{"id":1158,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1158"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:58","slug":"33-the-creation-of-the-heterogeneous-nation-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/33-the-creation-of-the-heterogeneous-nation-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-33_ The Creation of the Heterogeneous Nation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nchapter <\/font><\/span>
\n<\/b>
\nVII<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nThe Creation of the Heterogeneous Nation<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                            T<\/font><\/span>HE<\/span><\/font>
\nproblem of a federal empire founded on the sole foundation that is firm and
\nsecure, the creation of a true psychological unity, \u2014 an empire that has to combine
\nhete\u00adrogeneous elements, \u2014 resolves itself into two different factors, the
\nquestion of the form and the question of the reality which the form is intended
\nto serve. The former is of great practical importance, but the latter alone is
\nvital. A form of unity may render possible, may favour or even help actively to
\ncreate the corresponding reality, but it can never replace it. And, as we have
\nseen, the true reality is in this order of Nature the psycho\u00adlogical, since the
\nmere physical fact of political and administra\u00adtive union may be nothing more
\nthan a temporary and artificial creation destined to collapse irretrievably as
\nsoon as its imme\u00addiate usefulness is over, or the circumstances that favoured
\nits continuance are radically or even seriously altered. The first question,
\nthen, that we have to consider is what this reality may be which it is intended
\nto create in the form of a federal empire, and especially we must consider
\nwhether it is to be merely an enlarge\u00adment of the nation-type, the largest
\nsuccessful human aggregate yet evolved by Nature, or a new type of aggregate
\nwhich is to ex\u00adceed and must tend to supersede the nation, as that has replaced
\nthe tribe, the clan and the city or regional state.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe first natural idea of the
\nhuman mind in facing such a problem is to favour the idea which most flatters
\nand seems to continue its familiar notions. For the human mind is, in the mass,
\naverse to a radical change of conception. It accepts change most easily when its
\nreality is veiled by the continuation of a habitual form of things or else by a
\nceremonial, legal, intellectual or sentimental fiction. It is such a fiction
\nthat some think to create as a bridge from the nation-idea to the empire-idea of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-304<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npolitical unity. That which unites men most securely now is
\nthe physical unity of a common country to live in and defend, a common economic
\nlife dependent on that geographical oneness and the sentiment of the motherland
\nwhich grows up around the physical and economic fact and either creates a
\npolitical and administrative unity or keeps it to a secure permanence, once it
\nhas been created. Let us then extend this powerful sentiment by a fiction, let
\nus demand of the heterogeneous constituents of the empire that each shall regard
\nnot his own physical mother\u00adland but the empire as the mother or at least, if he
\nclings to the old sentiment, learn to regard the empire first and foremost as
\nthe greater mother. A variation of this idea is the French notion of the mother
\ncountry, France; all the other possessions of the empire, although in English
\nphraseology they would rather be classed as dependencies in spite of the large
\nshare of political rights conceded to them, are to be regarded as colonies of
\nthe mother country, grouped together in idea as France beyond the seas and
\neducated to centre their national sentiments around the greatness, glory and
\nlovableness of France the common mother. It is a notion natural to the
\nCeltic-Latin temperament, though alien to the Teutonic, and it is supported by a
\ncompara\u00adtive weakness of race and colour prejudice and by that remark\u00adable power
\nof attraction and assimilation which the French share with all the Celtic
\nnations.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe power, the often miraculous
\npower of such fictions ought not for a moment to be ignored. They constitute
\nNature’s most common and effective method when she has to deal with her own
\ningrained resistance to change in her mentalised animal, man. Still there are
\nconditions without which a fiction cannot succeed for long or altogether. It
\nmust in the first place be based on a plausible superficial resemblance. It must
\nlead to a reali\u00adsable fact strong enough either to replace the fiction itself or
\neventually to justify it. And, this realisable fact must progressively realise
\nitself and not remain too long in the stage of the formless nebula. There was a
\ntime when these conditions were less insis\u00adtently necessary, a time when the
\nmass of men were more imagi\u00adnative, unsophisticated, satisfied with a sentiment
\nor an appear\u00adance ; but as the race advances, it becomes more mentally alive,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-305<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nself-conscious,
\ncritical and quick to seize dissonances between fact and pretension. Moreover,
\nthe thinker is abroad; his words are listened to and understood to an extent
\nunprecedented in the known history of mankind; and the thinker tends to become
\nmore and more an inquisitor, a critic, an enemy of fictions.1<\/sup> <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>Is then this fiction based upon a realisable parallel,<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>in other words, is it true that the true imperial
\nunity when realised will be only an enlarged national unity? or, if not, what is
\nthe realisable fact which this fiction is intended to prepare? There have been
\nplenty of instances in history of the composite nation and, if the paraI1el is
\nto be accepted as effective, it is such a composite nation on a large scale
\nwhich it is the business of the federal empire to create. We must, therefore,
\ncast a glance at the most typical instances of the successful composite nation
\nand see how far the parallel applies and whether there are difficulties in the
\nway which point rather to the necessity of a new evolution than to the
\nvariation of an old success. To have a just idea of the difficulties may help
\nus to see how they can be overcome.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The instance most before our eyes
\nboth of the successfully evolved composite or heterogeneous nation and of the
\nfortunately evolving heterogeneous empire is that of the British nation in
\n<\/font>the past and the British
\nEmpire in the present,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>successfully, but, fortunately, with a qualification;
\nfor it is subject to the perils of a mass of problems yet unsolved.1<\/sup> The British nation has been
\ncomposed of an English-speaking Anglo-Norman England, a Welsh-speaking Cymric
\nWales, a half-Saxon, half-Gaelic English- speaking Scotland and very
\nimperfectly, very partially, of a Gaelic Ireland with a mainly Anglo-Scotch
\ncolony that held it indeed by force to the united body but was never able to
\ncompel a true union. Ireland was, until recently, the element of failure in
\nthis formation and it is only now and under another form and under other
\ncircumstances than its other members that some kind of unity with the whole,
\nstill very precarious, and with the empire, not with the British nation, is
\nbecoming possible, although even <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/sup>These conditions too may
\nvery well soon disappear; for freedom of thought is menaced everywhere and,
\nwhere there is no freedom of thought, there will be the disappearance of the
\npower of the thinker.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n2<\/sup> <\/font>It must be remembered that this was written some
\ndecades ago and circumstances and the
\nEmpire itself have wholIy changed; the problem, as it was then, no longer poses
\nitself.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-306<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n


\nyet it has hardly begun to be real1<\/sup> What were the determining circumstances of this general success
\nand this partial failure and what light do they shed on the possibilities of
\nthe larger problem?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In building up her human
\naggregates, Nature has followed in general principle the same law that she
\nobserves in her physical aggregates. She has provided first a natural body,
\nnext a common life and vital interest for the constituents of the body, last a
\nconscious mind or sense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which
\nthat common ego-sense can realise itself and act. There must be in her ordinary
\nprocess either a common bond of descent or past assodation that will enable
\nlike to adhere to like and distinguish itself from unlike and a common habitation,
\na country so disposed that all who inhabit within its natural boundaries are
\nunder a sort of geographical necessity to unite. In earlier times when
\ncommunities were less firmly rooted to the soil, the first of these conditions
\nwas the more important. In settled modern communities the second predominates;
\nbut the unity of the race, pure or mixed<\/font>
\n<\/font> <\/span>–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>for it need not have been one in its origin – remains
\na factor of importance, and strong disparity and difference may easily create
\nserious difficulties in the way of the geographical necessity imposing itself
\nwith any permanence. In order that it may impose itself, there must be a
\nconsiderable force of the second natural condition, that is to say, a necessity
\nof economic unity or habit of common sustenance and a necessity of political
\nunity or habit of common vital organisation for survival, functioning and
\naggrandisement. And in order that this second condition may fulfil itself in
\ncomplete force, there must be ,nothing to depress or destroy the third in its
\ncreation or its continuance. Nothing must be done which will have the result of
\nemphasising disunity in sentiment or perpetuating the feeling of separateness
\nfrom the totality of the rest of the organism; for that will tend to make the
\ncentre or governing organ psychologically unrepresentative of the whole and
\ntherefore not a true centre of its ego-sense. But we must remember that
\nseparatism is not the same thing as particularism which may well coexist with
\nunity;<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1 <\/sup>
\nThis was written when Home Rule seemed to be a
\npossible solution; the failure has ‘now become a settled fact and Ireland has
\nbecome the independent Republic of Ireland<\/font><\/span>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>307<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

it is the sentiment of the impossibility of true union
\nthat separates, not the mere fact of difference.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The geographical necessity of union was
\nobviously present in the forming of the British nation; the conquest of Wales
\nand Ireland and the union with Scotland were historical events which merely
\nrepresented the working of this necessity; but the unity of race and past
\nassociation were wholly absent and had with greater or less difficulty to be
\ncreated. It was effected successfully with Wales and Scotland in a greater or
\nless lapse of time, not at all with Ireland. Geographical necessity is only a
\nrelative force; it can be overridden by a powerful sentiment of disunion when
\nnothing is done effectively to dissolve the disintegrating impulsion. Even when
\nthe union has been politically effected, it tends to be destroyed, especially
\nwhen there is within the geographical unity a physical barrier or line of
\ndivision sufficiently strong to be the base of conflicting economic interests,
\n– as in that which divides Belgium and Holland, Sweden and Norway, Ireland and
\nGreat Britain. In the case of Ireland, the British rulers not only did nothing
\nto bridge over or dissolve this line of economic division and counteract the
\nsentiment of a separate body, a separate physical country, in the Irish mind,
\nbut by a violent miscalculation of cause and effect they emphasised both in the
\nstrongest possible manner.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In the first place, the economic
\nlife and prosperity of Ireland were deliberately crushed in the interests of
\nBritish trade and commerce. After that it was of little use to bring about, by
\nmeans which one shrinks from scrutinising, the political "union" of
\nthe two islands in a common legislature, a common governing organ; for that
\ngoverning organ was not a centre of psychological unity. Where the most vital
\ninterests were not only different but in conflict, it could only represent the
\ncontinued control and assertion of the interests of the "predominant
\npartner" and the continued subjection and denial of the interests of the
\nforeign body bound by legislative fetters to the larger mass but not united
\nthrough a real fusion. The famine which depopulated Ireland while England
\nthrove and prospered was Nature’s terrible testimony to the sinister character
\nof this "union" which was not unity but the sharpest opposition of
\nthe most essential interests. The Irish<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-308<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

movements
\nof Home Rule and separatism were the natural and’ inevitable expression of
\nIreland’s will to survive; they amounted to nothing more than the instinct of
\nself-preservation divining and insisting on the one obvious means of
\nself-preservation.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>In human life economic interests
\nare those which are, ordinarily, violated with the least impunity; for they are
\nbound up with the life itself and the persistent violation of them, if it does
\nnot destroy the oppressed organism, provokes necessarily the bitterest revolt
\nand ends in one of Nature’s inexorable retaliations. But in the third order of
\nthe natural conditions also British statesmanship in Ireland committed an
\nequally radical mistake in its attempt to get rid by violence of all elements
\nof Irish particularism. Wales like Ireland was acquired by conquest, but no
\nsuch elaborate attempt was made to assimilate it; after the first unease that
\nfollows a process of violence, after one or two abortive attempts at
\nresistance, Wales was left to undergo the peaceful pressure of natural
\nconditions and its preservation of its <\/font>
\nown race and language has been no obstacle to the
\ngradual union <\/font> <\/span>‘f’ of the Cymric race and
\nthe Saxon in a common British nationa<\/font>lity. A similar non-interference, apart from the
\nminor problem <\/font> <\/span>c, <\/font><\/i>of the Highland clans, has resulted in a still more
\nrapid fusion of the Scotch race with the English. There is now in the island of
\nGreat Britain a composite British race with a common country bound together by
\nthe community of mingled blood, by a settled past association in oneness, by
\ngeographical necessity, by a common political and economic interest, by the
\nrealisation of a common ego. The opposite process in Ireland, the attempt to
\nsubstitute an artificial process where the working of natural conditions with a
\nlittle help of management and conciliation would have sufficed, the application
\nof old-world methods to a new set of circumstances has resulted in the opposite
\neffect. And when the error was discovered, the result of the past Karma had to
\nbe recognised and the union has had to be effected through the method demanded
\nby Irish interests and Irish particularist sentiments, first by the offer of
\nHome Rule and then by the creation of the Free State and not under a complete
\nlegislative union.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This result
\nmay well reach beyond itself; it may create the necessity of an eventual
\nremodelling of the British Empire and<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-309<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

perhaps
\nof <\/i>the whole Anglo-Celtic nation on new lines with the principle of <\/i>federation
\nat the base. For Wales and Scotland have not been fused into England with the
\nsame completeness as Breton, Alsatian, Basque and Provencal were fused into the
\nindivisible unity of <\/i>France. Although no economic interest, no pressing
\nphysical necessity demands the application of <\/i>the federative principle
\nto Wales and Scotland, yet a sufficient though minor particularist sentiment
\nremains that may yet feel here- after the repercussion of <\/i>the Irish
\nsettlement and awake to the satisfaction and convenience of <\/i>a similar
\nrecognition for the provincial separateness of <\/i>these two countries. And
\nthis sentiment is bound to receive fresh strength and encouragement by the
\npractical working out of <\/i>the federative principle in the reorganisation,
\nwhich one day may become inevitable, of <\/i>the colonial empire hitherto
\ngoverned by Great Britain on the basis of <\/i>Home Rule without federation.<\/font>1<\/sup>
\n<\/font> <\/span>The peculiar circumstances both of <\/i>the national
\nand the colonial formation and expansion of <\/i>the races inhabiting the
\nBritish Isles have indeed been such as to make it almost appear that this
\nEmpire has throughout been intended and prepared by Nature in her workings to
\nbe the great field of <\/i>experiment for the creation of <\/i>this new
\ntype in the history of <\/i>human aggregates, the heterogeneous federal
\nempire.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1 <\/sup>
\nHome Rule now
\nreplaced by Dominion Status which means a confederation in fact hough not yet
\nin Corm<\/font><\/span>.<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-310<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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