{"id":1169,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","slug":"31-nation-and-empire-real-and-political-unities-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\/31-nation-and-empire-real-and-political-unities-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-31_Nation and Empire Real and Political Unities.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n
\n


\nV<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n Nation And Empire: Real And Political Unities<\/font><\/a><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE<\/span><\/font>
\nproblem of the unification of mankind <\/font> <\/span>
\nresolves<\/font><\/span> itself into two distinct
\ndifficulties. There is the doubt <\/font> <\/span>
\nwhether<\/font><\/span> the collective egoisms already
\ncreated in the natural evolution of humanity can at this time be sufficiently
\nmodified or abolished and whether even an external unity in some effective form
\ncan be securely established. And there is the doubt whether, even if any such
\nexternal unity can be established, it will not be at the price of crushing both
\nthe free life of the individual and the free play of the various collective
\nunits already created in which there is a real and active life and substituting
\na State organisation which will mechanise human existence. Apart from these two
\nuncertainties there is a third doubt whether a really living unity can be
\nachieved by a mere economic, political and administrative unification and
\nwhether it ought not to be pre- ceded by at least the strong beginnings of a
\nmoral and spiritual oneness. It is the first question that must be taken first
\nin the logical order<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n At the present
\nstage of human progress the nation is the living collective unit of humanity.
\nEmpires exist, but they are as yet only political and not real units; they have
\nno life from within and owe their continuance to a force imposed on their
\nconstituent elements or else to a political convenience felt or acquiesced in
\nby the constituents and favoured by the world outside. Austria was long the
\nstanding example of such an empire; it was a political convenience favoured by
\nthe world outside, acquiesced in until recently by its constituent elements and
\nmaintained by the force of the central Germanic element incarnated in the Haps-
\nburg dynasty, – of late with the active aid of its Magyar partner. If the
\npolitical convenience of an empire of this kind ceases, if the constituent
\nelements no longer acquiesce and are drawn more<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-285<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npowerfully by a centrifugal force, if at the same time the
\nworld outside no longer favours the combination, then force alone remains as
\nthe one agent of an artificial unity. There arose indeed a new political
\nconvenience which the existence of Austria served even after it suffered from
\nthis tendency of dissolution, but that was the convenience of the Germanic idea
\nwhich made it an in- convenience to the rest of Europe and deprived it of the
\nacquiescence of important constituent elements which were drawn towards other
\ncombinations outside the Austrian formula. From that moment the existence of
\nthe Austrian Empire was in jeopardy and depended, not on any inner necessity,
\nbut first on the power of the Austro-Magyar partnership to crush down the Slav
\nnations within it and, secondly, on the continued power and dominance of
\nGermany and the Germanic idea in Europe, that is to say, on force alone. And
\nalthough in Austria the weakness of the imperial form of unity was singularly
\nconspicuous and its conditions exaggerated, still those conditions are the same
\nfor all empires which are not at the same time national units. It was not so
\nlong ago that most political thinkers perceived at least the strong possibility
\nof an automatic dissolution of the British Empire by the self-detachment of the
\ncolonies, in spite of the close links of race, language and origin that should
\nhave bound them to the mother country. This was because the political
\nconvenience of imperial unity, though enjoyed by the colonies, was not
\nsufficiently appreciated by them and, on the other hand, there was no living
\nprinciple of national oneness. The Australians and Canadians were beginning to
\nregard themselves as new separate nations rather than as limbs of an extended
\nBritish nationality. Things are now changed in both respects, a wider formula
\nhas been discovered, and the British Empire is for the moment proportionately
\nstronger.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Nevertheless, it may be asked, why
\nshould this distinction be made of the political and the real unit when name,
\nkind and form are the same? It must be made because it is of the greatest
\nutility to a true and profound political science and involves the most
\nimportant consequences. When an empire like Austria, a non-national empire, is
\nbroken to pieces, it perishes for good; there is no innate tendency to recover
\nthe outward unity, because<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-286<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthere is no real inner oneness; there is only a politically
\nmanufactured aggregate. On the other hand, a real national unity broken up by
\ncircumstances will always preserve a tendency to recover and reassert its
\noneness. The Greek Empire has gone the way of all empires, but the Greek
\nnation, after many centuries of political non-existence, again possesses its
\nseparate body, <\/font> <\/span>
\nbecause<\/font><\/span>
\nit has preserved its separate ego and therefore really existed under the
\ncovering rule of the Turk. So has it been with all the races under the Turkish
\nyoke, because that powerful suzerainty, stern as it was in many respects, never
\nattempted to obliterate their national characteristics or substitute an Ottoman
\nnationality. These nations have revived and have reconstituted or are
\nattempting to reconstitute themselves in the measure in which they have
\npreserved their real national sense. The Serbian national idea attempted to
\nrecover and has recovered all territory in which the Serb exists or
\npredominates. Greece attempts to reconstitute herself in her mainland, islands
\nand Asiatic colonies, but cannot now reconstitute the old Greece since even
\nThrace is rather Bulgar than Hellenic. Italy has become an external unity again
\nafter so many centuries; because, though no longer a State, she never ceased to
\nbe a single people.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>This truth of a
\nreal unity is so strong that even nations which <\/font> <\/span>
\nnever<\/font><\/span> in the past realised an outward
\nunification, to which Fate and circumstance and their own selves have been
\nadverse, nations which have been full of centrifugal forces and easily
\noverpowered by <\/font> <\/span>
\nforeign<\/font><\/span>
\nintrusions, have yet always developed a centripetal force as well and arrived
\ninevitably at organised oneness. Ancient Greece clung to her separatist
\ntendencies, her self-sufficient city or regional states, her little mutually
\nrepellent autonomies; but the centripetal force was always there manifested in
\nleagues, associations of States, suzerainties like the Spartan and Athenian. It
\nrealised itself in the end, first, imperfectly and temporarily by the
\nMacedonian overrule, then by a strange enough development, through the evolution
\nof the Eastern Roman world into a Greek and Byzantine Empire, and it has again
\nrevived in modern Greece. And we have seen in our own day Germany, constantly
\ndisunited since ancient times, develop at last to portentous issues its innate
\nsense of oneness formidably embodied in the Empire of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-287<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe Hohenzollerns and persistent after its fall in a federal
\nRepublic. Nor would it at all be surprising to <\/i>those who study the
\nworking of forces and not merely the trend of outward circumstances, if one yet
\nfar-off result of the War were to be the fusion of the one Germanic element
\nstill left outside, the Austro-German, into the Germanic whole, although
\npossibly in some 9ther embodiment than Prussian hegemony or Hohenzollern
\nEmpire. (This possibility realised itself for a time, but by means and under
\ncircumstances which made the revival of Austrian national sentiment and a
\nseparate national existence inevitable.) In both these historic instances, as
\nin so many others, the unification of Saxon England, medieval France, the
\nformation of the United States of America, it was a real unity, a
\npsychologically distinct unit which tended at first ignorantly by the
\nsubconscious necessity of its being and afterwards with a sudden or gradual
\nawakening to the sense of political oneness, towards an inevitable external
\nunification. It is a distinct group-soul which is driven by inward necessity
\nand uses outward circumstances to constitute for itself an organised body.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>But the most
\nstriking example in history is the evolution of India. Nowhere else have the
\ncentrifugal forces been so strong, numerous, complex, obstinate. The mere time
\ntaken by the evolution has been prodigious; the disastrous vicissitudes through
\nwhich it has had to work itself out have been appalling. And yet through it all
\nthe inevitable tendency has worked constantly, pertinaciously, with the dull,
\nobscure, indomitable, relentless obstinacy of Nature when she is opposed in her
\ninstinctive purposes by man, and finally, after a struggle enduring through millenniums,
\nhas triumphed. And, as usually happens when she is thus opposed by her own
\nmental and human material, it is the most adverse circumstances that the
\nsubconscious worker has turned into her most successful instruments. The
\nbeginnings of the centripetal tendency in India go back to the earliest times
\nof which we have record and are typified in the ideal of the Samrat or
\nChakravarti Raja and the military and political use of the Aswamedha and
\nRajasuya sacrifices. The two great national epics might almost have been
\nwritten to illustrate this theme; for the one recounts the establishment of a
\nunifying dharmariijya <\/i>or imperial reign of justice, the other starts
\nwith an idealised des-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-288<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\ncription of such a rule pictured as once existing in the
\nancient and sacred past of the country. The political history of India is the
\nstory of a succession of empires, indigenous and foreign, each of them
\ndestroyed by centrifugal forces, but each bringing the centripetal tendency
\nnearer to its triumphant emergence. And it is a significant circumstance that
\nthe more foreign the rule, the greater has been its force for the unification
\nof the subject people. This is always a sure sign that the essential
\nnation-unit is already there <\/font><\/span>
\n-.<\/font><\/span>
\nand that there is an indissoluble national vitality necessitating the t
\ninevitable emergence of the organised nation. In this instance, we see that the
\nconversion of the psychological unity on which nationhood is based into the
\nexternal organised unity by which it is perfectly realised, has taken a period
\nof more than two thousand years and is not yet complete.1<\/sup>  And yet, since the essentiality of
\nthe thing was there, not even the most formidable difficulties and delays, not
\neven the most persistent incapacity for union in the people, not even the most
\ndisintegrating shocks from outside have prevailed against the obstinate
\nsubconscious necessity. And this is only the extreme illustration of a general
\nlaw.
\nIt will be useful to dwell a little upon this aid lent by foreign rule to the
\nprocess of nation-making and see how it works. History abounds with
\nillustrations. But in some cases the phenomenon of foreign domination is
\nmomentary and imperfect, in others long-enduring and complete, in others often
\nrepeated in various forms. In some instances the foreign element is rejected,
\nits use once over, in others it is absorbed, in others accepted with more or
\nless assimilation for a longer or briefer period as a ruling caste. The
\nprinciple is the same, but it is worked variously by Nature according to the
\nneeds of the particular case. There is none of the modern nations in Europe
\nwhich has not had to pass through a phase more or less prolonged, more or less
\ncomplete, of foreign domination in order to realise its nationality. In Russia
\nand England it was the domination of a foreign conquering race which rapidly
\nbecame a ruling caste and was in the end assimilated and absorbed, in Spain the
\nsuccession of the Roman, Goth and Moor, in Italy the overlordship of the
\nAustrian, in the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1   <\/font><\/sup>
\n
\nBut it must be remembered that France, Germany, modem Italy took each a thousand
\nor two thousand years and more to form and set into a firm oneness<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-289<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\nBalkans (Here there was no single people to be united but
\nmany separate peoples which had each to recover their separate independence or,
\nin some cases, a coalition of kindred peoples.) the long suzerainty of the
\nTurk, in Germany the transient yoke of Napoleon. But in all cases the essential
\nhas been a shock or a pressure which would either waken a loose psychological unity
\nto the necessity of organising itself from within or would crush out, dispirit
\nor deprive of power, vitality and reality the more obstinate factors of
\ndisunion. In some cases even an entire change of name, culture and civilisation
\nhas been necessary, as well as a more or less profound modification of the
\nrace. Notably has this happened in the formation of French nationality. The
\nancient Gallic people, in spite of or perhaps because of its Druidic
\ncivilisation and early- greatness, was more incapable of organising a firm
\npolitical unity than even the ancient Greeks or the old Indian kingdoms and
\nrepublics. It needed the Roman rule and Latin culture, the superimposition of a
\nTeutonic ruling caste and finally the shock of the temporary and partial English
\nconquest to found the unequalled unity of modern France. Yet though name,
\ncivilisation and all else seem to have changed, the French nation of today is
\nstill and has always remained the old Gallic nation with its Basque, Gaelic,
\nArmorican and other ancient elements modified by the Frank and Latin admixture.
\nThus the nation is a persistent psychological unit which Nature has been busy
\ndeveloping throughout the world in the most various forms and educating into
\nphysical and political unity. Political unity is not the essential factor; it
\nmay not yet be realised and yet the nation persists and moves inevitably to-
\nwards its realisation; it may be destroyed and yet the nation persists and
\ntravails and suffers but refuses to be annihilated. In former times the nation
\nwas not always a real and vital unit; the tribe, the clan, the commune, the
\nregional people were the living groups. Those unities which in the attempt at
\nnational evolution destroyed these older living groups without arriving at a
\nvital nationhood disappeared once the artificial or political unit was broken.
\nBut now the nation stands as the one living group-unit of humanity into which
\nall others must merge or to which they must become subservient. Even old
\npersistent race unities and cultural unities are powerless against it. The
\nCatalonian in<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-290<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\nSpain, the Breton and Provencal and Alsatian in France, the
\nWelsh in England may cherish the signs of their separate’ existence; but the
\nattraction of the greater living unity of the Spanish, <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nFrench, the
\nBritish nation has been too powerful to be in<\/font><\/span>jured by these persistences. The nation in modem times
\nis practically indestructible, unless it dies from within. Poland, torn asunder
\nand crushed under the heel of three powerful empires, ceased to exist; the
\nPolish nation survived and is once more reconstituted. Alsace after forty years
\nof the German yoke remained faithful to her French nationhood in spite of her
\naffinities of race and language with the conqueror. All modem attempts to
\ndestroy by force or break up a nation are foolish and futile, because they
\nignore this law of the natural evolution. Empires are still perishable
\npolitical units; the nation is immortal. " And so it will remain until a
\ngreater living unit can be found into which the nation idea can merge in
\nobedience to a superior attraction.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>And then the
\nquestion arises whether the empire is not precisely that destined unit in
\ncourse of evolution. The mere fact <\/font> <\/span>
\n"<\/font><\/span> that at present not the empire but
\nthe nation is the vital unity can be no bar to a future reversal of the
\nrelations. Obviously, in order that they may be reversed the empire must cease
\nto be a <\/font> <\/span>
\nmere<\/font><\/span>
\npolitical and become rather a psychological entity. But there have been
\ninstances in the evolution of the nation in which the political unity preceded
\nand became a basis for the psycho- logical as in the union of Scotch, English
\nand Welsh to form the British nation. There is no insurmountable reason why a
\nsimilar evolution should not take place on a larger scale and an imperial unity
\nbe substituted for a national unity. Nature has long been in travail of the
\nimperial grouping, long casting about to give it a greater force of permanence,
\nand the emergence of the conscious imperial ideal all over the earth and its
\nattempts, though still crude, violent and blundering, to substitute itself for
\nthe national, may not irrationally be taken as the precursory sign of one of
\nthose rapid leaps and transitions by which she so often accomplishes what she
\nhas long been gradually and tentatively preparing. This then is the possibility
\nwe have next to consider before we examine the established phenomenon of
\nnationhood<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-291<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nin relation to the ideal of human unity. Two different ideals
\nand therefore two different possibilities were precipitated much nearer to
\nrealisation by the European conflict, – a federation of free nations and, on
\nthe other hand, the distribution of the earth into a few great empires or
\nimperial hegemonies. A practical combination of the two ideas became the most
\ntangible possibility of the not distant future. It is necessary to pause and
\nconsider whether <\/font> <\/span>
\n~<\/font><\/span> one
\nelement of this possible combination being already a living unit~ the other
\nalso could not under certain circumstances be converted into a living unit and
\nthe combination, if realised, made the foundation of an enduring new order of
\nthings. Otherwise it could be no more than a transient device without any
\npossibility of a stable permanence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>Page-292<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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