THE WEEK was so close to his heart that it seems an appropriate place to mourn the void Jacob Matthan leaves behind and to celebrate his extraordinary life. I learnt just yesterday about Jacob’s tryst with his final exit in Oulu, Finland, and am flooded by memories of my long association with him.
For me personally, Jacob’s passing away is the loss of a fellow Cathedralite and Stephanian, my colleague in Finnish academia to which we both belonged, a colleague on the board of a publishing company we both once served, my co-author of a well-cited publication ’ Is e-Business in healthcare injurious to health?’ that was flagged and appreciated in a keynote address at IIT Delhi by the President of India, and a guiding light who introduced me to Finland when I first arrived there 10 years after he did.
If brotherly love (he was Sushil to me and regarded me like a younger brother), collegiate respect and gratitude were my only emotions, I might well have only expressed these sentiments privately to the family he leaves behind—his talented wife Annikki, his daughters Susanna and Joanna, his sons Jaakko and Mika and his grandchildren Daniel and Samuel. But Jacob was more than a brother, colleague and friend.
Jacob’s life was an inspiration to thousands of persons—Finns and Indians and other foreigners in Finland—and his four decades of bridge-building between Finland and India has left indelible marks and milestones in the 75 years of diplomatic history that Finland and India recently celebrated in September this year. From the time Jacob arrived in Finland in 1984 and joined hands with Ambassador K.P. Fabian who was then heading a small Indian mission in Helsinki when there were fewer than a hundred Indians in Finland, Jacob contributed significantly to the strengthening of India-Finland relations and to the reform of Finnish institutions to participate in internationalisation.
Finland had the least proportion of foreigners of all the world’s countries at the time. Just about one per cent. This was like a Catch-22 situation in which there was no felt need in Finland at the time to develop Finnish institutions to cater to engagement with foreigners because there were so few foreigners and Finland as a country was not much sought after by foreigners precisely because the laws and rules and culture were xenophobic. For instance, a foreigner couldn't have a landline telephone connection in the days before mobile telephony because only shareholders of the public utility TELE could have telephones and a foreigner was not eligible to buy shares in TELE! Finland was not a signatory to many international conventions, not even to the European Convention on Human Rights. Sameness was misinterpreted as equality and it was Jacob who pointed out that a foreigner defending himself in a Finnish Court and not conversant with either of the two official languages—Finnish and Swedish—was entitled only to howl in a court in ’Joikku’ (Yoicks!) on grounds that the indigenous Samis had been conferred that right. In 1998, the Finnish justice system accepted Hague Protocols of the Geneva Convention for the first time in a case in which Jacob was assisting the defendant.
Jacob participated actively in various sports and cultural fora and founded numerous initiatives in the non-controversial arenas of sports and culture as a means of promoting cross-cultural integration of Finns and foreigners. One of these was an initiative called ’Alakka na mua?’ (Will you play with me?) aimed at promoting sensitivity to differences among school children in Oulu City. Jacob organised the first international conference in Finland on the then tabooed questions around civil rights for foreigners (an initiative where fearful sponsors withdrew their support at the last minute leaving Jacob ’in the red’ in more ways than can be described). But Jacob smilingly went on courageously without rancour or hatred and continued to foster community harmony initiatives until his very end. One of his brainchilds was the institution CHAFF (Chamber for Assistance to Finns and Foreigners) he founded as an alternative voice for people excluded from consideration in the lobbying by the existing Chambers of Commerce and Federations in Finland that he felt were run as elite clubs (’hyväveli kerhot’, in Finnish).
When I recently visited Jacob and Annikki in Oulu after Jacob’s foot had been amputated (due to gangrene after a medical procedure in the local hospital) and he was adjusting to his prosthetic attachment, he was stoic in his approach about how he was coping with challenges and what he still hoped to do. Jacob introduced me to his family saga The Eighth Ring authored by former Malayala Manorama Editor-in-Chief K.M. Mathew which I immediately procured from Amazon. In this last meeting with him, Jacob reminded me that at his urging I had promised to write a regular column and we discussed that it would be called ’Humblebee’ and also drew up a list of topics for the first 10 columns. Jacob said he would introduce me to 'Thambi' (THE WEEK Editor Philip Mathew) whether I could offer my ’Humblebee’ column to THE WEEK. Little did I realise then that the very first column would be this one about him and a glimpse of his life’s contributions.
Jacob’s last email message to me was on June 24, 2024, in which he shared his excitement about completing the writing of his new book on Finland by July 15 and inquired if he could cite my book Finland-India Business Opportunities: Connecting the Swan and the Elephant (Springer, 2019) in his new work. In his recent emails to me, he expressed concern about four cases of violence in Oulu, lamenting the mass arrival of young, immature, hot-headed foreign students unprepared to join Finnish society. A tribute to his sense of balance that he felt the victims could not be entirely absolved of their responsibility in provoking reactions to their aggressiveness since there is a strong taboo against expressing aggression in Finnish society!
The ’Findian’ newsletters, ’Seventh Heaven’ for Cathedralites, and his hosting of the annual Cathedralite and Stephanian annual reunions in Finland with 100 per cent attendance to savour the delicious cakes of Annikki and more, and his blogging journalistic spirit now belong to an era that has ended. The thousands whose lives Jacob touched will continue to cherish his humanity, values of Christian charity and his sense of ’Swiss Family Robinson’ that he carried as someone long marooned by choice in Finland with his heart still in India. Adieu, Findian Bridgemaker, Rest in Peace!
Ajeet Mathur (anmathur@iima.ac.in) is an author and professor.