Executive socio-economic and financial outline with special reference to Sri Lanka
Executive socio-economic and financial outline with special reference to Sri Lanka
Executive socio-economic
and financial outline
with special reference to
Sri Lanka
©2002 Wendell W. Solomons
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From the inventor of the telecommunications satellite and the concept of the World Wide Web
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FOREWORD
How does one work through historical timelines rapidly? This little book chooses the sphere of credit in a specific country so as to accompany the reader through millennia.
Yet, the book also provides a service in helping the reader develop themes such as safeguarding the world city and its environment.
Taken in such light, this book would seem a boon to executives in business and those preparing for careers.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke
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The Governor-General was Sir Andrew Caldecott. He knew of several representations made at the State Council about the need for a bank to serve the island of British Ceylon.
When first proposed in the State Council in 1932 by Kandy-elected George E. De Silva, the motion received lukewarm support…
However, an appointed Commission explained that money-lenders had become the available source of commercial finance for the average Ceylonese. Such money lending had become the province of migrant Chettiar clans (of Natukottai, South India) and of Pathan clansmen (locally referred to as Afghans or Kabul beys).
As much as 18% would be absorbed in transferring cash realised, say – through selling black pepper – between market and home town by the Chettiar chit system (the word `chit’ entered English from the subcontinent; Portuguese `caixa’ was a still earlier adoption for `cash’ from Sanskrit `karsa.’)
The Commission’s study and proposal for creation of a state-aided bank gained support from across the local political spectrum. In the State Council supporters included H. W. Amarasuriya, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, Claude Corea, E. W. Perera, G. G. Ponnambalam and P. Sundaram.
Someone had to take the hot chestnuts from the fire for the idea was a 50% government ownership of the bank. Here was futurism in contrast, say, to the private handling, then by Montegu Norman, of the Bank of England, dubbed the old lady of Threadneedle Street. Out in metropolitan London in consequence, an appointed committee of private bankers torpedoed the idea of the British government controlling 50% of the share capital in the proposed bank. However, with the support of devoted and articulate men, Sir Andrew Caldecott opened the Bank of Ceylon for business on 1st August 1939.
THE HISTORICAL SETTING
This thought for the island community contained millennia of history.
History tells us of the “Noble Eightfold Path” taught by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. In the fifth aspect of this Path, the great teacher taught that the giving of money on interest was not a “Right Livelihood” or in the original Pali language – Samma Ajiva. His teaching was encapsulated in the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, the sage’s foundational and first enunciated discourse in the Deer Park, near modern Benares.
In the Commandments at Mount Sinai it appeared as “You shall not steal.” In the island of Lanka, Buddhists expressed it as “Not to Take What is Not Given.”
Buddhists consolidated resources – say for re-tiling a house – through interest-free savings put together by participatory savings circles of friends and relations (e.g., `Seetu’). Similarly, without raising loans on interest, infrastructure for the community domain such as roadways or reservoirs were defined for creation through (a) voluntary or (b) regally / clerically mediated donations of labour day (e.g., `Rajakariya.’)
The commitment of Pali vernacular slokas (cf. Gk `logos’) to manuscript came several centuries after the Buddha. About the same time the collation and translation of Hebrew scriptural writings into the Greek language Septuagint was completed. The inspiration came from Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) whose rule as king of Egypt began in 284 BC.
The Septuagint led the Greek annals of Christianity. In the New Testament the only act of violence recorded of Jesus of Nazareth is his taking of a whip into his hands to evict money dealers (`kermatistes’ in the original Greek) from the temple. When the early Christian church developed, it too discouraged loans on interest. In the British Isles where Christianity had arrived through missionary Patrick, followed by the Benedictine abbeys of missionary Augustine, King Edward I banished money-lending clans from his kingdom in 1292.
In Islam of the 7th Century, Prophet Mohammed