Dr. Ariyaratne was given the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Jamnalal Bajaj award for his outstanding work to promote Gandhian ideals in Sri Lanka
Dr. A.T.Ariyaratne, who died earlier this week at 92, was viewed in India as a Gandhian par excellence. Indeed, if there was anyone in Sri Lanka who encapsulated the fullness of the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, it was Dr. Ariyaratne, the founder of the Sarvodaya Movement.
The Tamils of Sri Lanka hail S.J.V. Chelvanayakam as “Eelathu Gandhi” but Chelvanayakam’s contribution was restricted to the political sphere in which he stood out as a champion of a non-violent struggle for the Tamils’ rights in Sri Lanka. But Dr. Ariyaratne’s work covered a wider canvas, including social and economic development, social justice, and social and political reconciliation irrespective of caste and creed.
It was, therefore, not a surprise that the renowned Sri Lankan-American writer, educator and administrator, Dr. Patrick Mendis, described Dr. Ariyaratne as “Sri Lanka’s Gandhi” when he received the Hubert H. Humphrey International Humanitarian Award from the University of Minnesota’s Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in 1994.
India gave Dr. Ariyaratne the Gandhi Peace Prize in 1996. Earlier in 1990, he was given the Jamnalal Bajaj Award for “Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India”.
The citation of the Jamnalal Bajaj award said that Dr. Ariyaratne’s Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement became a household word in the context of self-help. Sarvodaya became one of the largest NGOs in the Global South.
“Sarvodaya has come to be regarded as a way of ‘building of a social infrastructure’. The movement has also led to establishment of Shanti Sena (Peace Brigade) which organises inter-community living and exchange. Another initiative for peace is ‘People’s Peace Offensive’ (PPO). Thus Dr. Ariyaratne is playing a dynamic role in the transformation of Sri Lanka,” the citation said.
The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement was founded in 1958 by Ariyaratne, then a 27-year-old teacher at Nalanda College in Colombo. Inspired by Gandhi and his disciples Vinoba Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan, he further developed the originally Gandhian Sarvodaya concept “for the welfare of all.”
The name of his movement Ariyaratne explained as follows: “Sarvodaya” signifies a thought and ‘Shramadana’ the implementation of that thought. In the initial years this concept was given practical expression above all in the form of one-week voluntary community service, called Shramadana Camps, in which students from the towns helped the inhabitants of particularly backward villages to improve their infrastructure; access roads were improved, irrigation ponds and canals cleaned, brick wells constructed, public buildings, schools and temple compounds repaired.”
“But right from the start the changes of consciousness and behaviour that took place in all the participants in the course of a work camp were much more important to the movement than the concrete, visible results of such mutual endeavours. These changes were fostered systematically through group exercises and by meditating together. Individually, everyone was expected to consciously cultivate the fundamental Buddhist attitudes of Loving Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy as well as equal regard for all living beings without distinction, while socially, generosity, friendliness, constructive cooperation and equality were also practised.”
“Between 1958 and 1966 more than 300,000 volunteers participated in hundreds of such activities and ‘Shramadana’ became a household word in the discussions about self-help in Sri Lanka.”
“The Government recognised the movement in 1965 as a public charity. But the further expansion and professionalism of its work was only made possible when foreign donors also became increasingly aware of its developmental significance and started promoting it in 1972. In the same year, Sarvodaya was legally incorporated by an Act of Parliament.”
Dr. Ariyaratne was an embodiment of the civilisational, spiritual, cultural and social consciousness that has bound Sri India and India since ancient times. The Sarvodaya Movement, which Dr. Ariyaratne founded in 1958 and led for decades, drew its inspiration from the philosophy and work of Mahatma Gandhi.
If Gandhi took the Indian independence movement to the many villages of India and made it relevant to their needs and aspirations, Dr. Ariyaratne took his Sarvodaya Movement to the villages and marginalised communities of Sri Lanka, addressing their issues and helping them overcome their travails. And he did that without seeking any return in the true Gandhian spirit.
Indian envoy’s tribute
In a speech delivered at the Sarvodaya Trust Fund on June 18, 2006, the then Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Nirupama Rao, commended the aptness of the term “Sarvodaya” for Dr. Ariyaratne’s Movement.
“Sarvodaya”, she said, meant “awakening of all.” Awakening has been the goal of philosophers since the dawn of history. Awakening has included awakening from ignorance. It meant sensitivity to the sufferings of fellow men and women.
Mahatma Gandhi once said that if there is to be awakening in society, it has to come first to the person who wants to be an agent of change. One has to be the change one wants to see in others, he said. Verily, Dr. Ariyaratne’s life and his work embodied the change he wanted to see in society, as it was in the case of Gandhi and Vinoba. And the Sarvodaya Movement, with its multifarious activities, embodied the concept of awakening in the fullness of term.
“Since 1969, when he won the Magsaysay Award (the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize), Dr. Ariyaratne’s has been a household name in Asia, and his receiving the Gandhi Peace Prize and the Jamnalal Bajaj Award was a reflection of the high esteem and regard with which he is held in all of India,” Rao said.
“In Dr. Ariyaratne, we have a man, who, like it was said of Mahatma Gandhi, is able to voice the sentiments of his country’s culture and ethos as probably no one else can do,” the Indian High Commissioner said.
She said that Dr. Ariyaratne was “the soul of simplicity, claiming no exclusive validity for his creed or religion, because we know that all religions aim at the same goal of the inner life, the inner truth.” Dr. Ariyaratne and Sarvodaya represented the age-old tradition in both Sri Lanka and India, a tradition of respecting diversity.
Having inculcated in his inner self and his work the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Ariyaratne saw politics as a branch of ethics and religion, not as a struggle for power and wealth, but a continuous effort to raise the quality of human beings. The task of politics was “to train people for freedom and fellowship, spiritual depth and harmony.”
In his work, Rao said, Dr. Ariyaratne had always striven for reconciliation, and the removal of suspicion, bitterness and resentment. He did not want Sri Lankans to think in watertight compartments as Buddhists, Hindus, Christians or Muslims but as one people.
“It was Jawaharlal Nehru who remarked that the voice and message of Mahatma Gandhi sounded so often to us as a reiteration of the Buddha’s. I know that the ideals of the Buddha have guided the work of Sarvodaya, too. The message and teachings of the Buddha, enable us to look at our problems in the right perspective, draw back from conflict, violence and hatred,” Rao said.
True leader
Sarvodaya, the Indian envoy pointed out, provided a strong anchor for those who were dejected and dispirited, and gave them the spiritual sustenance that enabled them to face life with a smile and with hope
Mahatma Gandhi laid stress on the manner of doing things, on the means employed. It was not enough, he used to say, to have a right objective, to have right ends in view, but also to adopt the right method and right means, and that ideal guided the work of Sarvodaya, Rao said.
“The true test of leadership is to draw out the best in those who work with you. I know that through Sarvodaya, thousands of people have been inspired to give their best to society, and to their fellow Sri Lankans,” the Indian High Commissioner said.
“The linkages between Sarvodaya and India are manifold and I need not elaborate on them. Suffice it to say that our two countries must share a precious and everlasting harmonious understanding cemented by the ideals of great visionaries like the Buddha, Emperor Ashoka, and Mahatma Gandhi.”
“Sarvodaya is very much a part of the tradition inculcated in us by those great visionaries. Let us, therefore, celebrate the work and the mission of Sarvodaya – the true awakening of all,” Rao said.
