Leadership was suddenly thrust upon TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN in 1951 at the age of 48. Assuming a task no prominent politician wanted, he became president of the United Malays National Organization when it verged on fragmenting over extension of equal membership rights to all races. Close friends had sensed his political acumen and observed the ability to find common ground regardless of color or calling that would make this son of a Sultan of Kedah a nation-builder and, in six years, Bapa Merdeka, or Father of Malayan Independence. 

Malaya’s progress toward nationhood then was mired in divisive factionalism. Eleven states, some feudal and others modern, held Southeast Asia’s least homogenous mixture of races, religions, languages and cultural groups. Roughly 50 percent Malays, 37 percent Chinese, 11 percent Indian, Pakistani and Ceylonese and the remainder miscellaneous minorities, each community in itself was a composite, with Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus speaking different dialects and holding to their ancestral customs. Most at odds were the Malays, sometimes arrogantly possessive of their birthright, and Chinese, with superior economic and educational resources they could use for gaining political control. A communist-led insurrection compounded these differences. 

ABDUL RAHMAN and other foresighted leaders determined to avoid violent upheavals comparable to Indonesia’s war of independence and the communal strife following India’s partition. They resolved that independence must be achieved by constitutional means, agreed on the absolute necessity for interracial cooperation and chose to promote a new “Malayan” citizenship. 

The TUNKU’s personal message was one of sincerity, generosity and firm common sense. Meeting supporters and adversaries alike in a forthright manner that was highly persuasive, he first clarified the issues and re-formed the UMNO. He then forged an Alliance with the Malayan Chinese Association and the Malayan Indian Congress, which won a sweeping victory at the polls in 1955. The nine hereditary rulers next were convinced they could retain their rights and privileges with independence. These evidences of political viability induced Great Britain to grant independence on August 31, 1957, and TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN became Malaya’s first Prime Minister. 

Re-elected in 1959, he announced that his chief purpose for the next five years would be cementing national unity. In two election campaigns, moving from city to kampong throughout the country, he has pleaded, persuaded and sold his idea of communal harmony. Keenly conscious of his people’s needs, he has made rural development a major function of a Government notable for its integrity. Though some guerrillas remain in the jungle, independence, a flourishing economy with one of the highest per capita incomes in Asia and communal cooperation have curbed rebel appeal, and, in July 1960, the Emergency declared 12 years earlier was officially ended. 

In electing His Excellency, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN PUTRA AL-HAJ, Prime Minister of the Federation of Malaya, to the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his guidance of a multiracial society through its constitutional struggle for independence, toward communal alliance and national identity. Emerging as a symbol of racial accord, the TUNKU has brought the communities of Malaya into a working partnership based on mutual rights and responsibilities and fostered an understanding, rare in newly independent nations, that the future is best insured with tolerance and goodwill among one’s fellowmen.

I have come on behalf of my father, TUNKU ABDUL RAHMAN PUTRA, the Prime Minister of the Federation of Malaya, to receive the high honor of an Award for Community Leadership which the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation is so generously bestowing upon him. 

My father has asked me to express his sincere thanks and his deep appreciation for your having singled him out as one of the recipients for award in the year 1960. 

He feels that recognition of his services in the cause of humanity is a tribute not to him alone but also to his colleagues and to the people of Malaya, for it is they who have made him worthy of your consideration. 

It was the people of Malaya who made the achievement of Malayan Independence possible. It is the people of Malaya who have worked to build up goodwill and understanding between all the diverse races in our country. And it is the people of Malaya again who have helped my father to establish a contented, happy and prosperous state in the Federation of Malaya. 

His burden has been made very much lighter through the willing and ready cooperation he has received from the Malayan people, irrespective of their race, creed or color. Through the help of the people also, the security forces of the Federation have been able to crush the Communist uprising which lasted for 12 long years. 

On the 31st of July this year, just one month ago, the Government of the Federation of Malaya, was able to declare that the Emergency was over at last, and that it could now remove all the Emergency Regulations which had restricted the freedom of the people during these years of trial. 

Today the people of Malaya are enjoying greater prosperity, greater peace of mind, and greater harmony than they have ever enjoyed before. The honor which you so thoughtfully give to my father in the form of a Ramon Magsaysay Award is most truly shared by all the people of my country. 

My father has sent me, being his closest kin and his only son, to come to Manila to receive the Award. Nothing would have pleased him better than to have been able to come here himself, but it so happens that this birthday anniversary of the late and great Ramon Magsaysay also falls on the day when the whole of Malaya celebrates national independence, today being the third anniversary of the great event. You will, I am sure, readily understand that because of this coincidence he was not himself able to make the journey. He has asked me to renew once again the feelings of goodwill and friendship which the people of Malaya have for the people of the Philippines. He also asks me to convey to the people of the Philippines his good wishes for the speedy recovery of President Garcia, whom he understands is not too well, and whose illness has caused a postponement of his visit to Malaya. The Malayan people had looked forward to his visit with great anticipation, and my father hopes that the opportunity for him to do so will soon occur. 

If I can speak for myself I would like to say also both as a Malayan and as my father’s son it is a great honor for me to represent him on this momentous day. Lastly I particularly wish to thank the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for the gracious hospitality and the warm welcome they have so cordially extended to me in Manila. This is the first time I have visited your country, of which I have heard so much, and may I say I have enjoyed every moment of my stay. 

On behalf of my father and myself I thank you once again.

JAMES YEN saw the tragedy of illiteracy among his own people in France during the first World War, when he was beseiged by Chinese laborers seeking help in writing to their families at home. Returning to China in 1920, he began a career dedicated to educating rural people who had no opportunity for schooling and reeducating the educated to share in this task. Through the years, he labored, sometimes alone, from one disheartening disappointment to another lesson learned, in his quest for ways to help farm folk realize their own strengths. 

The endeavors he has originated are milestones on the path of coping effectively with Asia’s age-old problems of ignorance, poverty, official abuse and lack of confidence in themselves among ordinary citizens. The “Ting Hsien Experiment” in North China was the first of its kind bringing scholars to live and work with the rural people. To this the wartime and postwar community developments in West China’s Szechuan Province were worthy successors. 

The Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction, launched on the mainland of China in 1948 and primarily responsible over the past decade for Taiwan’s peaceful and successful rural revolution, was conceived in large measure by DR. YEN. UNESCO’s Fundamental Education Movement in Southeast Asia has drawn much from his program.

In order that 30 years experience in China might be made helpful to other developing countries, JAMES YEN, in 1951, joined with friends in the United States to organize the International Mass Education Movement. After searching through Asia, Africa and Latin America, he chose the Philippines as a promising site where these lessons could be applied and an international center established to train rural leaders who would carry forward this pioneering work. A result is the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement which has begun to make a positive impression on life in the barrios it has reached. Stimulated in part by this private effort, the Presidential Assistant on Community Development, World Neighbors and other groups now are seeking to bring needed change to the rural areas. 

DR. YEN’s lifetime devotion to the cause he chose and the extraordinary talents cultivated in furtherance of this effort give expression to the ideals and spirit of service exemplified by Ramon Magsaysay. Born into a family of scholars, he has remained humble and at ease with the simplest of those whose lot he has sought to improve. These qualities have been translated into renewed faith and purpose by many who have worked with him. 

At all levels, from chiefs of state to legislators, government administrators, businessmen, field workers, and village people, JAMES YEN has spread the seeds of his mass education ideas to Asian countries. He has become a citizen of the world, who, by his works, gives substance to the dream that one day men everywhere may freely enjoy security, equal opportunity and a sense of international brotherhood. 

In electing Y. C. JAMES YEN to the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his sharing of experience and creative leadership in rural reconstruction and his bringing to East and West an awareness of the urgency for meeting the aspirations of the Asian farmer for a fuller life. 

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation particularly commends Dr. YEN’s continuing concern for the whole man and molding his social institutions, rather than simply refashioning the physical environment.

It is with a deep sense of gratitude and humility that I accept this great honor. Of course, I realize that this is not so much a recognition of any achievement on my part as a recognition of the basic importance of a movement for rural reconstruction and mass education with which I have been associated for nearly 40 years. Such an award given by such a distinguished Board in the name of such a great champion of freedom and education for the masses cannot but spur me and my colleagues on to greater efforts for our underprivileged fellowmen. 

We greatly appreciate the sympathetic and understanding statement made by the Foundation that we have a “continuing concern for the whole man and molding his social institutions, rather than simply reshaping his physical environment.” The village is important but the villager is more important. No village reconstruction can be truly effective and lasting unless the villager is reconstructed mentally and spiritually. Rural reconstruction is only the means, and human reconstruction the end. Gods noblest creation is not the sun, the moon and the stars but man because man is made in His own image. 

Now, let us see what is the state of our fellow man in our world today. To answer this question, I can do no better than quote President Eisenhower: “In vast stretches of the earth, men awake today in hunger. They will spend the day in unceasing toil and as the sun goes down, they will still know hunger. Many despair that their labor will ever decently shelter their families or protect them against hunger and disease. So long as this is so, peace and freedom will be in danger throughout our world.” 

President Eisenhower’s statement applies particularly to our Asia which contains more than half of the world’s hungry people! Now, what is the matter with us Asians? Is it because we have a low mentality, descended from a poor human stock? No, my friends. Confucius, Buddha and Jesus were all Asians! Nothing wrong with the stock. But what accounts for their being the victims of poverty and diseases? I will venture one reason. I believe our Asian ancestors spent too much time searching for ways of dealing with human nature, whereas the ancestors of the West devoted their time to discovering ways of conquering physical nature. As a result, they have developed what is called science. With it they have conquered the land, the sea and, before too long, the air. And to a remarkable extent, they have also conquered poverty and disease. If we are, therefore, to transform our Asian peasants into a modern people, a people that can conquer poverty and disease, we must take science to them. This, however, is more easily said than done. 

In the first place, modern science, as it is being taught in the colleges, whether it be agricultural or medical science, social or political science, is beyond the comprehension of the Asian peasant. To make it practical for them, science must step down. This is a great challenge to the ingenuity and creativity of the educators and scientists: they must humanize, simplify these complicated sciences and translate them into terms that are simple and practical so that the peasant people can understand and can put them into operation. 

This is also a challenge to the educated and privileged youth of the colleges. They must be willing to play the part of a science-missionary, to work, to live in the barrios in order to be teachers and to bridge the tremendous gap that exists today between modern science and the peasant. It is one thing to give improved seeds to the farmers; it is quite another thing to train them to select seeds themselves. It is one thing to give drugs to the farmers for diseases; it is quite another thing to educate them to prevent diseases. The one is relief, the other is release — the release of the potential powers of the people, so they can stand on their own feet and fight against and conquer poverty and disease. 

To combat diseases and hunger, science is important but science alone is not enough. If we pay attention only to science and technology but forget ideology, we may wake up one day to find that the people may have more to live on but little to live for. They may enjoy a full rice bowl, but they cease to be free men. It would be indeed tragic if we think only of the empty stomach and neglect the empty mind. While we promote science and technology to increase production and improve health, we must deliberately and vigorously push our democratic ideology. 

What makes the present situation in the Philippines so hopeful is that there is an increasing awareness of the urgency and basic importance of developing the “whole man.” Outstanding civic leaders representing business, banking, industry, education are backing up this movement for rural reconstruction and mass education. College presidents, professors, and scientists leave their city homes to go to the barrios to share their scientific knowledge and skills and adapt them to the simple and practical level of the peasant people. College-educated youth are dedicating themselves to become science-missionaries and freedom crusaders, living and working with the barrio people. When I watch these dedicated young men and women working, teaching, singing in the barrios with the poor and the lowly, the men make me think of St. Francis of Assisi and the women remind me of St. Clara. This is what gives us faith in the future of the Philippines and in the future of the peoples of Asia.

Distinguished members of the Board, your gracious recognition, through me, of the work of the Movement has given great encouragement to the members of our International Board in the United States and to our fellow-workers in different parts of the world. You have put steel into the hearts of our rural reconstruction workers. We are more determined than ever to extend this program of science education for the masses and the crusade for freedom to as many developing countries as we possibly can. We intend to promote national rural reconstruction movements in these countries such as we have done with our Filipino colleagues in the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement. Your generous award of US$10,000 will be added on to our International Scholarship Fund to encourage the finest young men and women to come from different developing countries to the Philippines to learn the techniques of rural reconstruction and to catch the spirit of a science-missionary and freedom-crusader. 

In due time, we hope to organize these different national rural reconstruction movements into a World Federation that will serve as a global force to promote international understanding and to assist one another in this urgent and fundamental task of mass education and rural reconstruction. So friends, we accept your award not so much as an award but as a challenge. The greatest challenge of the 20th century is not the exploring of the mysteries of the outer space but the developing of the millions of God’s forgotten children, the developing peoples of the world, so they can become our equal and full partners to build a better world — a world of freedom and brotherhood.

In 1900, Dr. HENRY HOLLAND joined the Anglican medical mission at Quetta, now in West Pakistan. He came to a small, pioneer hospital in a bleak land of rugged mountains and parched plains, where seasonal extremes of intense heat and bitter cold compelled the tribesmen to live a pastoral, nomadic existence. 

Among the tribesmen were brigands and Muslim fanatics whose lives were given to blood feuds, but the young medical graduate saw the courage and pathos of these independent people and prepared himself to help them. He learned three of their languages and mastered simple conversation in four other tongues. At the same time, he became expert in the treatment of cataracts and eye infections that were prevalent in the area. As the hospital’s and the doctor’s reputations spread, a motley “invasion” of patients began each spring and autumn when the nomads moved to and from their pastures. 

Swarthy Baluchi, wandering Brahui and tall, marauding Pathans waited their turn with Sindhis and Punjabis who had come up from the plains. Treatment was free for the poor. A pittance was charged those who could afford to pay a little, and even for the well-to-do the cost was nominal. 

Ten years later, Dr. HOLLAND extended his work, during the two winter months, to Shikarpur in North Sind, starting an eye clinic that today is one of the largest in the world. In slack periods, he made grueling journeys to encampments of tribesmen to patch up wounds and sometimes perform delicate eye operations. Quetta, meanwhile, was growing under his stewardship into a well-established medical and surgical center with a training school for nurses. For the HOLLANDS, medical service has since become a family tradition. Both sons became doctors and joined their father. Harry now is continuing mission work in England among lay Christians going abroad. RONALD has taken over as ophthalmic surgeon of the three. Like his mother, RONALD’s wife is a nurse, serving as an expert anesthetist and keeping hospital accounts though confined by paralytic polio to a wheelchair. 

Dr. RONALD HOLLAND has followed his father’s example in learning the languages of the area. Operating from early morning until nightfall during the busy seasons at Quetta and Shikarpur, he also remembers the distant tribes. Across the Baluchistan wastelands he travels by land rover or jeep where his father moved on horseback or by camel to bring relief to penniless nomads. Father and son have made significant contributions to medical science. Operating under severe handicaps, the HOLLANDS over the years have achieved a 97 per cent success with their eye surgery. Their methods for mass operative treatment under field conditions are now widely studied abroad, and eye specialists from around the world have come to work and learn at Shikarpur. 

The son, like the father, has not been tempted from his chosen work in Pakistan by attractive professional offers elsewhere. Imbued with a sure sense of vocation, the HOLLANDS welcome to their hospitals all who come regardless of faith, and the love that inspires their sense of public service goes out to everyone. 

In electing SIR HENRY and RONALD HOLLAND to share the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes the selfless dedication of their renowned surgical skills to combat the blight of blindness in a remote hinterland. In a Christian ministry of healing, they and their colleagues over the past 59 years have restored sight to more than 150,000 nomads and plainsmen and otherwise relieved the suffering of thousands more to whom no other help was available. Giving succor not only through medicine and surgery but through understanding, human touch, they have cared for all people as individuals and believed in their dignity and importance.

It is quite unnecessary for me to tell you how extremely delighted and surprised I was when I heard that the award had been given to my son and to me. 

Things are very different from what they were, and now I can look forward to my son being able with this magnificent gift to carry on the work which began some 60 years ago. It is delightful to know that, when our surgical team goes each year to our hospital at Shikarpur, it will ease our difficulty as regards the purchase of equipment from America for the ophthalmic side of our work, which has entailed the treatment and cure of over 200,000 poor villagers in Pakistan. 

Naturally, I should like to thank the Board of Trustees and the Rockefeller Brothers for the very generous grant towards our work, which upholds the aims and ideals of the late President Magsaysay, who himself always had at heart the welfare of the ordinary rural villager. 

The credit for the work is not ours, but belongs to our Saviour and Great Physician, Jesus Christ, in whose Name we work, and whose ambassadors we are.

In 1900, Dr. HENRY HOLLAND joined the Anglican medical mission at Quetta, now in West Pakistan. He came to a small, pioneer hospital in a bleak land of rugged mountains and parched plains, where seasonal extremes of intense heat and bitter cold compelled the tribesmen to live a pastoral, nomadic existence. 

Among the tribesmen were brigands and Muslim fanatics whose lives were given to blood feuds, but the young medical graduate saw the courage and pathos of these independent people and prepared himself to help them. He learned three of their languages and mastered simple conversation in four other tongues. At the same time, he became expert in the treatment of cataracts and eye infections that were prevalent in the area. 

As the hospital’s and the doctor’s reputations spread, a motley “invasion” of patients began each spring and autumn when the nomads moved to and from their pastures. Swarthy Baluchi, wandering Brahui and tall, marauding Pathans waited their turn with Sindhis and Punjabis who had come up from the plains. Treatment was free for the poor. A pittance was charged those who could afford to pay a little, and even for the well-to-do the cost was nominal. 

Ten years later, Dr. HOLLAND extended his work, during the two winter months, to Shikarpur in North Sind, starting an eye clinic that today is one of the largest in the world. In slack periods, he made grueling journeys to encampments of tribesmen to patch up wounds and sometimes perform delicate eye operations. Quetta, meanwhile, was growing under his stewardship into a well-established medical and surgical center with a training school for nurses. 

For the HOLLANDS, medical service has since become a family tradition. Both sons became doctors and joined their father. Harry now is continuing mission work in England among lay Christians going abroad. RONALD has taken over as ophthalmic surgeon of the three. Like his mother, RONALD’s wife is a nurse, serving as an expert anesthetist and keeping hospital accounts though confined by paralytic polio to a wheelchair. 

Dr. RONALD HOLLAND has followed his father’s example in learning the languages of the area. Operating from early morning until nightfall during the busy seasons at Quetta and Shikarpur, he also remembers the distant tribes. Across the Baluchistan wastelands he travels by land rover or jeep where his father moved on horseback or by camel to bring relief to penniless nomads. 

Father and son have made significant contributions to medical science. Operating under severe handicaps, the HOLLANDS over the years have achieved a 97 percent success with their eye surgery. Their methods for mass operative treatment under field conditions are now widely studied abroad, and eye specialists from around the world have come to work and learn at Shikarpur. 

The son, like the father, has not been tempted from his chosen work in Pakistan by attractive professional offers elsewhere. Imbued with a sure sense of vocation, the HOLLANDS welcome to their hospitals all who come regardless of faith, and the love that inspires their sense of public service goes out to everyone. 

In electing SIR HENRY and RONALD HOLLAND to share the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes the selfless dedication of their renowned surgical skills to combat the blight of blindness in a remote hinterland. In a Christian ministry of healing, they and their colleagues over the past 59 years have restored sight to more than 150,000 nomads and plainsmen and otherwise relieved the suffering of thousands more to whom no other help was available. Giving succor not only through medicine and surgery but through understanding, human touch, they have cared for all people as individuals and believed in their dignity and importance.

We received with utmost surprise the telegram announcing the honor of the Ramon Magsaysay award. We feel quite undeserving of this award personally, but accept it very gratefully on behalf of the whole hospital staff, as it is a tribute to the efforts, under the guidance of God, of a team of men and women, both past and present, Pakistani and British, American and from other nations, who have been welded together into a unity in a common purpose of service for those in need. 

It is also a very great privilege to be able to come here and see your lovely country and to pay tribute to the late President Magsaysay, whose courage and determined devotion to the ordinary people of the country is reflected also in the unobtrusive lives of many people throughout Asia, whose names will perhaps never be known to the outside world, but whose qualities and value have been so rightly emphasized by the awards given in his memory. These many thousands we are proud and happy to represent today and to identify ourselves with them in the tasks that lie ahead in the knowledge that all our work that is inspired and upheld by God will resound to His Glory.