom he may, including me, out and away in Sri Lanka. He has been pleased, through the Board of Trustees of the Foundation established in his memory to award to me the prize for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts for 1983. I am deeply grateful for this honor. I shall remember him in my prayers.

If, before I end, I may say something about myself, I wish to state that I did not work for remuneration or reward. There was an urge to work within me and I followed it. I wished to bring together my people who were sitting with a fence between them. I found a new way to do this; I wrote poetry, our people like poetry, and sang it. Song can break through fences, drop down from roofs, enter through keyholes. God blessed me. We are nearly together now.

Ramon Magsaysay, too, says let us be together. May his name be blessed forever. God bless you all.

Neglect, decay and sometimes desecration of cultural monuments to Asia’s past are among the major tragedies of this age. For all of their feudal ways, rulers of antiquity did truly patronize the arts. Religious architecture, sculpture, painting and monumental constructions often were created in part with carves labor. Taxes that supported the artisans frequently were onerous for the peasants. However, religious faith, combined with leaders’ desire of leaving an enduring heritage, inspired the finest artistic expressions of these ancient civilizations.

Secular societies now seem especially prone to forget their origins, and mass communications cater to the least common denominator of taste. Artists are left seeking a constituency among the small minority who take time to cultivate appreciation. Often today they are helpless to prevent the plastering of old church frescoes and weathered temple paintings in the name of modernization.

Born 77 years ago to poor parents in the fishing village of Alutgama in then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, MANJUSRI had to borrow a shirt to attend school. After apprenticing as a carpenter, he joined the Buddhist sangha (monkhood) as a novice at the age of 13. He was fortunate in studying under two famous teachers at the Mangala Pirivena in Beruwala, learning Buddhist philosophy and four languages: Sinhala, Pali, Sanskrit and Bengali.

MANJUSRI’s artistic sense was awakened in 1932 when he went to study at Santiniketan Ashram of Rabindranath Tagore in eastern India. He was inspired after two years to return to begin copying the old temple paintings in Sri Lanka, which work, by 1936, had won the admiration of the scholars at Santiniketan. After further study of the Lamaist sect of Buddhism and Buddhist artistic traditions in Sikkim and the Himalayan heights, the gifted monk turned his talents to his life work.

In 1943 he inspired the organization of an association of young artists known, as the “43 group” that has now become one of Asia’s more important art schools. After his own original paintings were exhibited in Colombo, together with his reproductions of temple art, MANJUSRI was invited to London and Vienna where this wealth of the Buddhist artistic tradition began to be appreciated.

Taking off the robes of a Buddhist monk, MANJUSRI in 1950 turned his full attention to art and writing. Over the past 29 years he has published 155 serious articles in Sinhala and 55 in English, bringing to public ken the ancient and medieval art of Sri Lanka. Visiting hundreds of viharas, or temples, sometimes living on wild fruits from the jungle, he systematically documented, and copied or traced, thousands of neglected and fast disappearing mural paintings. In between he translated world classics including poems by Tagore into Sinhala.

Marrying late in life, MANJUSRI now is assisted by a devoted wife, Mangala, an artistic son and two daughters. They and the Archaeological Society of Sri Lanka helped him prepare for publication on his 75th birthday his book, Design Elements from Sri Lankan Temple Paintings, complete with 159 plates of designs from 75 temples. In their modest flat he and his family have created a haven where other artists now gather to cooperate in preserving Sri Lanka’s rich artistic tradition.

In electing LOKUKAMKANAMGE THOMAS PEIRIS MANJUSRI to receive the 1979 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his preserving for the people of Sri Lanka and the world the 2,000-year-old tradition of classical art found in their great Buddhist temples.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award is well known in my country because three of my compatriots have received it before me. They were distinguished and well-known people. I am a poor artist, a painter. I never thought that I, too, would receive it one day. I thank the Board of the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation and the Executive Trustee for this great honor conferred on me, and thereby on my country.

I am a painter by accident. A long time ago, when I was a Buddhist monk, I spent a few years at the poet Tagore’s ashram, Santiniketan, in Bengal, India. During this time I used to see young people sketching and painting in the art school. My curiosity was aroused, and I began to paint too, by myself. This was in 1932.

By the time I returned to Sri Lanka in 1934 my experience at Santiniketan had awakened me to the beauty of art. I began to look at the paintings on our temple walls with new eyes. I saw that valuable temple murals were neglected, destroyed and replaced by cheap, meaningless, tasteless modern paintings. I decided to copy what was left, before they too were destroyed.

The Buddhist clergy and some groups of painters were opposed to what I was doing. They said that engaging in activities like painting was unethical for monks. Instead of being helped and encouraged, I was obstructed and discouraged. But I continued, with the determination that I had to save these treasures for posterity. I copied them faithfully, traveling the length and breadth of the land to find them on crumbling temple walls. I wrote to the newspapers about them, illustrating what I wrote with the sketches I had made. I wanted to awaken my countrymen to the need to preserve this cultural heritage for future generations.

Gradually, monks as well as laymen began to realize the value of this art of their forefathers. People began to collect my newspaper articles in Sinhala and in English. Some collected them in files; others bound them in book form.

There are still more temples to visit; more murals to copy; and many more to protect and preserve. But I can no longer undertake this task unaided. Perhaps with this Award I may find some help.

Youth compose the most precious resource in every country yet remain in many lands among the most underutilized. Especially is this so in Asia where young people make up more than one-half of the total population, and unemployment or underemployment are often the lot of the majority. Without jobs in sight, young folk are easily discouraged from using fully opportunities for self-development. In turn, they lack the skills that would make them useful. Thwarted in their ambitions, they fail to discover the creative satisfaction of disciplined, productive work, and their country’s development suffers the loss of their latent talents.

Fourteen years ago when Brother HERMENEGILD JOSEPH first looked at the desolate slopes of scrub jungle surrounding the water tank on Orange Hill of Ragama Town Council near Colombo, his mind’s eye saw beyond the inauspicious appearance. With imaginative determination he chose this 44.53-hectare site for the Brothers of Christian Schools to provide refuge and redirection for very poor, orphaned and handicapped boys, and delinquents released to them from correctional institutions. Diyagala Boys’ Town opened in 1963 in makeshift buildings with an entering class of 25 youngsters.

Today the hillsides have been transformed. Neat gardens, farms, dormitory, workshops, livestock and poultry enclosures, and a chapel all tell of contributions in kind and effort to create the Sri Lanka Technical Institute. This certificate-granting arm of Diyagala Boys’ Town is schooling for a responsible life 315 youths, aged 14 to 20, in scientific agriculture and practical trades. More than education, it provides a rounded, character-forming experience with a guiding philosophy expressed in the motto, “Deeds Not Words.”

Diyagala Boys’ Town cooperates with the government assault on unemployment that seeks alternatives to the futile hunt for white collar jobs by cultivating pride in the art and dignity of the craftsman’s and farmer’s skills and performance. Hard manual work in field and workshop under strict, competent supervision is part of the four-year curriculum. Income generated from machine and carpentry shops, farms and livestock covers most running costs. Corporations, with rotating membership of as many boys as a job requires, are accountable for every activity from housekeeping, water management, meat processing, a bakery, crops, roads and equipment to sports. A point system instills cooperation and healthy competition among these teams. Responsible democracy is taught by participation in the tribunal that judges guilt for wrongdoing.

With a waiting list of over 2,000 seeking entrance, word has spread that the Institute offers a future, for its skilled, diligent graduates are readily employed. Neighbors come to learn and buy planting material at a highland extension center raising seed, potatoes and vegetables, and at other stations specializing in rice, coconuts and mixed-farming. All are a tribute to the nine De La Salle Brothers and a lay staff of 10. Special credit belongs to the dynamic 60-year-old French Founder Director whose thorough planning, shrewd enlistment of local and foreign support, and efficient organization has permitted rapid progression from land clearing to creating a thriving showcase of the power of teaching boys to take confidence in themselves and their work.

In electing Rev. Brother HERMENEGILD JOSEPH to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his effective teaching of skills, values and discipline that build underprivileged and delinquent boys into self-respecting, useful citizens.

Much as I shun honors and praises, I am grateful to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for having studied and found to be of service to society the methods of training and youth formation I have been working on for some time, especially in helping the underprivileged youth of Sri Lanka. All those who have rallied round me should see in this Award a public recognition of the worthiness of our work and of their involvement in the cause it serves. For myself and all my supporters, I express humble and very sincere thanks to the Trustees of the Foundation. I pay my respects to the late President Ramon Magsaysay, a man of great heart and wonderful vision, and I congratulate all those who have helped keep the spirit of this great President alive and effective by maintaining so very successfully this fine Foundation. It is a great honor, indeed, for me and my associates to be included in the distinguished fraternity of the Magsaysay Awardees.

As an educator, I started at 17 years of age in a very poor school in southern France, my own country, with a class of 104 lads of various ages and degrees of poverty, poor in the goods of this world, in brain potential and poorer still in parents’ attention. To find those lads were happy only in class indelibly impressed me. The sight of them wasting their time roaming the streets on vacations and coming back to me on Mondays, half wild, prodded me to organize games, work where together we did very simple jobs, Scout camps and excursions. Watching them become interested, keen, resourceful, and helpful to each other, I began thinking that something should be done for poor and abandoned children instead of just blaming them.

When duty took me to teach more fortunate children in Lebanon, England, and Sri Lanka, I managed to run extracurricular activities for “retarded” boys to which large numbers of “outsiders,” or deprived boys, were attracted. Studying their cases, their needs, aspirations and potentialities, I discovered a “bad boy” is made by circumstances, mostly by poverty or rejection by those who should have attended to him. I came to know that given proper chances and care nearly all boys classed as “rejects” or “dangers” would rise to be excellent young men, good husbands and fathers, successful workers, reliable citizens, even heroes. I also saw that even the type of education we were imparting to the better off was too academic and impractical. My quest for something different to help the unfortunate led me to conclude that homes, centers, refuges, call them as you like, must be created where embittered and frustrated youths could find occupation, guidance and training, where men of dedication and vision could be their understanding friends and helpers, share their work, food, sports, art and social life, love them and create around them the atmosphere, the society, the family spirit needed to gain their sympathetic involvement.

In my experience, a study of any delinquency case will uncover a desire for “activity,” for “participation,” for “doing”. I had noted such youngsters, even if they cannot express it, aspire for a way of life, not necessarily the easier one, which will allow them to fulfill themselves and even be in a position to help others, an old, bedridden mother, younger brothers or sisters they know to be in distress, or a needy friend met when they themselves ran the streets. Indirectly, it is an aspiration to serve the larger community, the country.

Feeling I must be ready to attend to these inner good dispositions of underprivileged children, I planned a home where such youths would be provided with opportunities to improve themselves. They would be trained in jobs in agriculture, industries, trades. They would be further educated and their character formed. They would be given a sense of duty, honesty, love for work well done. They would be given a proper vision of what life truly is. They would be shown the correct way to self-sufficiency and proper use of time and money. They would be trained to civic life, to love others and country. Little by little they would be made to realize they have a good role to play. When, at long last, I was asked to set up a home for orphans and uncared for youths, my joy knew no bounds. There were to be many difficulties and there were failures, but we had the will and found a way.

At the start we had the good fortune of the approval and encouragement of the then Provincial of the De La Salle Brothers in Sri Lanka, Very Rev. Bro. Vincent Joseph; of His Eminence Cardinal Cooray of Colombo; of the government of Sri Lanka through the ministers of Social Services, Industries and Agriculture; of the then Director of Agriculture, Dr. W. Joachim. Similar support came from successive Provincials, Rev. Bros. Lawrence and Flavian, and especially the Assistant Superior General of the De La Salle Brothers for Asia, the Very Rev. Bro. Michael Jacques who is with us today deputizing for the Superior General himself, Very Rev. Bro. Pablo-Manuel. Throughout the years I have been privileged to have the assistance of exceptional young men. One who started with me, Rev. Bro. Philip, is still there and has endeared himself to all by his devotion and the efficiency he brings to every aspect of our campus work. Then there is the chorus of friends and philanthropic organizations from Sri Lanka and many countries who have helped us generously. They all share this Award.

Though Diyagala Boys’ Town was meticulously prepared in all its details, our work at the beginning was very hard indeed. We three animators and 25 half-starved boys of all castes and creeds lived together in cadjan sheds, cleared jungle, leveled land, grew a few vegetables, reared poultry, pigs and goats, cooked our food and cut bricks and cabouks for our initial buildings. But the boys could see and take pride in the town we were building ourselves and very soon we were a family community where each had a role. Before the year ended help came from international organizations, like MISEREOR of West Germany, to equip workshops and build kitchens, refectories and dormitories according to plan. Most encouraging was to see the youngsters accept the hardships and discipline because they felt they were fast improving their chances in life. Hope had been restored to them. What matters is that the boy feels he is loved, that he is wanted, that he is given responsibility and that he is trusted. These are the thirsts and aspirations of youth today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow. They are those of underprivileged children most acutely. It is the duty of our personnel, as it should be of all those wishing to achieve success with underprivileged children, to be firm but lavish with encouragement; to be experts in instruction, training, guidance; to love to work in association with the boys, and to share in dialogue, planning, execution and evaluation of results. They must be organizers, animators and guides but without excluding the boys themselves. Thus, in the true sense of service each is contributing, defining together the reasons for success or failure, suggesting improvement, working toward shared goals, and understanding his own duty and the common good. Our system, theoretical and perhaps difficult as it may seem, is both simple and effective. It is a training for involvement and responsibility. Today we feel very happy that the Foundation has given the Award for Public Service to my humble self. This is a wonderful encouragement to me and my associates and helpers.

In a world absorbed in scientific and material ventures that even lead men to the moon, we easily lose sight of that greatest frontier in man himself. On this centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, led by A. T. ARIYARATNE in Ceylon, reassuringly confirms man’s response to challenges of the spirit. 

A Sinhala and a Buddhist, ARIYARATNE first acted against injustice while a college student. Sharing his pocket money with an impoverished, old woman, he learned greedy middlemen paid her too little even for food, though she spun coconut coir 10 hours a day six days a week. Undeterred by a stabbing intended to thwart him, he organized the Coir Workers Cooperation Society that improved the spinners’ lot and still flourishes. 

Seeking national concern for the poor, ARIYARATNE investigated all of Ceylon’s then 20 odd political parties, the responsible government agencies, and religious groups, but found scant promise of social change. It was from study of the works of Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi’s leading disciple, that he became imbued with the idea of voluntary service based on truth, non-violence and self-denial. 

Remembering Bhave’s admonition that without personal sharing any movement would prove a delusion, ARIYARATNE began in Ceylon by inviting donation of labor from colleagues at Nalanda College, where he was teaching. From ancient Ceylonese tradition he evolved the concept of sarvodaya shramadana, meaning to share one’s time, thought and energy for the welfare of all. 

In 1958, 75 teachers and students of the College went to the outcast village of Kanatolowa. Working with villagers to sink wells, dig latrine pits, clear home gardens and start a school, these volunteers gave the “untouchables” their first sense of human dignity through shared generosity. Requests from other villages followed for similar Shramadana camps where volunteers concentrated their labor on weekends and during vacations upon specific “felt needs” that could be accomplished with donated resources. 

Under ARIYARATNE’s magnetic leadership, Sarvodaya Shramadana became the largest national voluntary movement. Members had only to subscribe to “service for all” and give seven days a year. Other college and university groups, Buddhist monks, doctors, government and factory employees and industrialists joined the crusade. Learning the real needs of their country, these volunteers helped eradicate distrust resulting from caste, race, creed and party politics. Self-confidence generated in villagers produced sustained improvement efforts. 

After five years, the Movement acquired legal status as the Lanka Jatika Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya. Now an “approved charity” with a small professional staff and its resource of 75,000 trained, young volunteers throughout the country, the Movement is honoring the Gandhi Centenary by seeking to transform 100 villages with its message of spiritual ennoblement and volunteers targeted on projects discriminatingly selected and planned. 

In electing AHANGAMAGE TUDOR ARIYARATNE to receive the 1969 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his founding and inspired guidance of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, combining voluntary service in meeting village needs with an awakening of man’s potential when he cultivates his best instincts.

It is with deep humility and renewed faith in the service of humanity that I rise on this memorable occasion to deliver this brief response. This is an honor you have given to my country, to the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of which I am a humble worker, and above all an honor given to chose simple village people who responded to our call of “love and service.” I am only a medium chosen by destiny to assist the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation to carry the spirit of that great leader, the late President Ramon Magsaysay, into the minds and hearts of my own common people for it was for the emancipation of the common man that he lived and died. 

Great men of the caliber of Ramon Magsaysay do not belong to one country or one period or one generation. They are social phenomena that suddenly appear and disappear like flashes of lightning in darkness and show us the path. They belong to the entire universe and eternity. Lord Buddha says “Rupan jeerathi maccanan Nama goththan na jeerathi” which means while all that is mortal in us decays our noble thoughts, words and deeds will live long after our physical remains are gone. The true greatness of a man is known only by the way his fellowmen hold him in esteem after his death. Judging from the name he has left behind to be honored and perpetuated in this manner, I am sure he must now be among the divine. May he bless us all in our endeavors to serve our fellowmen, particularly those that are considered the lowest the lowliest and the lost. 

I believe the Foundation has elected me for the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership on the basis of the external manifestations of my behavior in that particular field. Therefore, it is my duty to place before this august assembly some of my inner thoughts that motivated my external behavior. 

In the culture in which I was brought up I was fascinated from my childhood by certain thoughts the implementation of which, however, was postponed by that same culture to the next life. “Peetho bhavatu lokocha”, meaning “may all beings in the universe be well and happy”, was one such thought. Working for a nobler ideal than the ideal of the greater good of the greater number became a passion in my life. Mahatma Gandhi and Acharya Vinoba Bhave called this thought, the welfare of all, by the Sanskrit word sarvodaya. 

For the awakening of all in society we have to awaken ourselves first. Again my own Buddhist culture showed me four noble goals towards which every individual should strive. The first is loving kindness, or metta as we call it. As a good mother loves her one and only child and protects him at the risk of her own life we are taught to love and protect all living beings. Secondly, we are taught to cultivate kanuna, or compassion, which motivates us to go in search of those who suffer and help remove the causes which have brought upon them that suffering. Thirdly, we are taught to train ourselves to take altruistic joy in others’ happiness. We call this muditha. Fourthly, to educate oneself in upekkha, or equanimity, which gives one emotional balance to take fame or blame, profit or loss, success or failure with detachment and patience. These four qualities are called divine abodes because they elevate the follower to divine levels. It is this philosophy of life that motivated me for this silent mission which you have adjudged worthy of honor. 

These are not impractical idealistic thoughts that have no relevance to the modern scientific and technological world. Modernity is not determined by time. It is determined by our attitudes and outlook to life and living. These thoughts we translated into practical application to bring about significant changes in the grass-roots of our society — changes for the better among our rural communities which are the foundation of our culture, freedom and human dignity. And wasn’t it our revered Ramon Magsaysay himself who said that “democracy should start from the grassroots?” 

The technique we adopted to translate thoughts into action was a call to all to share their time, thought and energy? in the service of their fellowmen. We called it shramadana. Sharing (dana), compassionate speech (priya vacana), constructive activity (arthacharya) and equanimity (samanath-matha) are the four salient features of shramadana. 

These thoughts and action in their own small way are laying a strong spiritual and material foundation for rebuilding a new Ceylon — a new Sri Lanka — where I assure you science and spirituality will be harmonized and the island deserve once again to be called Dharmadweepa — The Island of Righteousness. Here and now I declare in the name of that great leader, the Lord Buddha, that every cent of this monetary award and every element of personal recognition that you have given me today will be utilized for this noble end. For I believe as he believed that “you can find yourself only to the extent you can lose yourself.” Lose yourself in what? Lose yourself completely and totally in the service of your fellowmen to free them from the causes of all suffering; namely, greed, ignorance and hatred.

Eleven years ago EDWARD MICHAEL LAW YONE founded The Nation of Rangoon. Since then, under his guidance, it has steadily grown in stature to become the leading English-language paper in his country. Rejecting sensationalism and fanaticism, The Nation has presented to the Burmese people a consistently fair and comprehensive report of events that most immediately affect their welfare. 

In promoting clean government, LAW YONE has on numerous occasions clashed with officialdom, but he has stood firm even under prosecution. Through his reasoned editorials he has helped to bring about reforms that have promoted the progress of his country. Notable among contributions to his profession in Burma has been his active participation in a School of Journalism he helped found in order to raise the standards of press reporting. 

TARZIE VITTACHI has also wielded a potent pen in the public interest in his country. As editor of the Ceylon Observer, he has called to public attention abuses in government and supported those who deserved the public trust. 

With his recent book, Emergency ’58, Mr. VITTACHI has given his people and the world a vivid documentary of the 1958 communal riots in Ceylon. This book was written when the conflict was still smoldering and before the truth could be obscured or glossed over. Himself a Sinhalese, he has subjected the role of Sinhalese and Tamil to equal unsparing scrutiny. He has likewise chronicled the manipulations of politicians who are exploiting old divisions to their advantage and who were ultimately responsible for the wave of violence that swept over Ceylon. 

Emergency ’58 appeals to all elements of Ceylonese society, particularly the leaders of the diverse groups, for a more rational attitude toward old differences and new insecurities. Though addressed chiefly to the Ceylonese, the book bears a wider implication for similar problems plague other newly-independent people in our part of the world. 

These two editors, like Ramon Magsaysay, have had the courage of their convictions. Setting personal security aside, they have worked, the one in Burma and the other in Ceylon, to build nations where man could live with man in honor and peace. 

In electing EDWARD MICHAEL LAW YONE and TARZIE VITTACHI to share the 1959 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism and Literature, the Board of Trustees recognizes their defense of civil rights and press freedom and their able stewardship of the power of the press which they have discharged with a sense of responsibility in keeping with the highest traditions of journalism.

I am very deeply conscious of the honor and privilege of having been selected to receive one of the Awards commemorating the life work of one of the most dedicated and well-beloved statesmen of the 20th century. I accept this recognition with due awareness of the distinction it confers upon me, leavened by my consciousness of my own shortcomings in the profession in which I belong. 

The response within me to the honor you have bestowed upon me is not one of satisfaction that something has been achieved, nor that some talent and skill I may have shown as a newspaperman and writer has been adequately rewarded, but one of humility and awe at the dimensions of the responsibility it implies for the future. It means to me that whatever I do as a journalist and writer in the future, whatever the mistakes I may have made in the past, will have to reflect, in such measure as I am capable of, that vitality, reliability and inspired leadership that Ramon Magsaysay symbolized in his life. 

The life of a journalist is not the romantic crusade that the script writers have made it out to be. The life of a journalist who comments on political affairs, as I do, is particularly perilous. But these perils are not usually of the kind that make heroes out of cub reporters or elevate painstaking and studious columnists and editors into glamorous buccaneers ready to draw their pens from their scabbards at the drop of a ballot. A journalist, a good one, might win a hundred readers overnight and lose two friends. He may lose the hundred readers a week later but he may never win back his friends. But there are greater perils than this and much nearer home. 

A newspaperman can lose his sense of proportion and perspective under the weight of political pressure or he can sacrifice forever his sense of human justice towards people of other races, religions and pigmentation, under the querulous demands of commercial or political expediency. A newspaperman, however fine and strong his nature may be, runs the terrible risk of losing his sense of human participation. He can easily lose that feeling that nothing human is alien to him. When this happens what is there left? Only the empty husk of a man. He becomes the kind of man who is hardboiled and blas, about other peoples’ tragedies and bitter about his own. He becomes cynical about human virtues as well as human weaknesses. 

In Asia we cannot afford the luxury of such sterile cynicism. Newspapermen have often to stand up against popular fervor when it is misdirected and agitated beyond the limits of law and order and fundamental human decency. He cannot sit back and merely record the passing parade indifferently. More than ever before, our tasks, our needs and our urgency are the same. We are involved in the possible growth or degradation of Asia. Let us hope that we will be given the strength to bear intelligently and honorably this involvement in the life of the people of which we are an articulate segment.

In 1896, MARY H. RUTNAM left the country of her birth to serve a people of a different race, creed and custom. Since then, she has for 62 years applied her heart, her mind and her medical knowledge with insight and understanding to the problems of the Ceylonese people, whom she has made her own. From her inspiration and leadership, volunteer and government-supported social services in many fields have grown and been sustained. Perhaps her greatest contribution has been the introduction into Ceylon of women’s institutes, known as the Lanka Mahila Samiti, that have done much to alter the status of village women. 

Dr. RUTNAM has labored particularly to enhance the self-respect of the less fortunate by showing them practical ways to improve their lot. At the same time, she has helped the more fortunate to recognize that it is their social responsibility and, indeed, their privilege to help their fellowmen. Her life and activities have been characterized by a spirit of service kindred to that of our late President. He, like her, cared for all people and believed in their dignity and importance. 

In electing MARY H. RUTNAM to receive the first Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the board of trustees recognizes her gift of service to the Ceylonese people and the example she has set by her full life of dedication as a private citizen to the needs of others.

I consider it a great privilege and honor to be chosen as one of the Ramon Magsaysay Awardees and to be able to be present on this memorable occasion. The ideals for which Ramon Magsaysay, your late President, stands have been a great example and inspiration, not only to his own people but to those of other lands as well. I greatly appreciate the privilege accorded to me of visiting Manila and meeting his beloved people who are today celebrating his 51st birthday in befitting manner.

I thank the Board of Trustees for the arrangements made for my stay here and the kind hospitality shown to me. I am sure on my return to Colombo I will have much that will be of interest and value to pass on to the people of Ceylon. My thanks are also due to the Rockefeller family who have been great benefactors to many notable causes. The presence of two of that family here today is a testimony of their great interest in all world-wide efforts for the uplift and benefit of mankind. I feel very proud of this opportunity of meeting them personally. I conclude by quoting a few lines written long ago but very appropriate for the present occasion: “The lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and departing leave behind us, Footprints on the sands of time.” Once again I thank you all.