The making of One World progresses only as citizens of all nations sense a shared pleasure in knowing one another. This is a human dimension, more fundamental than the political and economic rivalries, which now divide us. As popular, non-verbal art forms, music and the dance are uniquely fitted for this purpose. 

From the rich cultural heritage of the Philippines, the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER has distilled and designed a superior choreography with appropriate musical score and songs, costumes, stage settings and lighting. Such technical proficiency has been matched by a regimen of disciplined training for the largely amateur dancers and musicians. Management of performances at home and tours abroad has been fully professional, yet with the enthusiastic cooperation of sponsors, parents and patrons in the best bayanihan (working together) tradition. Recognition won by the Philippine Bayanihan Dance Company in capitals of Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas is the product of such sustained enterprise by all. 

Philippine Women’s University began research on dances and related epics among ethnic groups throughout the Islands more than 40 years ago. Ancient rituals and ceremonials of Muslims and Pagans were recorded and there artifacts collected. Diverse customs and dances of the Christian communities were studied and later filmed. Scholars and artists joined talents to develop performances evocative of the best they had learned. 

Beginning with their first appearance abroad at the Pakistani Folk Dance and Music Festival late in 1954, the dancers and musicians from Philippine Women’s University enlarged their repertoire for presentation at the Brussels Universal Exposition of 1958. Applauded and invited to perform before ever-growing audiences, the Bayanihan Company prompted creation of the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER. Supported by both the Bayanihan Folk Arts Association and Philippine Women’s University, the CENTER’s performers have become a popular international institution, appearing at World’s Fairs in Seattle and New York and winning new understanding of the Philippines from Caracas to Tel Aviv and Canberra. By example, they have helped stimulate other Philippine folk dance troupes and so broadened participation by young people.

In an era when the search for a sense of national identity often runs counter to the need for international acceptance of man’s brotherhood, the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER has shown that both can be well served, the one in complement to the other. For discovering in each other’s folk traditions the universals of joyfully working and celebrating together brings to persons everywhere a fuller sense of kinship. 

In electing the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER and its supporting entities to receive the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes their projection of a warm and artistic portrayal of the Filipino people to audiences on five continents.

On the occasion of the granting of the Ramon Magsaysay Award to the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER and its supporting entities, I wish to recall that it was the successful practice by the late President Magsaysay of the traditional Filipino bayanihan (working together) way of life which inspired us to adopt the name “Bayanihan” for the pioneering efforts of Philippine Women’s University to revive, preserve and disseminate our people’s folk arts and folkways.

I recall that soon after his election President Magsaysay recruited many of us—private citizens who were not involved in the political campaign—to work with and for the government on a voluntary basis. This widespread recruitment resulted in the organization of the Rice Commission, the President’s Good Neighbor Commission for Asian Countries, the Cultural Committee for the Brussels Exposition, the President’s San Luis (Pampanga) Rural Reconstruction Committee and others. This mobilization of private citizens and civic organizations found culmination in the official presidential declaration of June 30, 1955 as Civic Organizations Day. On that day for the first time in our country all the leading civic organizations of the Philippines met together in Manila with the late statesman and former president Sergio Osmena as guest speaker, to manifest their common desire to work together for the general welfare in the spirit of the ancient bayanihan folkway. 

And when the original commitment of President Magsaysay to send a cultural mission to the Brussels Universal Exposition was honored by President Garcia, it was again the old Filipino bayanihan tradition that inspired us in the Philippine Women’s University to offer to our government the Philippine Bayanihan Dance Company, with the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER conducting the research and training and a Citizens and Parents Committee in charge of fundraising and arrangements. 

Perhaps on this occasion it is worthwhile pointing out how the bayanihan way of President Magsaysay underlies the success underscored by the granting of this Award. 

In line with the mission of all true universities of promoting research, conserving, teaching and transmitting a nation’s cultural heritage, and in taking cognizance of a similar pioneering undertaking under the leadership of the late Dr. Jorge Bocobo, President, University of the Philippines, the BAYANIHAN FOLK ARTS CENTER was officially created. Its goal was to revive not only folk music and dance for the Brussels Program, but also all other forms of folkways and arts, and to open participation to entities outside the Philippine Women’s University. In this undertaking not only were other departments of the PWU directly involved but also private citizens and government officials in the true bayanihan way. 

To formalize citizen support, the Bayanihan Folk Arts Association was set up thus giving an outlet for civic-minded citizens who are able and willing to help their neighbors and their country. Bayanihan is a concrete exemplification of democracy and Christianity in action. I consider the success of our Bayanihan organizations a fitting tribute to the memory of Ramon Magsaysay. I am happy and proud to make this public acknowledgment on behalf of all who made contributions and helped in the creation of this dance team. 

In conclusion, having demonstrated in a particular project the value of the bayanihan way of working together, we are pledged to continue to diffuse the idea of a way of life that was above all exemplified in the man we honor today — Ramon Magsaysay.

The film has few peers among the major communications media created by advances in science and today molding human aspirations and behavior. So pervasive is its influence that the film now often supersedes the novel and the dramatic stage as a means of enabling the individual to perceive a deeper reality in his own existence. When used in documentation of contemporary society it becomes a kind of journalism. 

Yet in Asia as elsewhere, this powerful medium has often served to disguise consequential issues. Entertaining and diverting, films frequently foster expectations without awareness of the demands upon the individual for their realization. 

It is AKIRA KUROSAWA’s matching of mastery of his art, in all its technical sophistication, with unrelenting concern for the “humanism” of the individual that lends his work a special quality. His sensitive treatment of this intrinsic element has sharpened the awareness of those he has reached. 

Now 52 years old, this accomplished film director has devoted a quarter of a century to the sustained inspired labor that is requisite for achievement of any high goal. Starting as a young artist-apprentice with the Photo Chemical Laboratory, one of Japan’s pioneer movie makers, he was fortunate in finding as his teacher Kajiro Yamamoto, a director then second to none in the country. 

Long before KUROSAWA’s film, Rashomon, won the Grand Prix at the Venice International Film Festival in 1951, he had painstakingly evolved his method for coaxing the best from actors using scripts he had helped write. In the detailed, precise effort he devotes to editing, he reveals the conscientious craftsman. Fame from a succession of superior films produced since then has not tempted him to slacken his standards. 

Quiet, intense and stubbornly determined, KUROSAWA shuns the publicity that easily engulfs luminaries in the film industry. He lives unpretentiously with his wife and their two children, cultivating his liking for antiques and his friends. The same concern for being genuinely and zestfully human is as evident in his personal life as it is in his art.

In electing AKIRA KUROSAWA to receive the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his perceptive use of the film to probe the moral dilemma of man amidst the tumultuous remaking of his values and environment in the mid-20th Century.

Frankly speaking, I was surprised when I received a cable from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation informing me that I had been elected as one of the Awardees this year. I had not been aware that my works had been receiving such a warm and kind appreciation from you people in this great country. I am never good at making a speech, but I assure you that this is the happiest moment in my life, and that my future works will reflect how deeply this great Award impresses me. 

Let me end by paying a deep and heartfelt homage to the memory of the great President, a defender of fundamental principles of democracy and freedom, a really historic personage, after whom this Award has been named.

The career of Dr. PUEY UNGPHAKORN confirms that a single individual can make significant contributions to the progress of his country, despite a tendency toward official corruption evident in many developing lands. Thailand?s relative prosperity and steady growth matched by stable finances are a measure of his accomplishment. 

After wartime service in the Free Thai Movement and doctoral studies in England, Dr. PUEY joined the Ministry of Finance in 1949 as a third-grade official in the Comptroller General’s Office. Hardworking and brilliant, within the next three years he became one of the principal negotiators in securing World Bank loans for rehabilitation of his country’s railways and port facilities and construction of a large irrigation dam. 

Proven competence won him promotion to Technical Assistant to the Permanent Undersecretary of Finance and concurrently Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand. In these posts Dr. PUEY instigated reorganization of the country’s trade, foreign exchange and fiscal policies. A government monopoly on rice exports was replaced with a flexible premium system that made Thai rice competitive in world markets while keeping domestic prices of this staple within the budget of ordinary citizens. A single, more realistic exchange rate supplanted the former multiple exchange system while an Exchange Equalization Fund stabilized the currency. Thai accounting and budgetary methods were reformed. 

When manipulation of import controls threatened abuses, Dr. PUEY requested leave but instead was posted to the Royal Thai Embassy in London. Promoting foreign investment in industry for his country, he also mastered the intricacies of the world tin market, winning an increase in Thailand’s quota and election as Vice-Chairman of the International Tin Council. 

The Revolutionary Party that took power in Thailand in 1958 brought Dr. PUEY home to direct a new Budget Bureau and Fiscal Policy Office. In 1959, when a bank note printing scandal forced resignation of the incumbent, he was made concurrently Governor of the Bank of Thailand. Among the cautious yet continuing reforms he introduced were the Commercial Bank Act of 1962, low interest financing of raw material stocks for industry and creation of a central planning agency. Through this agency he initiated construction of highways to open inaccessible land for diversified farming, installation of an adequate drainage and sewerage system for Bangkok, and improvements in education to meet growing manpower needs. Over the past year he has also served as Dean of the Faculty of Economics at Thammasat University. 

Exemplary in the conduct of his personal affairs, Dr. PUEY, his wife and three sons live modestly on his salary as Governor of the Bank. He has avoided participation in tempting business ventures and gives earnings from his other posts to deserving people and social services. Repeatedly jeopardizing his career to abide by principle in defense of the public interest, he has become perhaps the most respected civil servant in Thailand. 

In electing PUEY UNGPHAKORN to receive the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his dedication, unquestioned integrity and high order of professional skill brought to the management of Thailand’s public finance.

In accepting the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, I wish to express my deep gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for having bestowed on me this great honor. To be called a dedicated, honest and competent government servant in the presence of this illustrious gathering is indeed the highest reward for all the toils, anxieties and sometimes courage demanded of a civil servant; but to be associated with the name and spirit of the Great Man, and to be thus included in the select list of worthy Awardees, is an honor which overwhelms me and make me feel humble and profoundly grateful. 

I hope the Board of Trustees will bear with me when I submit that their citation in my case has been very generous. Whatever deserving contribution I have made in service to my people would not have been possible without the collaboration and encouragement, indeed in many cases the initiative, of many of my friends and colleagues in the Bank of Thailand, the Ministry of Finance, the Budget Bureau and the National Economic Development Board. In times like this my mind also turns back to my old teachers at Assumption College, Bangkok, whose guidance in both moral and intellectual spheres has been invaluable. More fundamentally, I was most fortunate in having in my deceased mother — a widow without means — a woman who never gave up fighting against the most difficult circumstances in order to provide her children with the best available education and who expected from them, in return for her pains, only that they observe the highest standard of behavior. How much I owe to my wife, only I know well enough; and I also know that she would not like me to mention it. 

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, recently when my students at Thammasat University came to my room to congratulate me on this Award, they pledged themselves “to follow, through your example, the great spirit of Ramon Magsaysay.” These words of theirs filled my heart with joy and great hope for the younger generation. My youngest son, Giles, aged twelve, a stamp collector, also recited to me the following words: “Naniniwala ako na ang taong kapos sa buhay ay dapat punan sa batas.” [“I believe that he who has less in life should have more in law,” the excerpt from Ramon Magsaysay’s Credo printed on his commemorative stamp.] 

Thank you for bringing this noble inspiration to the youth of Thailand.

Throughout Asia few problems are more acute than those created by people flocking to cities unprepared to accept the influx. The slums that usually result are a blot upon any civilized society and make a mockery of popular aspirations for a better way of life. 

This dilemma has been resolved in Singapore in a manner that provides a model for much of the world. Completing construction of one new apartment every 45 minutes, on the average, at a cost of less than US$3.00 per square foot, the government can offer every applicant a new home within three days. These apartments, renting for US$7.00 to US$20.00 per month, offer kitchens, baths, electricity, gas, water and elevators. Erected in blocks rising up to 16 storeys, they are grouped into new communities complete with stores, social centers, schools, recreation facilities and delightful landscaping. 

As the person primarily responsible for this achievement, LIM KIM SAN became Chairman of the Housing and Development Board of the Singapore Government in 1960, and in 1963 was named Minister of National Development. Upon assuming office five years ago, he reorganized an earlier halting effort at government-assisted housing, applying quietly and carefully a businessman’s energetic pragmatism to the construction industry. Private contractors were encouraged to participate to the maximum, while their profits were kept reasonable and costs of materials were stabilized. Economic activity and employment generated by the building of some 60,000 apartments has been a major element in Singapore’s growing prosperity. 

Reclamation and construction of facilities for carefully designed industrial estates and satellite cities now promise that Singapore can “digest,” in a healthy environment, a population expected to reach two million within another 18 months. While continuing to expand government housing for the less fortunate citizens, LIM recently initiated the first major urban redevelopment program in Asia to transform the old port city into a modern metropolis. Private initiative and investment is being fostered to build apartments for middle-class and wealthier families as part of a harmonious commercial-residential complex on the 22 square mile island state. 

Alert to human needs, LIM and the government of which he is a part are broadening the base of private ownership by selling government-built apartments to individual families on easy terms. Meanwhile, occupants are learning to maintain clean premises, properly dispose of garbage, and otherwise to be considerate of their neighbors. Furnishings and household appliances, both tasteful and inexpensive, have been made available by enlisting competitive participation by architects and manufacturers. The community life that is developing in the glistening, well-managed blocks of flats that have replaced squalid, over-crowded shacks testifies to the concern and probity of the leaders who made this possible. 

In electing LIM KIM SAN to receive the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his marshalling of talents and resources to provide one-fifth of Singapore’s burgeoning population with decent, moderately-priced housing amidst attractive surroundings.

There is a saying in Malay, the national language of my country, which goes like this: “Lembu punya minyak sapi punya nama.” Translated, it means “The oil is from the cow but the buffalo gets the credit.” So it is with me here today. The great honor which has been conferred on me should rightly belong to the group of young, very dedicated, dynamic and unselfish men and women of my country who, by their hard work, foresight and devotion to duty, have made it possible for Singapore to complete successfully its first five-year low-cost housing program. 

It was my good fortune and privilege to be in a position to give them the opportunity to prove their worth, and the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership to me is actually a tribute to the young officers who worked with me and discharged well the responsibility that was assigned to them. This Award will undoubtedly spur all of us in Singapore towards fulfilling our aim of bringing about a more just and equal society, wherein every citizen will have the right to live in liberty and happiness and be given equal opportunity and expectation of a better life. 

Those of us who have emerged from colonial rule to become free and independent nations sometimes do not have enough confidence in the capacity and ability of our own people. My own rather limited experience in the last few years has convinced me that solutions to the problem of nation building lie mainly in our own hands. Reliance on foreign expert advice will bring us far, but not far enough to satisfy the aspirations and desires of our people. The hard and often tiresome work must be done by us and us alone. For it is only the citizens of the country who can get the feel of the situation which is essential in the solution of any vexatious problem. Singapore’s Housing and Development Board has only one expatriate officer among a staff of more than 800 monthly paid, and I hope that its record in the field of low-cost housing will convince other emerging countries that there are young men and women among their citizens who, given the opportunity, will show that they not only have the dedication, the determination and the will, but also the capacity and ability to solve their own problems, difficult though they may be. 

The Ramon Magsaysay Award, founded in memory of an outstanding leader of our time, keeps alive the spirit of international brotherhood. The high principles for which your great president lived, worked and died are continued, for, in making the Award, the Trustees have shown a spirit which transcends national boundaries and have made no distinction of race and creed. It is a beacon for the future of mankind and, if the spirit spreads, and spread it must, we can look forward confidently to the time when freedom can be enjoyed by all and man can live with man in honor and peace.

Like our own José Rizal, JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN has had the courage to see and say that forms such as independence, nationalism or socialism in themselves offer no adequate answers to man’s most basic needs. When, through bureaucracy, over-centralization, distortion of purpose or otherwise, they make tyranny a handmaiden, their worth is discounted.

Instead, NARAYAN begins with the individual, his yearning for liberty and his need to become equal to its demands. Through panchayat raj, or village-based sovereignty, he aims to restore to the rural mass of Indians meaningful control over decisions most intimately affecting their daily lives. The Sarvodaya, or Force of Service, Movement is his instrument. As its President, he has mobilized some 10,000 volunteers to carry this revolution in ideas to the countryside where they energize, and integrate with, efforts at bhoodan, or “land gift,” and local self-government.

Following in the path of his great mentor, Mohandas K. Gandhi, NARAYAN also has given new relevance to “non-violence” as a concept for resolving conflict and protecting the rights of minorities. In the bitter feud between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, he was the architect of an entente that opened the way for greater sanity. Rebel Nagas and ruling Indian authorities acceded to his persuasion in agreeing to negotiate the issue of Naga demands for a separate state. Tibetans resisting the imposition of Chinese Communist imperialism found in NARAYAN a champion who alerted his countrymen.

The route by which NARAYAN arrived at his present views and stature largely parallels India’s history over the half-century since his birth in a tiny village in the state of Bihar. Returning from study in the United States as a radical revolutionary and Marxist, he was repeatedly imprisoned and several times escaped arrest during the struggle for independence. Although the organizer of the Socialist Party and apparent heir to major leadership in his new nation, he renounced dialectal materialism and power politics a decade ago to devote himself to the more lonely and unrewarding task of enlightening and guiding his countrymen on crucial problems many were reluctant to face.

By personal modesty wedded to clarity of thought and force of personality, NARAYAN has shown that the moral strength of truth can make a difference. Some Indians regret his refusal to become involved in the complexities of administering government, but few can doubt his contribution in dispelling the myths of formulas that offer trite solutions. Through NARAYAN, India’s heritage of accumulated insights and methods for translating human values into action is being given contemporary relevance at home and abroad.

In electing JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN to receive the 1965 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his constructive articulation of a public conscience for modern India.

I feel greatly honored to be here today, a great day for the people of the Philippines, a day of remembrance and dedication—remembrance of a great leader of men and dedication to his great ideals of freedom and fulfillment of the human spirit. This Award and this day make it possible for peoples beyond these islands, which Ramon Magsaysay was privileged to serve and lead, to participate in this inspiring ceremony of remembrance and dedication.

I should like to express my gratitude to the Trustees of the Magsaysay Award Foundation that they found me deserving of this honor, and for their generous citation. In this I find not a personal recognition but recognition of the ideas that I have been pursuing and trying to translate into action. In that sense this Award will be a source of much encouragement to me and my colleagues in the work that we are doing to build a new India.

As an Indian I feel proud that since their inception, one of these Awards has gone every year, except for one, to my country. This indeed is an indication of the high regard in which the people of these islands hold India. Let me on my part assure you that the people of India reciprocate in full measure this feeling of friendship and hold you in great affection and regard. I hope these Awards will be a powerful bond to bring our countries closer than they happen to be today.

All the countries of the world—of Asia, Africa and South America—that have won their freedom in recent times and whose natural growth had been retarded on account of the bonds of colonialism, are trying to catch up with the advanced countries and build their societies as fast as possible. In this the model many have before them is that of the highly industrialized and affluent West. A few countries have set up before them the Eastern model presented by successful communism, whether Russian or Chinese. There is much in both the Western and Eastern models that is of abiding value and that the developing countries should accept and assimilate. The ideals of individual liberty, of government by consent and of the rule of law that the Western model has, by and large, emphasized as the true foundations of society’s political organization, are undoubtedly ideals that should be adopted and assimilated by the developing peoples. In the same manner, the concern of communism for the toiler and its drive toward greater economic equality are values that must also inspire and guide them.

But there are.in both models essential characteristics that, to my mind, should be rejected. In the Western model, the ruling ethic is that of individualism and competition, it being assumed that in the process the weaker will be driven to the wall. There is also an excessive emphasis on the satisfaction of material needs and their consequent multiplication, leading to serious imbalances. Western life is also unbalanced for the reason that sufficient attention is not paid, on account of the predominance of certain utilitarian and commercial values, to the interrelationship between man’s work, leisure, habitat and happiness. The drive towards urbanization, resulting in the monster of the megalopolis, has destroyed the community, divorced the urban from the rural and forcibly alienated man from nature. The result is a distorted growth of man and society.

On the other hand, the communist model also presents a distorted picture of human and social development. It strikes at the very root of man, by denying the primacy of his spirit and by deliberately suppressing it. By glorifying power and authority, as represented by the party and the state, and by making everyone and every thing subservient to them, it makes of society a vast prison house for the human spirit.

The new countries, therefore, while rejecting in totality both these models, must take from them what is of value and conducive to balanced spiritual and material growth of man and society. Happily, in the advanced countries themselves, particularly of the West, much thought is being given to this problem, and there is also some experimentation. These should be of great value to the new countries.

Development of science, both physical and social, has made it possible for the first time in history for human societies consciously to shape their future. But in no society, not even those where the sciences have developed farthest, are men prepared to be guided by science. They have their narrow interests, their prejudices and predilections, their concern with immediate things, their myths and ideologies—all these make the voice of science a cry in the wilderness.

As far as the new countries are concerned, even though they have an almost clean slate to write upon and a wonderful opportunity to select the best from the extant models and reject the rest, two circumstances make it almost impossible for them to do so.

Firstly, vast numbers of the peoples of these countries are too uneducated to be able to draw upon the teachings and techniques of science; and secondly, they are economically so backward and poor that their single overpowering anxiety is to secure before all else their economic development. This is understandable. But there was no reason to believe that economic development would have suffered if equal attention had been paid to the task of achieving a balanced human and social development. Indeed, if economic development had been thought of in terms of economic well-being of the mass of the people and not in terms of providing a base for industrial and military power, there should have been every reason to believe that the rate of development might have been faster.

Many of the new countries, it hardly needs to be pointed out, present such unstable societies—due either to their having become arenas of the power-struggle that rages between the mighty nations or to their internal situation—that they will be unable for a long time consciously to build their future.

Nonetheless, it needs to be stressed that even those new countries that are in some position consciously to direct their future course, have no clear picture of their goals apart from such cliches as democracy, socialism, communalism, industrialism, modernism and the like.

The central point to be stressed in this connection, and with that I wish to conclude, is that the question posed here is a question of values. Looked at from that standpoint it should not be difficult, not only to chalk out the course for the future, but also to achieve a consensus of public opinion behind the endeavor to reconstruct a new society.