A Conscientious Objector

Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne, 76, founded the Sarvodaya Shramandana movement in 1958. The idea was to promote the development of Sri Lankan society in ways that would empower ordinary people. In part it was a response to the sometimes destructive demands of Western foreign aid organizations, whose requirements, Ariyaratne felt, often ignored the needs and expectations of the society they were ostensibly trying to help. One way of surmounting this problem was by organizing development according to familiar and established traditions of self-empowerment—particularly those embodied by Buddhist teaching. Today the group tries to inspire Sri Lankans to find their own hands-on solutions for the problems they face, in the hope that they will find individual self-fulfillment as well as improve life for their own communities. Along the way Sarvodaya Shramandana has become one of the most powerful groups advocating a peaceful solution to the country's 25-year civil war. NEWSWEEK's Christian Caryl spoke with Ariyaratne on the phone from Sri Lanka. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What is your organization trying to achieve?
Ahangamage Tudor Ariyaratne: For the last 50 years we have been able to work in about 15,000 villages in the country. We are trying to help people to improve their living conditions by trying to meet their own self-reliance and potential, by trying to meet their own human needs. Gradually, stage by stage, we are trying to help them provide services to themselves in health, education, communication. Ultimately we are hoping to bring them to a point where they can manage their own affairs.

What is specifically Buddhist about this program?
This is all based on the teachings of the Buddha. In the first place, Buddha advocated that we should obey the five precepts: nonkilling, nonstealing, non-sexual indulgence, nonviolence and nonintoxication. These five precepts are the fundamentals on which we work. We believe that human beings should develop four characteristics Buddha has taught us: to practice loving kindness toward all living beings, to engage yourself in compassionate action, to gain joy out of serving other people and to work in a spirit of equality. These four principles help a person to develop one's personality. From them we can derive another set of principles for the community that we wish to practice. One is sharing, to share your efforts or whatever you have. The second is pleasant language, a language of compassion and respect. The third is constructive activity, the effort to direct your actions toward real and positive achievement. And the fourth is equality in association.

You've been remarkably successful. Now your movement encompasses some 11 million people across the island. How have you managed to achieve this success?
One thing is that we have a dedicated group of people who try to live according to these principles and who strive to organize the communities and to help them to help themselves. If you have a Buddhist background it leads you to help the people to understand and to get involved in what we are doing. So, yes, so far I think we have been very successful.

You're one of the few organized groups in Sri Lanka that has consistently lobbied for peace and an end to the civil war. Could you talk about that?
Right from the inception of our movement we have been insisting that our society should be a nonkilling society. In other words, we should not accept violence to solve any problems. Nonviolence is one of the fundamental principles of our organization. So right from the beginning people knew that we're an organization that does not practice any violence. Second, in Sri Lanka we have Sinhalese and Tamils and other groups as well, so we have made a point from the start of living equally with everyone without any racial or ethnic discrimination. People know we are not divided by religion or ethnicity or class. We are working with everybody, for everybody—even those who have taken up arms and done harm. We do not encourage anyone to do violence or bring violence. Therefore we are able to work in all parts of the country—even those controlled by the Tamil Tigers, except in two districts where fighting is going on.

Sri Lanka is a very polarized society today. Does your approach meet with resistance in some quarters?
Not openly. We are also an organization with large numbers of people behind it. They don't like to antagonize us, because we are a large part of the community.