Here I recall the journey we began 26 years ago. The journey has been long, painstaking and difficult. Yet it was rewarding. Through ARENA we have been able to connect some finest persons of the region. Here I recall four milestones that installed and established ARENA in its early days: the founding consultation in 1980, setting up a secretariat in 1981, publication of a bulletin titled Asian Exchange in 1982 and first council meeting in 1983.

• The founding consultation was held in Hong Kong on 17-23 July 1980.
  
• The ARENA Secretariat was formally launched in Hong Kong in January 1981 with two fulltime staff.
  
• ARENA’s first publication was “Papers from the Founding Consultation”, published from Hong Kong in January 1981. The fist issue of ARENA bulletin, Asian Exchange, was published in August 1982.
  
• The first council meeting was held in September 1983 at Hua Hin, Thailand.
  

The journey continued and now we are here. We had so far been housed in Hong Kong. Now we have found a new home, a sweet home.

Building a Community

We have been trying to build a community, a community of concerned scholars that care about the people and their environment and engage themselves in articulating the voice of the masses engaged in movements to determine their own destiny. For this community, we frequently use three keywords: exchange, transformation and alternative.
Let me quote a couple of statements from the founding consultation that very well characterizes the mission of ARENA.
“In the search for an Asian identity and understanding of the problems in the national and regional context of Asia, a key element is the creation of a forum among concerned Asians. The increasing intensity of the crises in Asia demands more than ever a creative forum through which concerned intellectuals from various social strata can continually exchange ideas, share experiences and lessons, and critically analyze alternative perspectives for social change and progress.
“ARENA – Asian Regional Exchange for new Alternatives – will provide this forum and within the pluri-dimensional context of Asia, seek to make its own modest contribution. It is hoped that ARENA by the very process of the community it seeks to build, can provide a pluralist and ‘critical prophetic’ function in the search for new perspectives for Asia and Asian societies.”
We want to draw lessons from diverse cultures, experiences and movements, movements that are directed to create a new vision, a new world with hope and optimism. This is indeed a process of constant learning: learning from intellectual interaction, as well as learning from movements. In order to steer such a community building process, we desperately need an enabling environment. We sincerely believe from the bottom of our heart that we will get such an environment in SKHU.  

Liberation of Mind

We continue to live in a world of poverty, discrimination and injustice. We also live in a world of rhetoric. We say we care about the people. But things are going wrong.
Many of us say we must dismantle this world order. And we say we want to create a new world. If we really mean it, we must get rid of myths and must take resort to realities, whatever crude they may be. We must change. We must liberate our minds from falsehood. We need to understand the world and uphold the truth. Some people talk about ‘organic intellectualism’. What is it? In my perception, it is breaking the wall between theory and practice. That has so far been the driving force of ARENA.
When people live under a domineering paradigm, they may choose one amongst three options. The options are:
à        Submission
à        Rejection
à        Transformation
Submission does not necessarily mean endorsement. It may be involuntary. But it may be a silent accommodation without any remonstration.
Rejection may be indicative of certain ability. It goes beyond disapproval of the conditions of existence and entails an element of protest. Rejection is a negative phenomenon unless it sets in motion a process of transformation.
Through transformation, a society is turned upside down. It can be all embracing, from conceptualization to management of statecraft, from habitat conservation to human relations, from revenue collection to fine art.
Rejection is a step toward transformation where the skill of craftsmanship is demonstrated through the language used. Language varies. The language of Socrates was so powerful and vibrant that it persists till today. Whereas the language of the Bolsheviks accompanied by all military might has failed to instill a sustainable social framework.
People talk and act on the basis of their immediate felt-needs. People have their own definition of the situation, which may not necessarily match with that of their mentors.
We are often prisoners of self-deceiving ideas and ideologies. We love to worship myths. We create them. We glorify them. And after wasting valuable time and scarce resources, we come to senses.
Fight for Life
There are plenty of institutions of different sizes and shades. We always say that we are different. Today all roads lead to one common slogan: another world is possible. In whatever level we work, we contribute or we intervene, we have to prepare ourselves for the new world. And that demands freedom from falsehood. To free us from falsehood, mere search for truth may not be enough. We need to fight for that, if necessary.
Let us pull all our resources to fight: our vigor, our pens, our minds and our souls. We shall fight hand in hand. We shall fight for life.
In this world life will stay
Predators will die some day.