The 1962 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

RESPONSE of Palayil Pathazapurayil Narayanan

I would like to begin my response with an enunciation of Newton's second law of motion which states: "The rate of change of momentum is proportional to the impressed force and takes place in the direction in which the force acts."

With your kind permission I would like to stretch this law in its application to human endeavor by stating that it is not only proportional but in this process of its interaction it becomes cumulative. And I believe that the Award should set in motion a chain reaction that would release an enormous force for positive action. This is what the Magsaysay Award means to me. It is my privilege and honor to announce here and now that I dedicate myself to spread the spirit of Magsaysay in my own country by setting apart half the amount of the award for a Workers' Education Foundation. Sages of Asia have told us that any positive idea is like the tiny seed that produces the great banyan tree that provides shade and shelter to a multitude of people. This award you have bestowed on me today I believe is the first stone that would cause the ever-widening ripples of philanthropy in my country and, I venture to say, would soon find equal response in other parts of Asia.

I would like to recall now the words of wisdom by the great American, Harry Emerson Fosdick, who said: "Democracy is a conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people and if the doors of opportunities are opened surprising consequences will flow from unlikely sources." I believe that the key to those doors is education, and we all know that democracy itself hinges on education, and it is towards that goal that this Workers' Education Foundation will completely devote itself in the days to come.

Let me assure you that this Foundation I hope to create will to a great degree reincarnate the spirit, the faith and the philosophy of Ramon Magsaysay, who lived and toiled for the small man so that no person would be denied the opportunity for a full life contributing to the enrichment of the society whatever his station in life.

Now let me pause and look back on the events that pulled me into the vortex of the trade union movement that has thrust me before you. It was 16 years ago. That was the time when the Communist Party of Malaya decided to snatch the government by force. The first move in their operation was to subvert the trade unions. Things moved fast. Every trade unionist was suspect; we did not know where to look for guidance. Subversion was the order of the day. There was massacre and arson. The game was loaded against us. There were the workers insulated by the feudalistic employers on one side and on the other the threat of the terrorists, who were determined to wreck any democratic trade unions. Under the shadow of this threat 11 good and true men met. It was on January 27th, 1946, that they met in dismal surroundings, and it was at that meeting that the idea of a union germinated. Today, this union, the National Union of Plantation Workers, embraces a membership of over 180,000. But this was achieved only after years of hard work and series of meetings to convince the sectarian unions before they could realize the benefits of national integrated unions. We have now gone far from the days of our beginning. We have achieved something, but there is a lot more to be done. This recognition of what little we have achieved will spur us on to greater efforts to promote the welfare and well-being of the workers.

Now I stand here in all humility as a representative of Malayan workers to accept this great honor. To me the greatest significance of this moment is that for the first time in the history of Asia the worker has been elevated to a position that his humble representative has been chosen to receive this Award.