Law is the cement of enduring civilizations, codifying aspirations of a people for their mutual well-being. The law thus must supersede the individual, yet, in its framing and interpretation, sensitivity to personal needs and simple justice are requisite for its continued acceptance. Especially is this so when diverse customs and values must be welded to shape a common national identity.

Tun SUFFIAN’s career parallels the emergence of Malaysia. Born in 1917 into a humble family in a kampong in the northern Malayan state of Perak, he was the first pupil of any rural school to win a Queen’s Scholarship. Study in England at Cambridge University was followed by call to Bar at the Middle Temple, London in 1941. En route back to Malaya, the Japanese occupation of his homeland caught him in Ceylon. Joining the war effort he began broadcasting to Malaya for All India Radio and later for the British Broadcasting Company.

The end of hostilities prompted SUFFIAN’s return to England to study public administration and social anthropology at the London School of Economics, before joining the Malayan Civil Service. Named Magistrate of Malacca in 1948, he also served as Harbor Master. Throughout the difficult years of the Emergency he was posted to such city and state positions as Federal Counsel, Public Prosecutor, Solicitor-General and Constitutional Adviser in Kuala Lumpur, Johore Bahru, Brunei and Pahang. He learned to know broadly his people and their problems. While serving as High Court Judge in Alor Star in 1964—after creation of the Federation of Malaysia—he was appointed Pro-Chancellor of the University of Malaya, and the following year became Chairman of the Royal Commission on Salaries of the Public Service.

Called to head Malaysia’s court system as Lord President in 1974, SUFFIAN’s life long pursuit of fostering both better government and better citizenship has not slackened. His book on Malaysia’s constitution, written in fairly simple language, was aimed at the wide public outside the university and the courtroom. The Government relies upon him to head commissions on controversial issues, knowing a careful study will be made on time and his findings will be trusted. Withal, in deportment and concern he has retained a sense of his simple beginnings, advising others in high office not to be dazzled by prestige.

Searching for a new legal synthesis that truly will make Malaysia a harmonious society, guiding the university system to relevance, speaking with a voice of moderation, SUFFIAN gives form to his motto, “life is service.” For the young of his nation he has provided a model of what can be accomplished for the public good by following this precept.

In electing Tun MOHAMED SUFFIAN BIN HASHIM to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his uprightness and humanity in adapting Western legal forms to realities of his own plural Asian society and shaping the public institutions of a new nation.

My wife and I are delighted to be here today to receive the Magsaysay Award. It came out of the blue on Saturday 3 August when at about 5:00 p.m. a friend in Kuala Lumpur rang me up at home to say that he heard announcement of it on TV a few minutes earlier. The Award came as a great and pleasant surprise.

Your late President Ramon Magsaysay cared for people and believed in the dignity and importance of the individual. He strove to improve the lot of his countrymen. He had courage, he had conviction. His ire was aroused whenever he saw injustice. He believed that freedom should be enjoyed by all. I shall strive to live up to the ideals that inspired him.

The Award is a great honor to me, personally, and I cannot express how happy I am to be in the distinguished company of so many eminent men and women who have been similarly rewarded, especially when I remember that two of the five Malaysian recipients were Prime Ministers.

The Award is, however, a greater honor to the judiciary of this region than to me personally, for you have never before honored a judge. I am very proud that I am the first and may I express the hope that I won’t be the last judge to win this Award.

In a developing country like Malaysia we are dependent on agriculture, fishing and other peasant activities which bring little reward in terms of material things, and our various governments do the right thing by bending their efforts towards fostering and increasing industries and manufactures so that we get more return for our labor and spread the good things of life among more and more of our people. So the emphasis, certainly in my country, has been to produce more and more economists, accountants, bankers, manufacturers; more and more engineers, architects, surveyors; more and more doctors, dentists, scientists, and so on, people whose efforts can result in increasing our bread and butter. Though during the struggle for independence lawyers were most courageous and skillful fighters and were always to the fore, yet after independence, apart from the few lawyer-politicians who man the cabinet and the legislature and the civil service, the importance of the legal profession has been eclipsed by the importance of citizens who fell the forest and till the soil; who build roads, bridges and houses; open and run schools, universities, hospitals, and clinics, and open and run factories, banks, insurance companies, and the like, persons whose efforts visibly increase the GNP and generally help the citizenry to a better and more prosperous life. In Malaysia during the period after independence the legal profession, as such, has occupied a back seat, and its role has never caught the public imagination.

Practising lawyers are themselves to blame for the comparatively insignificant part they are playing during the most formative stage in the history of our developing country. They tend not to see the wood for the trees, and in the endeavor to serve their client’s interest they get lost in a jungle of technicalities and forget that the law is also an instrument to be used for the general improvement of the community. The law is not something immutable, something carved on tablets of stone that cannot be changed. The law should serve man, not man the law, though of course man must obey it until it has been changed if we are to avoid anarchy. My philosophy is quite simple: having read in history books that the law can be used as an engine of oppression, we should, on the contrary, determine to use it as an instrument to improve the lot of mankind, as an instrument for bringing about a good and just government in a system whereby it is possible for us to choose the persons who decide our present and future and to change them at periodic intervals through the ballot box rather than the bullet.

Government is responsible for making the law, and governments try to enact just laws, but laws are made to suit the times, and when times change sometimes the law ceases to be just in its application to actual cases. I have always held the view that it is the public duty of every lawyer to bring to the notice of the authorities instances of antiquated laws so that they may be amended and brought up to date, in line with new circumstances and modern ideas of what is and what is not just. This is especially important in a newly independent country.

Having dealt with lawyer-politicians who make the law, and lawyers who practice the law, I now turn to judges. Their role in the courtroom is well known and there is no need for me to say anything about it. Today I would rather talk of the extracurricular activities of a judge. He should eschew partisan politics and not indulge in public controversies. His judgments are often reported in the daily papers, and are accepted for their impartiality. Accordingly, he enjoys a special place in the community, being regarded as fair-minded and not swayed in a multiracial and multi-religious country by racial and religious considerations, being guided simply by what is just. Enjoying the confidence of the public, outside the courtroom he should be ready to perform community functions—serving on a school board, or in any other educational capacity, doing work among young people, serving the Red Cross—and the Government may call upon him to serve on or head a Commission of Enquiry. The last is particularly true of Malaysia where everytime the Opposition demand a public enquiry they always stipulate that it be led by a High Court judge. The judiciary is naturally proud of the confidence shown by the public in our sense of fair play. My attitude has always been to accept whatever assignment is thrust upon me beyond the line of duty, provided that there are no political overtones to the assignment, for nothing harms the judiciary more than being involved, or thought to be involved, in partisan politics. No matter how humble his origin, when a person has become a judge he belongs to a privileged community and it is his privilege to serve the community in any capacity not inconsistent with his judicial office.

I am lucky in having been invited to serve the community outside the courtroom in several capacities. Other Malaysian judges have also been similarly lucky, but I am luckier than all of them, because my activities came to the notice of your trustees with very pleasant results indeed to my wife and me, for it has enabled us to visit your great country and meet so many interesting and wonderful people.

Subservience by women was their accepted lot in life throughout most of Korean history. The doctrine of Three Obediences—to father in childhood, to the husband after marriage and to sons in old age—prevailed to the end of the Yi Dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910. This traditional social bondage was only slightly modified during the ensuing 35 years of Japanese colonial administration.

The faith taught by Christian missionaries, allowed into the Hermit Kingdom late in the 19th century, and the schools they founded challenged old Confucian mores and the authoritarian ordering of life. From this crucible came women who had learned to work together in schools and churches and who had joined prominently in the Korean Independence Declaration Movement of March 1919. Although the Movement was suppressed by the Japanese military, the ferment continued. With Allied liberation in August 1945, hitherto inhibited talents of Korean women blossomed.

Despite the Korean War that devastated much of their country, women have continued to mobilize public support for modernizing their society. The Constitution reflects their ideas and determination. No longer are girls given during childhood in arranged marriages. Widows now can remarry. Property rights, divorce, access to schooling and entry into the professions all have come with a rush, mostly in the last three decades.

Dr. TAI-YOUNG LEE—Mrs. Y. H. CHYUNG in private life—is both a product of this formative period for Korea’s women and one of its architects. Born in 1914 into a family stirred by liberalizing influences, she was able to attend the new schools for girls, graduating in home economics from Ehwa Womans University in 1936. During the five years her husband was imprisoned by the Japanese, she supported their family as a seamstress and a teacher. Liberation afforded her the opportunity to study law at Seoul National University where she earned her degree at the age of 38 while raising four children; she later earned her doctorate there.

The first woman in Korea to become a lawyer and a judge, Dr. LEE naturally came to lead in achieving women’s rights. Since 1956 she has operated a private non-profit Legal Aid Center providing free legal counsel in particular to illiterates and poor women. In 1963 her years of persistent persuasion and of channeling the concern of women’s groups, resulted in enactment of the Law Concerning Judgments of Family Affairs and establishment of the implementing Seoul Family Court. For residents of the capital city and environs, the Court seeks, through mediation, rational solutions to complaints before passing any judgments.

From her school days, amidst all the vicissitudes that have beset her land, Dr. LEE has sustained an unwaveringly purposeful commitment to enabling Korean women to become full citizens. While championing their freedom from ancient thralldom and pursuing her profession, she has remained a conscientious wife and mother and inspiration for the womanhood of her country.

In electing TAI YOUNG LEE to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes her effective service to the cause of equal juridical rights for the liberation of Korean women.

I consider it a great honor to receive the Magsaysay Award as the late President Magsaysay was so highly respected by leaders and citizens of Asia and the whole free world.

I want to share this honor with my family and with all the women of my country, Korea. Korean women, who were bound as slaves for so long by the old traditional system and by custom, since the liberation of Korea 30 years ago have shown such great effort and ability in breaking out of this old pattern that their progress in raising the status of women must be highly regarded.

I am only one of these women, but I have tried to work with the other women, discuss with them our problems, study and do research with them and run errands for them. So, I feel that this Award should really go to all of the women in Korea and that I, as their representative, have come to receive it for them.

When the news came that I had received the Award, the happy voices of my office colleagues cried out in my small, crowded office, “The rain is coming from way beyond in the Philippine sky.” This means that we have hope; our Korean proverb for sustaining hopes goes, “You can’t tell which cloud will bring rain.”

Since its foundation 20 years ago, our Legal Aid Center has been undergoing a severe drought. While we have every day had a flood of women coming to us for help, we have been short of means, and my limited ability and the lack of understanding in our society about legal aid has made it twice as difficult to carry on our work. In this kind of drought our office colleagues have been encouraging each other with this proverb. Truly, it is a miracle that I have received such sweet rain from such a far off sky.

A poet has sent me a poem in which it says, “Some people have eyes to see.” These are very impressive words. The late President Magsaysay was always looking for the people who served the poor, the unhappy, and the weak who were suffering from oppression. The Philippine people who have inherited such a heart, mind, and spirit have eyes of wisdom to find even such a person like me. But I didn’t realize that the Philippine people had such eyes of wisdom to find our humble work. We never even realized you were watching us.

Coming from a Confucian society which teaches that man is always first, I was the first woman to become a lawyer in Korean history. But I have recognized my call and I have left my professional practice to start this Legal Aid Center to serve Korean women, although this has been somewhat like emptying the Han River by dipping the water out with a clam shell. It seems almost futile at times.

The reason is that the law discriminated against women so that it was of little assistance in our efforts to help them. Therefore, I started to work for the change of laws and the repeal of some. My effort to set up a Family Court and to revise the Family Law was inevitable and natural.

This year is Women’s Year. In order to assist more women I have been busy trying to build a Legal Aid Center Hall. This happy news came to me as a great surprise to give me encouragement and the responsibility for more sincere service for the welfare of Korean women.

At the time mankind was created, man and woman lived together happily in the Garden of Eden. But then the relationship was broken and the seeds of disharmony were spread. The idea that man has a right always to have the higher position while it is woman’s duty to occupy the lower one sets them off in opposition. Because of this function we have lost our peace and the advance of our human society has been retarded. Even so our women’s movement is not to create a new history but to reform the distorted view of history and through this work we hope to restore harmony to the universe.

I don’t think we need to name this the Women’s Year; I am sure we can build a society where we no longer have to set up a Women’s Year, still, the history remains. Though the progress is there, still we have to knock so the door of history can be opened. Instead of waiting for the gradual change, we must hurry and knock and open it. I must hurry so I will run to do it.

I think any man’s ultimate wish must be peace and happiness, but this starts with equality of the sexes. Order must find the right place and it should start in the home, then maybe we can get back to the Garden of Eden.

Normalization of the relationship between human beings is not done only by men or by the more powerful, but by all of mankind. The conscientiousness of all of mankind and their effort and wisdom should be mobilized altogether at this time. For this reason I think that receiving the Magsaysay Award now is timely, and accepting the Magsaysay spirit and philosophy will enable me to put it into practice for further service. I will stand by the oppressed and give my whole life for this cause as recompense for this Award.

Productively utilizing hitherto idle uplands and mountain slopes is an urgent challenge for Asian agriculture as populations burgeon and lowlands no longer are capable of growing sufficient food. Especially is this true in the Republic of Korea where only 22 percent of the land surface is cultivated.

Making these uplands produce food demands a type of farming new to most of Asia, accustomed to emphasis upon cultivation of rice and other grains. The predicament is acute in localities like Cheju Island, where a volcanic rock formation allows all rainfall immediately to seep down and prevents irrigation. On these slopes livestock do best with improved grasses and legumes.

When Father McGLINCHEY arrived on Cheju in 1953, just as the destructive Korean War was ending, he found “farmers extremely poor, yet basically very talented, while 50,000 hectares of land lay idle.” He took heart from what he had seen accomplished with sound livestock management when he had accompanied his veterinarian father around similarly poor agricultural areas at home in Ireland.

Upon completion of his language study in 1955, McGLINCHEY started his first pilot projects—teaching farmers improved hog raising. Founding the Isidore Development Association, he secured U.S. Public Law 480 corn through the Catholic Relief Services and built a feed mill that became the focus for other community development efforts. More than 77,000 hogs have been sold profitably since then, including about 1,000 exported monthly to Japan.

A Central Training Farm of some 1,000 hectares is the model for total livestock development. From New Zealand have come the breeding stock for a flock of sheep, now numbering 1,600, and also grasses making pastureland five times more productive than with native varieties. Hereford cattle from Australia are raised successfully and crossbred with native stock. To resist the devastating typhoons that periodically lash Cheju, McGLINCHEY constructed buildings on the principle of the ancient, vaulted Ctesiphon arch of Baghdad.

Today the Isidore Development Association is cooperating with 300 farm families to upgrade their cattle and hog raising. Abandoning his earlier lecture-type training courses as ineffective, McGLINCHEY has 78 trainees at one time living and working on the farm for 6 to 12 months. Upon returning to their villages, they are eligible to borrow one-half of the capital needed to buy sows or breeding cows from the credit cooperatives that have been organized.

This program offering practical benefit to farmers attracted private relief assistance from Germany, England, New Zealand, and Ireland for acquiring tractors and other equipment, breeding stock and for building plastic-lined reservoirs. Volunteers have come from Scotland, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, each to contribute his special skills; with the “crazy, redheaded foreigner” they are giving hope to fellow farmers on bleak Cheju Island. 

In electing Father PATRICK JAMES McGLINCHEY to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes his mobilizing international support and foreign volunteers to modernize livestock farming in his adopted country.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for electing me as the 1975 Awardee for International Understanding. Never in all my life, did I imagine that such a signal honor would be conferred upon me and I am considerably overwhelmed by the glory of it all. Since the announcement of the Award was made, I have been deluged with congratulatory cables, telephone calls and letters from people of all walks of life from all over Korea—from Cardinal Kim of Seoul, from high government officials and from farmers. I have lost count of all the newspaper, magazine, radio and television reporters who made the long journey to our farm area on Cheju Island. What I found truly astonishing and delightfully surprising was the genuine pleasure manifested by all, in my receiving this Award despite the fact that the Koreans have suspected for some time that I am not a Korean but an Irishman. It has often been said that Korea is the Ireland of the East and that Ireland is the Korea of the West. The people of both countries work very hard, if the occasion demands it. They both put up a hard fight for their rights. They are both of generally friendly disposition, do a great deal of singing and consume considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages—which is probably why they do a great deal of singing. Whether or not it is because of these similarities between the Koreans and the Irish, I do not know, but the genuine pleasure shown by them on this occasion is indicative of the extremely high regard they have for the prestigious Magsaysay Award.

I am, personally, truly gratified at receiving this Award for International Understanding. I have the honor of being a member of the Missionary Society known as the Columban Fathers. When we join the Columban Fathers in order to live as priests in the various countries of Asia, we do not abandon the citizenship into which we have been born. Rather we transcend this native citizenship and break down the boundaries of narrow nationalism to become citizens of the world. It is the avowed aim of every Columban Father to help build up and unite all the members of the human family, regardless of the superficial differences, which divide them.

Since I became involved in working directly for the farmers of Korea, I have become aware of the existence of a vast reservoir of good will amongst government officials, businessmen and young professional experts and students of many different countries. Large numbers of people are sincerely concerned about the worsening situation of the world’s poor. They are casting about for ways and means to break through the spiral of poverty, which holds so many millions of people in its grasp. The trouble is that the number of people in the world who are prepared to take the action necessary to break this spiral of poverty, is pathetically small. The problem will not be solved until the dignity of the human person is put at the very center of the scheme of things.

In President Ramon Magsaysay, the Republic of the Philippines has given to Asia and to the world a man who understood this fundamental principle clearly and who put it into practice. It is increasingly urgent that more and more people follow his way. What we need is a crusade, a great movement among those who have, to uplift those who have not. The economists and sociologists have long since indicated what basically needs to be done. But the narrow-minded selfishness must first be discarded. The Great Spirit of Ramon Magsaysay is an inspiration to us all to step out manfully upon the same high road trod by him.

In repeating my deepest gratitude for the signal honor on me here today, I pledge my utmost efforts to work for the betterment of the socioeconomic status of Korean farmers.

Drug addiction is a prime curse of modern urban life. Congested and accelerated living generates psychic pressures that are intensified by mass media often purveying fads. These circumstances have conspired to involve growing numbers of people with drugs: some profiteer, building the criminal networks for pushing drugs, while many more become the miserable victims.

This tragedy is compounded in Thailand as it is the chief export route for opium grown in the hilly “golden triangle” in the north where Thailand, Burma and Laos adjoin. Much of the harvest from this major world center of opium production is processed clandestinely in Thailand, ten kilos of opium becoming one kilo of heroin. Although legalized opium smoking was banned in Thailand over two decades ago, known drug addicts have increased from 72,000 to an estimated 400,000. Instead of opium smoking being principally a vice of middle-aged and older men, derivatives, chiefly heroin, are increasingly an addiction of the young, faddishly made captive of the habit. Opportunity to buy for the equivalent of US$5 a quantity of heroin sold in North America for US$5,000, encourages the underworld of dealers and smugglers.

Phra CHAMROON PARNCHAND became aware of the drug traffic as a policeman. After the end of World War II, disillusioned with the tasks assigned to him, he resigned to become a Buddhist monk, shaving his head, donning the saffron robe and begging and foraging for his sustenance. He and his companions were twice arrested while on tudong (pilgrimage); their walking around the country and discussing with people the Buddhist law, the dharma, was misunderstood as troublemaking. Release followed quickly when authorities became convinced of their sincerity and government help came when his treatment of opium addicts later became known.

Phra CHAMROON’s mentor in this work was his aunt Mian, a revered Buddhist lay nun, who because of her devotion and wisdom was treated as a senior monk. Together near Saraburi, 132 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, they founded in caves of the limestone mountains an interim shelter for tudong monks known as Wat Tham Krabok. At this “Temple of the Bamboo Cave” Abbot CHAMROON 17 years ago began perfecting the treatment for drug addiction he and his aunt devised. Addicts volunteering for treatment at the monastery, which now has some 100 monks in residence, take sajja, a sacred vow, never to touch drugs again and commit themselves to a new life. Oral treatment with a decoction from a selection of 100 fresh and dried emetic and purgative herbs and barks for five days is accompanied by daily herbal steam baths and frequent regular bathing. Another five days of recuperation—with plentiful good food and light work—follow, under guidance of the abbot and 12 monks who take turns with their fellow monks caring for patients.

While some Western-oriented doctors still dismiss the value of the treatment at Wat Tham Krabok, about 1,250 Laotians—sent by their government—plus some 56,000 Thais have been treated. No one pays; the nominal cost calculated by the abbot at US$10 per person for 10 days is covered entirely by donations. There have been reversions, a few deaths in terminal cases, smuggled drugs, violation of the treatment regimen, and suicides of those overcome by the prospect of coping without an escape from life’s realities. Yet for the great majority of his addicted countrymen, and some foreigners both of Buddhist and other faiths who will accept the vow of restraint, Phra CHAMROON offers release from drug enslavement.

In electing Phra CHAMROON PARNCHAND to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his curing thousands of drug addicts with unorthodox yet efficacious herbal and spiritual treatment in his monastery.

It is my honor to deliver the response of Phra CHAMROON PARNCHAND to the recognition he has received from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation as follows:

Some 20 years ago I committed myself to a religious vow not to use any vehicular transportation. This vow prevents me from being present at the Award Presentation Ceremonies on the 68th birth anniversary of the late President Ramon Magsaysay.

I want you to know, however, that the Magsaysay Award for Public Service has brought to prominent public attention the problem of drug addiction, and particularly the treatment service available at our monastery, Wat Tham Krabok. During this past week since the announcement was carried in our mass media, addicts voluntarily coming to our monastery seeking liberation from the cursed enslavement to drugs has sharply increased to more than twice the usual number. This means that more and more victims who have been lost to drug addiction will have the opportunity to return to respected, useful new lives in the community. The monetary portion of the Award will serve a very important purpose for it is sufficient to care for about 1,000 addicts. The fortunate 1,000 who will benefit from the Ramon Magsaysay Award shall be the aged—over 60 years old, the young—under 16, students and women, regardless of faith, creed or nationality.

At the present rate of admission it is likely that the stipend will be expended within the next two months—less than the duration of the monsoon rains. Remembrance of your far searching Award, however, shall be perpetuated. At Wat Tham Krabok a spacious new building, attractively designed and now in the final phase of construction, is intended for treatment of drug addicts. At another historic Ramon Magsaysay Award Ceremony on September 6, 1975 it shall be named Gusaling Magsaysay (Magsaysay Pavilion). In this building the Public Service Award medal and certificate will be on display to inspire and remind: that for man, good deeds bring forth merits.

Note: In respect for the abbot’s vow not to travel in any type of vehicle, the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, for the first time in the 17 years of its history, saw fit to hold a second presentation outside the Philippines. In a formal ceremony at Wat Tham Krabok on September 5, 1975 the Award was presented to Phra CHAMROON by the Philippine Ambassador, the Honorable Manuel T. Yan, with opening remarks by Dr. Dioscoro Umali, former chairman of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, and reading of the citation by Dr. Jose B. Abueva, a former trustee.

Encouraging economic and social progress in lands impatient for advancement requires that sound ideas be available to guide decision-makers and form the basis for informed discussion. Vested upon the fourth estate is responsibility for a critique of events beyond the routine concept of news reporting. The press is obligated to apprise the public realistically of available national and regional choices, the time and effort each may demand, and the benefits to be expected.

Such reporting needs intimate knowledge of the subject, combined with historical perspective. The writer must be aware of the boundaries of his own competence, for the temptation is ever near to presume to offer opinions inadequately substantiated by experience. As a generalist, the reporter must synthesize from the experts’ findings and, with utmost regard for accuracy, make these comprehensible and interesting to the lay reader.

BOOBLI GEORGE VERGHESE has practiced journalism within these exacting professional criteria with a perspicacity matched by few of his colleagues anywhere. His book, A Journey Through India, meticulously details development projects and their problems across the subcontinent in the late 1950s. Design For Tomorrow, published in 1965, similarly scrutinizes hurdles and progress on India’s Five Year Plans. In March 1974 his Will to New Purpose: Gandhi’s Truth Recalled presciently anticipated his nation’s new quandary.

Born in 1927 in Burma where his father was an army doctor, VERGHESE by chance became a newspaperman. He was completing his studies in economics at Cambridge University and hoping for a job with the United Nations when an opening for an assistant editor with The Times of India led to apprenticeships on the Glasgow Herald and the News Chronicle before he returned to Bombay. There and in New Delhi, where for many years he was chief correspondent of The Times of India, VERGHESE evolved his style of reporting.

In an occupation encumbered by cynicism, VERGHESE has remained an optimist with critical integrity. Despite all of its uncertainties and competitiveness, journalism for him is zestful. Yet his sense of public duty is strong. In 1966 he became Information Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, seeking to translate into official policy some of the convictions he had garnered as a reporter. From this experience in observing the limitations besetting administrative power, he moved to edit the Hindustan Times.

As one to emulate, professionally and personally, VERGHESE has few peers among a generation of Asian journalists. His accessibility, fair-mindedness, modesty of manner and lifestyle, and generosity bespeak individual qualities matching his professional competence. His involvement with work is as consuming as is his commitment toward moving India in the direction of self-disciplined liberty as charted by the late Mahatma Gandhi. In this VERGHESE has proven himself a worthy disciple of the father of modern India.

In electing BOOBLI GEORGE VERGHESE to receive the 1975 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his superior developmental reporting of Indian society, balancing factual accounts of achievements, shortcomings and carefully-researched alternatives.

I deem it a great privilege and honor to be chosen to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts in 1975.

Few achievements are individual. People and institutions are shaped by the environment in which they live and work. It is therefore the tradition of constructive inquiry nurtured by the Indian press and its growing readership over a century and more which I, in turn, acknowledge and uphold in accepting this Award.

The late President Ramon Magsaysay was a distinguished son of the Philippines, a man who felt for the common people, a leading statesman. It is entirely fitting that the Magsaysay Foundation should have named awards after him in the fields of government and public service, community leadership, and international understanding. If journalism has been added to the list, it is because Ramon Magsaysay was himself a great communicator who well understood the role of communications in politics and development.

The press, especially in a developing society, is more than a mirror. It stands somewhere between university and government. It has a duty to its readers, whose confidence it has to win and whose interest it must maintain and seek to enlarge day after day. But its true constituency is society, the community as a whole—the illiterate, who cannot read newspapers; the impoverished, who cannot buy them; and the underprivileged, whose problems and aspirations need to be articulated.

Asian newspapers, indeed the media as a whole, cannot afford to be or remain an elitist and predominantly urban phenomenon. For that would be to turn their backs on the masses and to ignore the true message—of development and the fight against poverty. And nowhere have the people to be educated and organized for change more than in the countryside—in the farms and villages; and in the slums—the vast, sprawling, inadvertent cities being spawned by runaway rural migrants, Malthusian refugees.

Change is the law of life. But to what kind of change must the masses of Asia aspire? Imitative change is to be avoided, and there are dangers in the blind adoption of Western or other imported development models. Modernization does not necessarily imply Westernization; nor should it suggest a wholesale turning away from tradition and cultural values, shorn of superstition and dead habit.

India, for its part, is rediscovering the message and the wisdom of Gandhi, a man far ahead of his time. The Mahatma was concerned with the quality of life, starting with what he called “the last man.” He believed in building from below. His goal: “To wipe the tear from every eye.” He preferred consensus to competition, emphasized right means and placed society above the state.

At a moment in history when even the most affluent nations are in search of an alternative society, the countries of the Third World too need to rethink their future. Where are they headed? To what should they aspire?

In this quest our countries have much to learn from one another while absorbing whatever is of value from elsewhere. And in this task too, the press has its part to play. The Magsaysay Award, by focusing on Asian experience and bringing Asians together, contributes to this purpose.

My wife, Jamila, and I are grateful to the Board of Trustees for your gracious invitation to this ceremony and for the opportunity to visit this beautiful country. We shall return enriched by this experience and by the many friendships made.

For me, the Magsaysay Award will ever remain an inspiration.