Social Scientist. v 10, no. 110 (July 1982) p. 61.


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BOOK REVIEW

NANDASENA RATNAPALA (ED), COLLECTED WORKS OF A. T. ARIYARATNE, Volume I, Publisher Unknown, Rs.60.

Through a terminology and logic understandable only to such 'enlightened' persons they often persuade governments, institutions and persons of the 'developed world5 to come to the aid of their poor people. The local 'elite' have mastered the economic and political jargon which help successful negotiation of these master aid programmes, (p.88, Collected Works of Ariyaratne).

At the moment, the Dutch co-financing organization NOVIB supports the general programme (of Sarvodaya). Other organizations such as Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, OXFAM - England and OXFAM-Canada, and 11-11-11 Campaign-Belgium are supporting special projects, (p.42, Collected Works of Ariyaratne).

AS far as the reviewer is aware, there arc no collected works of Sri Lankan individuals — even of such important ones as Ananda Coomaraswamy or Anaganka Dharmapala. The present collection (printed in the Netherlands, funded by a Dutch aid organization, yet place of publication unknown) by Sarvodaya leader A.T. Ariyaratne is the first such collected works. Ariyaratne's collected works deal with the "philosophy" of his movement, Sarvodaya.

The papers of Ariyaratne reproduced here have one general characteristic: they are very uneven and of low academic quality, a gap which incidentally is amply filled by generalities and platitudes. This lack of an academic rigour may be excused in a writer fired by a vision, yet, strangely, there is no feeling of fervour or excitement in the text that one would expect in the case of the leader of an alleged national, social movement. The Sri Lanka Sarvodaya "philosophy", as the editor himself admits, is "eclectic" (p.8) and is "still growing" (ibid). Let the philosopher-leader speak for himself about the "philosophy".

"The Sarvodaya philosophy is a synthetic ideology and a universal concept. All forms of creative altruism and evolutionary humanism, be it from the marxian aim of material integration, Rousseau's option of social integration or Asoka's endeavour of moral integration, just to give a few examples, are inherent in the Sarvodaya philosophy prectised by us, for ours is an attempt to bring about total human integration" (p.48). The philosophy, as summarised in



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