{"id":1170,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:02","slug":"66-self-determination-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\/66-self-determination-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-66_Self- Determination.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nSelf- Determination<\/span><\/font><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\n            A<\/font><\/b>
\nNEW<\/b> phrase has recently
\nbeen cast out from the bloodstained yeast of war into the shifty language of
\npolitics,<\/font> –<\/font> that strange language full of Maya and falsities of
\nself-illusion and deliberate delusion of others, which almost immediately turns
\nall true and vivid phrases into a jargon, so that men may fight in a cloud of
\nwords without any clear sense of the thing they are battling for,<\/font>
\n–<\/font> it is the
\nluminous description of liberty as the just power, the freely exercised right
\nof self-determination. The word is in itself a happy discovery, a thought-sign
\nof real usefulness. For it helps to make definite and manageable what was apt
\ntill now to be splendidly vague and nebulous. Its invention is a sign at once
\nof a growing clarity of conception about this great good which man has been
\nstriving to achieve for himself through the centuries, as yet without any
\nsatisfying ,<\/font> success to boast of
\nanywhere, and of the increasing subjectivity<\/font><\/span> of our ideas about life. This clarity and
\nthis subjectivity must indeed go together; for we can only get good hold of the
\nright end of the great ideas which should govern our ways of living when we
\nbegin to understand that their healthful process is from within outward, and
\nthat the opposite method, the mechanical, ends always by turning living
\nrealities into formal conventions. No doubt, to man the animal, the mechanical
\nalone seems to be real; but to man the soul, man the thinker through whom we arrive
\nat our inner manhood, only that is true which he can feel as a truth within him
\nand feel without as his external self- expression. All else is a deceptive
\ncharlatanry, an acceptance of shows for truths, of external appearances for
\nrealities, which are so many devices to keep him in bondage.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Liberty in one shape or another
\nranks among the most ancient and certainly among the most difficult aspirations
\nof our race: it arises from a radical instinct of our being and is yet opposed
\nto all our circumstances; it is our eternal good and our condition of
\nperfection, but our temporal being has failed to find<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-598<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

its
\nkey. That perhaps is because true freedom is only possible if we live in the
\ninfinite, live, as the Vedanta bids us, in and from our self-existent being;
\nbut our natural and temporal energies seek for it at first not in ourselves,
\nbut in our external conditions. This great indefinable thing, liberty, is in
\nits highest and ultimate sense a state of being; it is self living in itself
\nand determining by its own energy what it shall be inwardly and, eventually, by
\nthe growth of a divine spiritual power within determining too what it shall
\nmake of its external circumstances and environment; that is the largest and
\nfreest sense of self-determination. But when we start from the natural and
\ntemporal life, what we <\/font>practically come to mean by liberty is a convenient elbow-room<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font>\u00a0<\/font><\/span>for our natural energies to satisfy
\nthemselves without being too much impinged upon by the self-assertiveness of
\nothers. And that is a difficult problem to solve, because the liberty of one,
\nimmediately it begins to act, knocks up fatally against the liberty of another;
\nthe free running of many in the same field means a free chaos of collisions.
\nThat was at one time glorified under the name of the competitive system, and
\ndissatisfaction with its results has led to the opposite idea of State
\nsocialism, which supposes that the negation of individual liberty in the
\ncollective being of the State can be made to amount by some mechanical process
\nto a positive sum of liberty nicely distributable to all in a carefully guarded
\nequality. The individual gives up his freedom of action and possession to the
\nState which in return doles out to him a regulated liberty, let us say, a
\nsufficient elbow-room so parcelled out that he shall not at all butt into the
\nribs of his neighbour. It is admirable in theory, logically quite
\nunexceptionable, but in practice, one suspects, it would amount to a very
\noppressive, because a very mechanical slavery of the individual to the
\ncommunity, or rather to something indefinite that calls itself the community.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Experience has so far shown us that the
\nhuman attempt to arrive at a mechanical freedom has only resulted in a very
\nrelative liberty and even that has been enjoyed for the most part by some at
\nthe expense of others. It has amounted usually to the rule of the majority by a
\nminority, and many strange things have been done in its name. Ancient liberty
\nand democracy meant<\/font> in
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-599<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Greece the self-rule –
\nvariegated by periodical orgies of mutual throat-cutting – of a smaller number
\nof free men of all ranks who lived by the labour of a great mass of slaves. In
\nrecent times liberty and democracy have been, and still are, a cant assertion
\nwhich veils under a skilfully moderated plutocratic system the rule of an
\norganised successful bourgeoisie over a proletariate at first submissive,
\nafterwards increasingly dissatisfied and combined for recalcitrant
\nself-assertion. The earliest use of liberty and democracy by the emancipated
\nproletariate has been the crude forceful tyranny of an ill-organised labour
\noligarchy over a quite disorganised peasantry and an impotently recalcitrant
\nbourgeoisie. And just as the glorious possession of liberty by the community
\nhas been held to be consistent with the oppression of four- fifths or
\nthree-fifths of the population by the remaining fraction, so it has till lately
\nbeen held to be quite consistent with the complete subjection of one half of
\nmankind, the woman half, to the physically stronger male. The series continues
\nthrough a whole volume of anomalies, including of course the gloriously
\nbeneficent and profitable exploitation of subject peoples by emancipated
\nnations who, it seems, are entitled to that domination by their priesthood of
\nthe sacred cult of freedom. They mean no doubt to extend it to the exploited at
\nsome distant date, but take care meanwhile to pay themselves the full price of
\ntheir holy office before they deliver the article. Even the best machinery of
\nthis mechanical freedom yet discovered amounts to the unmodified will of a bare
\nmajority, or rather to its selection of a body of rulers who coerce in its name
\nall minorities and lead it to issues of which it has itself no clear
\nperception.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>These anomalies, – anomalies of many kinds are inseparable from
\nthe mechanical method, – are -a sign that
\nthe real meaning of liberty has not yet been understood. Nevertheless the
\naspiration and the effort itself towards the realisation of a great idea cannot
\nfail to bear some fruit, and modern liberty and democracy, however imperfect
\nand relative, have had this result that for the communities which have followed
\nthem, they have removed the pressure of the more obvious, outward and
\naggressive forms of oppression and domination which were inherent in the
\nsystems of the past. They have made life a little more<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-600<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

tolerable<\/font> <\/font> <\/span>
\nfor the mass, and if they
\nhave not yet made life free, <\/font> <\/span>
\nthey have <\/font> <\/span>
\nat
\nleast given more liberty to thought and to the effort <\/font> <\/span>
\nto embody <\/font> <\/span>
\na freer thought in a more
\nadequate form of life. This <\/font> <\/span>
\nlarger <\/font> <\/span>
\nspace
\nfor the thought in man and its workings was the <\/font> <\/span>
\nnecessary <\/font> <\/span>
\ncondition for a growing clarity which must enlighten
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>in the end the crude conceptions with
\nwhich the race has started and refine the crude methods and forms in which it
\nhas embodied them.<\/font>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>The attempt to
\ngovern life by an increasing light of <\/font> <\/span>
\nthought <\/font> <\/span>
\nrather than allow the rough and imperfect
\nactualities <\/font> <\/span>of life to govern and to
\nlimit the mind is a distinct sign of advance in human progress. But the true
\nturning-point will come with <\/font>the <\/font> <\/span>
\nfarther
\nstep which initiates the attempt to govern life by that <\/font> <\/span>
\nof <\/font> <\/span>
\nwhich thought itself is only
\na sign and an instrument, the soul, <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe <\/font> <\/span>
\ninner being, and to make our ways of living a freer opportu<\/font><\/span>nity for the growing height and breadth of its need of
\nself- fulfilment. That is the real, the profounder sense which we shall <\/font>
\nhave <\/font> <\/span>
\nto learn to attach to the
\nidea of self-determination as the <\/font> <\/span>
\neffective <\/font> <\/span>
\nprinciple of liberty.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The principle of self-determination really
\nmeans this that within every living human creature, man, woman and child, <\/font>
\nand <\/font> <\/span>
\nequally within every
\ndistinct human collectivity growing or <\/font> <\/span>grown,
\nhalf developed or adult there is a self, a being, which has the right to grow
\nin its own way, to find itself, to make its life a full and a satisfied
\ninstrument and image of its being. This is the first principle which must
\ncontain and overtop all others; the rest is a question of conditions, means,
\nexpedients, accommodations, opportunities, capacities, limitations, none of
\nwhich must be allowed to abrogate the sovereignty of the first essential
\nprinciple. But it can only prevail if it is understood with a right idea of
\nthis Self and its needs and claims. The first danger to the principle of
\nself-determination, as to all others, is that it may be interpreted, like most
\nof the ideals of our human existence in the past, in the light of the ego, its
\ninterests and its will towards self- satisfaction. So interpreted it will carry
\nus no farther than before; <\/font>we <\/font> <\/span>
\nshall
\narrive at a point where our principle is brought up short, <\/font> <\/span>
\nfails us, turns into a false or a half-true assertion
\nof the mind and a convention of form which covers realities that are quite the
\nopposite of itself.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-601<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\u00a0<\/font><\/span>For the ego has inalienably the instinct of a
\ndouble self- II assertion, its self-assertion against other egos and its
\nself-assertion<\/font> 1 <\/font>
\nby means of other egos; in
\nall its expansion it is impelled<\/font><\/span>
\nto sub<\/font><\/span>ordinate
\ntheir need to its own, to use them for its own purpose and for that purpose to
\nestablish some kind of control or domination or property in what it uses,
\nwhether by force or by dexterity, openly or covertly, by absorption or by some
\nskilful turn of exploitation. Human lives cannot run upon free parallels; for
\nthey are compelled by Nature continually to meet, impinge on each other,
\nintermix, and in the ego-life that means always a clash. The first idea of our
\nreason suggests that our human relations may be subjected to a mechanical
\naccommodation of interests which will get rid of the clash and the strife; but
\nthis can only be done up to a certain point: at best we diminish some of the
\nviolence and crude obviousness of the clashing and the friction and give them a
\nmore subtle and less grossly perceptible form. Within that subtler form the
\nprinciple of strife and exploitation continues; for always the egoistic
\ninstinct must be to use the accommodations to which it is obliged or induced to
\nassent, as far as possible for its own advantage, and it is only limited in
\nthis impulse by the limits of its strength and capacity, by the sense of
\nexpediency and consequence, by the perception of some necessity for respecting
\nother ego isms in order that its own egoism too may be respected. But these
\nconsiderations can only tone down or hedge in the desire of a gross or a subtle
\ndomination and exploitation of others; they do not abrogate it.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The human mind has resorted to ethics as
\na corrective; but the first laws of ethical conduct also succeed at best in
\nchecking only the egoistic rule of life and do not overcome it. There- fore the
\nethical idea has pushed itself forward into the other and opposite principle of
\naltruism. The main general results have been a clearer perception of collective
\negoisms and their claim on the individual egoism and, secondly, a quite
\nuncertain and indefinable mixture, strife and balancing of egoistic and
\naltruistic motives in our conduct. Often enough altruism is there chiefly in
\nprofession or at best a quite superficial will which does not belong to the
\ncentre of our action; it becomes then either a deliberate or else a
\nhalf-conscious camouflage by which egoism<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-602<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

masks<\/font>
\nitself and gets at its
\nobject without being suspected. But <\/font> <\/span>
\neven <\/font> <\/span>
\na sincere altruism hides within itself the ego, and
\nto be able<\/font><\/span> to discover the amount of it hidden up in our most benevolent or even
\nself-sacrificing actions is the acid test of sincere self- introspection, nor
\ncan anyone really quite know himself who has not made ruthlessly this often
\npainful analysis. It could not be otherwise; for the law of life cannot be
\nself-immolation; self- <\/font>
\nsacrifice<\/font><\/span>
\ncan only be a step in
\nself-fulfilment. Nor can life be in<\/font><\/span> its nature a one-sided self-giving; all giving must
\ncontain in itself some measure of receiving to have any fruitful value or
\nsignificance. Altruism itself is more important even by the good it <\/font>does<\/span> to
\nourselves than by the good it does to others; for the latter is often
\nproblematical, but the former is certain, and its good consists in the growth
\nof self, in an inner self-heightening and self- expansion. Not then any general
\nlaw of altruism, but rather a self-recognition based upon mutual recognition
\nmust be the broad rule of our human relations. Life is self-fulfilment which
\nmoves upon a ground of mutuality; it involves a mutual use of one by the other,
\nin the end of all by all. The whole question is whether this shall be done on
\nthe lower basis of the ego attended by strife, friction and collision with
\nwhatever checks and controls, or whether it cannot be done by a higher law of
\nour being which shall discover a means of reconciliation, free reciprocity and
\nunity.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A right idea of the rule of
\nself-determination may help to set us on the way to the discovery of this
\nhigher law. For we may note that this phrase, self-determination, reconciles
\nand brings together in one complex notion the idea of liberty and the idea of
\nlaw. These two powers of being tend in our first conceptions, as in the first
\nappearances of life itself, to be opposed to each other as rivals or enemies;
\nwe find therefore ranged against each other the champions of law and order and
\nthe defenders of liberty. There is the ideal which sets order first and liberty
\neither nowhere or in an inferior category, because it is willing to accept any
\ncoercion of liberty which will maintain the mechanical stability of order; and
\nthere is the ideal which on the contrary sets liberty first and regards law
\neither as a hostile compression or a temporarily necessary evil or at best a
\nmeans of securing liberty by guard-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-603<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

ing
\nagainst any violent and aggressive interference with it as between man and man.
\nThis use of law as a means of liberty may be advocated only in a minimum
\nreducible to the just quantity necessary for its purpose, the individualistic
\nidea of the matter, or raised to a maximum as in the socialistic idea that the
\nlargest sum of regulation will total up to or at least lead up to or secure the
\nlarger sum of freedom. We have continually too the most curious mixing up of
\nthe two ideas, as in the old-time claim of the capitalist to prevent the
\nfreedom of labour to organise so that the liberty of contract might be
\npreserved, or in the singular sophistical contention of the Indian defenders of
\northodox caste rigidity on its economical side that coercion of a man to follow
\nhis ancestral profession in disregard not only of his inclinations, but of his
\nnatural tendencies and aptitudes is a securing to the individual of his natural
\nright, his freedom to follow his hereditary nature. We see a similar confusion
\nof ideas in the claim of European statesmen to train Asiatic or African peoples
\nto liberty, which means in fact to teach them in the beginning liberty in the
\nschool of subjection and afterwards to compel them at each stage in the
\nprogress of a mechanical self-government to satisfy the tests and notions
\nimposed on them by an alien being and consciousness instead of developing
\nfreely a type and law of their own. The right idea of self-determination makes
\na clean sweep of these confusions. It makes it clear that liberty should
\nproceed by the development of the law of one’s own being deter- mined from
\nwithin, evolving out of oneself and not determined from outside by the idea and
\nwill of another. There remains the problem of relations, of the individual and
\nthe collective self- determination and of the interaction of the
\nself-determination of one on the self-determination of another. That cannot be
\n<\/font>finally settled by any
\nmechanical solution, but only by<\/font><\/span> <\/font>
\nthe dis<\/font><\/span>covery of some meeting-place of the law of our
\nself-determination with the common law of mutuality, where .they begin to
\nbecome one. It signifies in fact the discovery of an inner and larger self
\nother than the mere ego, in which our individual self-fulfilment no longer
\nseparates us from others but at each step of our growth calls for an increasing
\nunity.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But it is
\nfrom the self-determination of the free individual<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-604<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

within
\nthe free collectivity in which he lives that we have to start, because so only
\ncan we be sure of a healthy growth of <\/font>
\nfreedom<\/font><\/span>
\nand because too the unity to be arrived at is that
\nof indi<\/font><\/span>viduals growing freely towards
\nperfection and. not of human machines working in regulated unison or of souls
\nsuppressed, mutilated and cut into one or more fixed geometrical patterns. The
\nmoment we sincerely accept this idea, we have to travel altogether away from
\nthe old notion of the right of property of man in man which still lurks in the
\nhuman mind where it does not ,<\/font> possess <\/font> <\/span>
\nit. The trail of this notion
\nis all over our past, the right <\/font> <\/span>of
\nproperty of the father <\/b>over the child, of the man over the woman, of the
\nruler or the ruling class or power over the ruled, of the State over the
\nindividual. The child was in the ancient patriarchal idea the live property of
\nthe father; he was his creation, his production, his own reproduction of
\nhimself; the father, rather than God or the universal Life in place of God,
\nstood as the author of the child’s being; and the creator has every right over
\nhis creation, the producer over his manufacture. He had the right to make of
\nhim what he willed, and not what the being of the child really was within, to
\ntrain and shape and cut him according to the parental ideas and not rear him
\naccording to his own nature’s deepest needs, to bind him to the paternal career
\nor the career chosen by the parent and not that to which his nature and
\ncapacity and inclination pointed, to fix for him all the critical
\nturning-points of his life even after he had reached maturity. In education the
\nchild was regarded not as a soul meant to grow, but as brute psychological
\nstuff to be shaped into a fixed mould by the teacher. We have travelled to
\nanother conception of the child as a soul with a being, a nature and capacities
\nof his own who must be helped to find them, to find himself, to grow into their
\nmaturity, into a fullness of physical and vital energy and the utmost breadth,
\ndepth, and height of his emotional, his intellectual and his spiritual being.
\nSo too the subjection of woman, the property of the man over the woman, was
\nonce an axiom of social life and has only in recent times been effectively
\nchallenged. So strong was or had become the instinct of this domination in the
\nmale animal man, that even religion and philosophy have had to sanction it,
\nvery much in that formula<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-<\/font>605<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nin which Milton expresses the height of masculine egoism, <\/font>
\n"He for God only, she
\nfor God in him",<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>–<\/font> if not actually indeed for him in the place of God. This idea too is
\ncrumbling into the dust, though its remnants still cling to life by many strong
\ntentacles of old legislation, continued instinct, persistence of traditional
\nideas; the fiat has gone out against it in the claim of woman to be regarded,
\nshe too, as a free individual being. The right of property of the rulers in the
\nruled has perished by the advance of liberty and democracy; in the form of
\nnational imperialism it still indeed persists, though more now by commercial
\ngreed than by the instinct of political domination; intellectually this form
\ntoo of possessional egoism has received its deathblow, vitally it still
\nendures. The right of property of the State in the individual which threatened
\nto take the place of all these, has now had its real spiritual consequence
\nthrown into relief by the lurid light of the war, and we may hope that its
\nmenace to human liberty will be diminished by this clearer knowledge. We are at
\nleast advancing to a point at which it may be possible to make the principle of
\nself- determination a present and pressing, if not yet an altogether dominant
\nforce in the whole shaping of human life.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Self-determination viewed from this
\nsubjective standpoint carries us back at once towards the old spiritual idea of
\nthe Being within, whose action, once known and self-revealed, is not an
\nobedience to external and mechanical impulses, but proceeds in each from the
\npowers of the soul, an action self- -determined by the essential quality and
\nprinciple of which all our becoming is the apparent movement, svabhiivaniyatam
\nkarma. <\/i>But it is only as we rise higher and higher in ourselves and find
\nout our true self and its true powers that we can get at the full truth of this
\nSwabhava. Our present existence is at the most a growth towards it and
\ntherefore an imperfection, and its chief imperfection is the individual’s
\negoistic idea of self which re- appears enlarged in the collective egoism.
\nTherefore an egoistic self-determination or a modified individualism, is not
\nthe true solution; if that were all, we could never get beyond a balance and,
\nin progress, a zigzag of conflict and accommodation. The ego is not the true
\ncircle of the self; the law of mutuality<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-606<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\n which meets it at every turn and which it misuses, arises from the truth that
\nthere is a secret unity between our self and the self of others and therefore
\nbetween our own lives and the lives of others. The law of our
\nself-determination has to wed itself to the self-determination of others and to
\nfind the way to enact a real union through this mutuality. " But its basis
\ncan only be found within and not through any mechanical adjustment. It lies in
\nthe discovery within by the being in the course of its self-expansion and
\nself-fulfilment that these things at every turn depend on the self-expansion
\nand self-fulfilment of those around us, because we are secretly one being with
\nthem and one life. It is in philosophical language the recognition of the one
\nself in all who fulfils himself variously in each; it is the finding of the law
\nof the divine being in each unifying itself with the law of the divine being in
\nall. At once the key of the problem is shifted from without to within, from the
\nvisible externalities of social and political adjustment to the spiritual life
\nand truth which can alone provide its key.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Not that the outer life has to be
\nneglected; on the contrary the pursual of the principle in one field or on one
\nlevel, provided we do not limit or fix ourselves in it, helps its disclosure in
\nother fields and upon other levels. Still if we have not the unity within, it
\nis in vain that we shall try to enforce it from without by law and compulsion
\nor by any assertion in outward. forms. Intellectual assertion too, like the
\nmechanical, is insufficient; only the spiritual can give it, because it alone
\nhas the secure power of realisation. The ancient truth of the self is the
\neternal truth; we have to go back upon it in order to carry it out in newer and
\nfuller ways for which a past humanity was not ready. The recognition and
\nfulfilment of the divine being in one- self and in man, the kingdom of God
\nwithin and in the race is the basis on which man must come in the end to the
\npossession of himself as a free self-determining being and of mankind too in a
\nmutually possessing self-expansion as a harmoniously self-determining united
\nexistence.<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-607<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self- Determination   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0             A NEW phrase has recently been cast out from the bloodstained yeast of war into the shifty language of politics,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}