UN Secretary-General’s Visit to Sri Lanka

U Thant embodies Asia’s UN aspirations

Some leaders are born great or acquire greatness, thanks to their potentialities such as personal talents or political ties. And a rare few have greatness thrust on them… out of the blue.

So when the aircraft carrying sitting UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld plummeted out of dark skies in 1961, the spotlight descended from the wide blue yonder to rest on a relatively unknown contender for the post of someone whose office makes him or her arguably ‘the leader of the free world.’

He was Burma’s ambassador to its Permanent Mission at the United Nations when a plane fell out of the sky – and a planet fell into his hands.

Thant was as unlike his deceased predecessor as chalk and cheese. He was a modest – yet, often enough outspoken – and down-to-earth ‘diplomatic type,’ while Hammarskjöld had been aristocratic, aloof and reserved or reticent in a cold Nordic way.

Those who knew them dubbed the latter, ironically, as ‘the Eastern mystic’ and assessed the former as being ‘direct, almost Western’ in his demeanour and doings.

In his 10 year tenure at being the planet’s leading diplomat, the Burmese national who parachuted into the top slot job proved to be a straight talking, self-assured and effective leader.

His shuttle diplomacy saw him flying the world over as an agent for deftly – yet, directly – negotiated peace in troubled hotspots, which included hovering over the Cuban Missile Crisis, worrying about the Vietnam War, and playing intermediary between India and China, in addition to securing China a seat at the UN.

In his praxis, he embodied the imperative for Asians to step up to the plate and grasp with both hands the destiny that then seemed to be shaping up his home continent as a contender for a spate of future UN leaders.

A nod to Sri Lanka in this respect was when the highflying UN Secretary-General visited Sri Lanka in his second stint at demonstrably the most influential office in the world of internationalism.

Thant declared open the United Nations compound in Colombo on 10 April 1967 and – being a practising Buddhist of no little repute for being devout and disciplined – visited Kandy’s Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic (Sri Dalada Maligawa).

In his 10 year tenure at being the planet’s leading diplomat, the Burmese national who parachuted into the top slot job proved to be a straight talking, self-assured and effective leader