'BUCHMAN KI JAI!'

The talk of the hour was the barter agreement just negotiated by the Minister of Trade, R. G. Senanayake - known as 'China Dick' - whereby Ceylon was to exchange her rubber for Chinese rice. Ceylon had always been an exporter, not an importer, of rice. But rice lands had been put down to more profitable crops like tea and rubber, and besides, to save labour, rice seed was being broadcast instead of planted in the old way, thus sometimes reducing the crop to around a quarter of the old yield.

One day the Minister of Food invited Buchman to see a demonstration of the old method by a thousand women in the lush green paddy fields sixty miles out of town. Buchman took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers and planted the first shoot - for him a painful exercise. Paul Kurowski, the German miner, and many of the other visitors followed suit. When asked to address the workers Buchman said, 'What you are doing today is most significant. There is enough rice in the world for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.* And there is another great truth I want to utter. If everyone cares enough and everyone shares enough, won't everyone have enough?'

Buchman planting rice in Ceylon

(* This phrase has been widely attributed to Gandhi. In fact, it appeared first in Buchman's East Ham Town Hall speech on 4 June 1938.)

The Prime Minister gave a reception in the garden of his residence, Temple Trees, and Kotelawala, who was soon to succeed him, did likewise. The sessions of the conference with which the visit ended were attended by cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, diplomats from East and West, Buddhist priests, Christian missionaries, tea-planters and workers, dockers and the dock superintendent, school children - a lively and unpredictable mixture. In Bombay Buchman received a cable from the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, expressing 'deep gratitude'. 'We feel the hour calls for the continuance of this work in Asia in the interests of unity, security and peace,' it said.4 But the message which pleased him most was from 'China Dick', who said, 'You have definitely brought an easing of the tension, even in the Cabinet.'5

The voyage to Bombay was a blissful rest, especially for the stage crew who had been working for forty-eight hours virtually without sleep. But it was not all holiday. The first evening Buchman said to one of the chorus, 'On our last night at sea we will give a concert for everyone,' and seemed surprised when it was pointed out that tomorrow would be the last night. However, the concert took place, preceded by a reiteration of the health rules for the trip. No fruit must be eaten unless protected by a skin, and no salads at all. Other precautions clearly stemmed back to Buchman's Indian experience thirty years before: everyone had to wear a topee - and a belly-band. 'That goes for you too, Emily,' interjected Buchman, pointing to the venerable Mrs John Henry Hammond, née Vanderbilt. Buchman's science may have been somewhat outdated, but at the end of the eight-month tour the group of two hundred had travelled the length and breadth of the sub-continent with hardly any serious illness.

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Photo: Buchman planting rice in 1952 in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), at the beginning of a tour of Asian countries.
©David Channer/MRA Productions