{"id":3078,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3078"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:48","slug":"34-the-creation-of-the-heterogeneous-nation-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/34-the-creation-of-the-heterogeneous-nation-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-34_The Creation of the Heterogeneous Nation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter VII <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Creation of the
\n\t\t\tHeterogeneous Nation <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE PROBLEM<\/b> of a federal empire founded on the sole foundation that is firm and secure, the creation of a true
\npsychological unity, \u2014 an empire that has to combine heterogeneous elements, \u2014 resolves itself into two different factors,
\nthe question of the form and the question of the reality which the form is intended to serve. The former is of great practical
\nimportance, but the latter alone is vital. A form of unity may render possible, may favour or even help actively to create the
\ncorresponding reality, but it can never replace it. And, as we have seen, the true reality is in this order of Nature the psychological,
\nsince the mere physical fact of political and administrative union may be nothing more than a temporary and artificial creation
\ndestined to collapse irretrievably as soon as its immediate usefulness is over or the circumstances that favoured its continuance
\nare radically or even seriously altered. The first question, then, that we have to consider is what this reality may be which it is
\nintended to create in the form of a federal empire; and especially we have to consider whether it is to be merely an enlargement
\nof the nation-type, the largest successful human aggregate yet evolved by Nature, or a new type of aggregate which is to exceed
\nand must tend to supersede the nation, as that has replaced the tribe, the clan and the city or regional state. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first natural idea of the human mind in facing such a problem is to favour the idea which most flatters and seems
\nto continue its familiar notions. For the human mind is, in the mass, averse to a radical change of conception. It accepts change
\nmost easily when its reality is veiled by the continuation of a habitual form of things or else by a ceremonial, legal, intellectual
\nor sentimental fiction. It is such a fiction that some think to create as a
\n\t\t\tbridge from the nation-idea to the empire-idea of political unity.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 323<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

That which unites men most securely now is the
\nphysical unity of a common country to live in and defend, a common economic life dependent on that geographical oneness
\nand the sentiment of the motherland which grows up around the physical and economic fact and either creates a political and
\nadministrative unity or keeps it to a secure permanence once it has been created. Let us then extend this powerful sentiment by
\na fiction; let us demand of the heterogeneous constituents of the empire that each shall regard not his own physical motherland
\nbut the empire as the mother or at least, if he clings to the old sentiment, learn to regard the empire first and foremost as the
\ngreater mother. A variation of this idea is the French notion of the mother country, France; all the other possessions of the
\nempire, although in English phraseology they would rather be classed as dependencies in spite of the large share of political
\nrights conceded to them, are to be regarded as colonies of the mother country, grouped together in idea as France beyond the
\nseas and educated to centre their national sentiments around the greatness, glory and lovableness of France the common mother.
\nIt is a notion natural to the Celtic-Latin temperament, though alien to the Teutonic, and it is supported by a comparative weakness of race and colour prejudice and by that remarkable power of attraction and assimilation which the French share with all
\nthe Celtic nations. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe power, the often miraculous power of such fictions
\nought not for a moment to be ignored. They constitute Nature’s most common and effective method when she has to deal
\nwith her own ingrained resistance to change in her mentalised animal, man.
\n\t\t\tStill, there are conditions without which a fiction cannot succeed.
\n\t\t\tIt must in the first place be based on a plausible superficial
\n\t\t\tresemblance. It must lead to a realisable fact strong enough either
\n\t\t\tto replace the fiction itself or eventually to justify it. And this
\n\t\t\trealisable fact must progressively realise itself and not remain too
\n\t\t\tlong in the stage of the formless nebula. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 324<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tThere was a time when these conditions were less insistently
\n\t\t\t\tnecessary, a time when the mass of men were more imaginative,
\nunsophisticated, satisfied with a sentiment or an appearance; but as the race advances, it becomes more mentally alive, selfconscious, critical and quick to seize dissonances between fact and pretension. Moreover, the thinker is abroad; his words are
\nlistened to and understood to an extent unprecedented in the known history of mankind: and the thinker tends to become
\nmore and more an inquisitor, a critic, an enemy of fictions. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIs then this fiction based upon a realisable parallel,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 in
\nother words, is it true that the true imperial unity when realised will be only an enlarged national unity? or, if not, what is the
\nrealisable fact which this fiction is intended to prepare? There have been plenty of instances in history of the composite nation
\nand, if this parallel is to be accepted as effective, it is such a composite nation on a large scale which it is the business of the
\nfederal empire to create. We must, therefore, cast a glance at the most typical instances of the successful composite nation and see
\nhow far the parallel applies and whether there are difficulties in the way which point rather to the necessity of a new evolution
\nthan to the variation of an old success. To have a just idea of the difficulties may help us to see how they can be overcome. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe instance most before our eyes both of the successfully evolved composite or heterogeneous nation and of the fortunately evolving heterogeneous empire is that of the British nation in the past and the British Empire in the present,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 successfully,
\nbut, fortunately, with a qualification; for it is subject to the perils of a mass of problems yet unsolved.1 The British nation
\nhas been composed of an English-speaking Anglo-Norman England, a Welsh-speaking Cymric
\n\t\t\tWales, a half-Saxon, half-Gaelic English-speaking Scotland and, very
\n\t\t\timperfectly, very partially, of a Gaelic Ireland with a mainly
\n\t\t\tAnglo-Scotch colony that held it indeed by force to the united body
\n\t\t\tbut was never able to compel a true union. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 It must be remembered that this was written some decades ago and circumstances and the Empire itself have wholly changed; the problem, as it was then, no longer poses
\n itself.
\n <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 325<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tIreland was, until recently, the element of failure in this
\n\t\t\t\tformation and it is only now and under another form and other
\n\t\t\t\tcircumstances than its other members that
\nsome kind of unity with the whole, still precarious and with the empire, not with the British nation, is becoming possible,
\nalthough even yet it has hardly begun to be real.2 What were the determining circumstances of this general success and this
\npartial failure and what light do they shed on the possibilities of the larger problem?\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn building up her human aggregates, Nature has followed in general
\n\t\t\tprinciple the same law that she observes in her physical aggregates.
\n\t\t\tShe has provided first a natural body, next, a common life and vital
\n\t\t\tinterest for the constituents of the body, last, a conscious mind or
\n\t\t\tsense of unity and a centre or governing organ through which that
\n\t\t\tcommon ego-sense can realise itself and act. There must be in her
\n\t\t\tordinary process either a common bond of descent or past association
\n\t\t\tthat will enable like to adhere to like and distinguish itself from
\n\t\t\tunlike and a common habitation, a country so disposed that all who
\n\t\t\tinhabit within its natural boundaries are under a sort of
\n\t\t\tgeographical necessity to unite. In earlier times when communities
\n\t\t\twere less firmly rooted to the soil, the first of these conditions
\n\t\t\twas the more important. In settled modern communities the second
\n\t\t\tpredominates; but the unity of the race, pure or mixed \u2014 for it need
\n\t\t\tnot have been one in its origin \u2014 remains a factor of importance,
\n\t\t\tand strong disparity and difference may easily create serious
\n\t\t\tdifficulties in the way of the geographical necessity imposing
\n\t\t\titself with any permanence. In order that it may impose itself,
\n\t\t\tthere must be a considerable force of the second natural condition,
\n\t\t\tthat is to say, a necessity of economic unity or habit of common
\n\t\t\tsustenance and a necessity of political unity or habit of common
\n\t\t\tvital organisation for survival, functioning and aggrandisement. And
\n\t\t\tin order that this second condition may fulfil itself in complete
\n\t\t\tforce, there must be nothing to depress or destroy the third in its
\n\t\t\tcreation or its continuance.  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2 This was written when Home Rule seemed to be a possible solution; the failure has now become a settled fact and Ireland has become the independent Republic of Ireland.<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 326<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tNothing must be done which will have the result of emphasising
\n\t\t\t\tdisunity in sentiment or perpetuating the feeling of
\n\t\t\t\tseparateness from the totality of the est of the organism; for that will tend to make the centre or governing organ psychologically unrepresentative of the whole
\nand therefore not a true centre of its ego-sense. But we must remember that separatism is not the same thing as particularism
\nwhich may well coexist with unity; it is the sentiment of the impossibility of true union that separates, not the mere fact of
\ndifference. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe geographical necessity of union was obviously present
\nin the forming of the British nation; the conquest of Wales and Ireland and the union with Scotland were historical events which
\nmerely represented the working of this necessity; but the unity of race and past association were wholly absent and had with
\ngreater or less difficulty to be created. It was effected successfully with Wales and Scotland in a greater or less lapse of time, not at
\nall with Ireland. Geographical necessity is only a relative force; it can be overridden by a powerful sentiment of disunion when
\nnothing is done effectively to dissolve the disintegrating impulsion. Even when the union has been politically effected, it tends
\nto be destroyed, especially when there is within the geographical unity a physical barrier or line of division sufficiently strong to
\nbe the base of conflicting economic interests, \u2014 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 to bridge over or dissolve this line of economic
\ndivision and counteract the sentiment of a separate body, a separate physical country, in the Irish mind, but by a violent
\nmiscalculation of cause and effect they emphasised both in the strongest possible manner. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the first place, the economic life and prosperity of Ireland were
\n\t\t\tdeliberately crushed in the interests of British trade and commerce.
\n\t\t\tAfter that it was of little use to bring about, by means which one
\n\t\t\tshrinks from scrutinising, the political "union" of the two islands
\n\t\t\tin a common legislature, a common governing organ; for that
\n\t\t\tgoverning organ was not a centre of psychological unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 327<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tWhere the most vital interests were not only different but in
\n\t\t\t\tconflict, it could only represent the continued control and
\n\t\t\t\tassertion of the interests of the "predominant partner" and the
\ncontinued subjection and denial of the interests of the foreign body bound by legislative fetters to the larger mass but not
\nunited through a real fusion. The famine which depopulated Ireland while England throve and prospered was Nature’s terrible testimony to the sinister character of this “union” which was not unity but the sharpest opposition of the most essential
\ninterests. The Irish movements of Home Rule and separatism were the natural and inevitable expression of Ireland’s will to
\nsurvive; they amounted to nothing more than the instinct of selfpreservation divining and insisting on the one obvious means of
\nself-preservation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn human life economic interests are those which are, ordinarily, violated with the least impunity; for they are bound up with the life itself and the persistent violation of them, if it
\ndoes not destroy the oppressed organism, provokes necessarily the bitterest revolt and ends in one of Nature’s inexorable retaliations. But in the third order of the natural conditions also British statesmanship in Ireland committed an equally radical
\nmistake in its attempt to get rid by violence of all elements of Irish particularism. Wales like Ireland was acquired by conquest,
\nbut no such elaborate attempt was made to assimilate it; after the first unease that follows a process of violence, after one or
\ntwo abortive attempts at resistance, Wales was left to undergo the peaceful pressure of natural conditions and its preservation
\nof its own race and language has been no obstacle to the gradual union of the Cymric race and the Saxon in a common British
\nnationality. A similar non-interference, apart from the minor problem of the Highland clans, has resulted in a still more rapid
\nfusion of the Scotch race with the English. There is now in the island of Great Britain a composite British race with a common
\ncountry bound together by the community of mingled blood, by a settled past association in oneness, by geographical necessity,
\nby a common political and economic interest, by the realisation of a common ego.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 328<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

 The
\n\t\t\t\topposite process in Ireland, the attempt to substitute an
\n\t\t\t\tartificial process where the working of natural conditions with
\n\t\t\t\ta little help of management and conciliation would have
\n\t\t\t\tsufficed, the application of old-world methods to anew set of circumstances has resulted in the opposite effect. And when the error was discovered, the result of the past Karma had
\nto be recognised and the union has had to be effected through the method demanded by Irish interests and Irish particularist
\nsentiments, first by the offer of Home Rule and then by the creation of the Free State and not under a complete legislative
\nunion. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis result may well reach beyond itself; it may create the
\nnecessity of an eventual remodelling of the British Empire and perhaps of the whole Anglo-Celtic nation on new lines with
\nthe principle of federation at the base. For Wales and Scotland have not been fused into England with the same completeness
\nas Breton, Alsatian, Basque and Provencal were fused into the<\/p>\n

\u00b8
\nindivisible unity of France. Although no economic interest, no pressing physical necessity demands the application of the federative principle to Wales and Scotland, yet a sufficient though minor particularist sentiment remains that may yet feel hereafter the repercussion of the Irish settlement and awake to the satisfaction and convenience of a similar recognition for the
\nprovincial separateness of these two countries. And this sentiment is bound to receive fresh strength and encouragement
\nby the practical working out of the federative principle in the reorganisation, which one day may become inevitable, of the
\ncolonial empire hitherto governed by Great Britain on the basis of Home Rule without federation.3 The peculiar circumstances
\nboth of the national and the colonial formation and expansion of the races inhabiting the British Isles have indeed been such
\nas to make it almost appear that this Empire has throughout been intended and prepared by Nature in her workings to be the
\ngreat field of experiment for the creation of this new type in the history of human aggregates, the heterogeneous federal empire. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 Home Rule now replaced by Dominion Status which means a confederation in fact though not yet in form.
\n   <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tPage \u2013 329<\/p>\n

\t<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span>
\n\t\t\t\t<\/font>\t\t\t<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VII   The Creation of the Heterogeneous Nation   THE PROBLEM of a federal empire founded on the sole foundation that is firm and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078","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=3078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3078\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}