{"id":3148,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3148"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:19","slug":"07-nation-and-empire-real-and-political-unities-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-ideal-of-human-unity\/07-nation-and-empire-real-and-political-unities-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-07_Nation and Empire-Real and Political Unities.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER V <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nNATION AND EMPIRE: REAL
\nAND POLITICAL UNITIES<\/b><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/font> problem of the unification of mankind resolves
\nitself into two distinct difficulties. There is the doubt whether
\nthe collective egoisms already created in the natural evolution of
\nhumanity can at this time be sufficiently modified or abolished
\nand whether even an external unity in some effective form can
\nhe securely established. And there is the doubt whether, even
\nif any such external unity can be established, it will not be at the
\nprice of crushing both the free life of the individual and the free
\nplay of the various collective units already created in which
\nthere is a real and active life and substituting a State organisation which will mechanise human existence. Apart from these
\ntwo uncertainties there is a third doubt whether a really living unity can be
\nachieved by a mere economic, political and administrative unification and whether it ought not to be preceded
\nby at least the strong beginnings of a moral and spiritual oneness.
\nIt is the first question that must be taken first in the logical order. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAt the present stage of human progress the nation is the
\nliving collective unit of humanity. Empires exist, but they are
\nas yet only political and not real units; they have no life from
\nwithin and owe their continuance to a force imposed on their
\nconstituent elements or else to a political convenience felt or acquiesced in by the constituents and favoured by the world
\noutside. Austria was long the standing example of such an empire; it was a political convenience favoured by the world outside, acquiesced in until recently by its constituent elements and  <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-43<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmaintained by the force of the central Germanic
\nelement incarnated in the Hapsburg dynasty,\u2014of late with the active aid of
\nits Magyar partner. If the political convenience of an empire of
\nthis kind ceases, if the constituent elements no longer acquiesce
\nand are drawn more powerfully by a centrifugal force, if at the
\nsame time the world outside no longer favours the combination,
\nthen force alone remains as the one agent of an artificial unity. There arose
\nindeed a new political convenience which the existence of Austria served even after it suffered from this tendency
\nof dissolution, but that was the convenience of the Germanic idea which made it
\nan inconvenience to the rest of Europe and deprived it of the acquiescence of important constituent elements
\nwhich were drawn towards other combinations outside the Austrian formula. From
\nthat moment the existence of the Austrian empire was in jeopardy and depended, not on any inner
\nnecessity, but first on the power of the Austro-Magyar partnership to crush down the Slav nations within it and, secondly, on
\nthe continued power and dominance of Germany and the Germanic idea in Europe, that is to say, on force alone. And although
\nin Austria the weakness of the imperial form of unity was singularly conspicuous and its conditions exaggerated, still those conditions are the same for all empires which are not at the same
\ntime national units. It was not so long ago that most political
\nthinkers perceived at least the strong possibility of an automatic
\ndissolution of the British Empire by the self-detachment of
\nthe colonies, in spite of the close links of race, language and
\norigin that should have bound them to the mother country. This
\nwas because the political convenience of imperial unity, though
\nenjoyed by the colonies, was not sufficiently appreciated by
\nthem and, on the other hand, there was no living principle of national oneness.
\nThe Australians and Canadians were beginning to regard themselves as new separate nations rather than as
\nlimbs of an extended British nationality. Things are now changed
\nin both respects, a wider formula has been discovered, and the
\nBritish Empire is for the moment proportionately stronger. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNevertheless, it may be asked why should this distinction <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-44<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbe made of the political and the real unit when name, kind and
\nform are the same? It must be made because it is of the greatest
\nutility to a true and profound political science and involves the
\nmost important consequences. When an Empire like Austria,
\na non-national empire, is broken to pieces, it perishes for good; there is no innate tendency to recover the outward unity, because there 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 oneness. The Greek Empire has
\ngone the way of all empires, but the Greek nation, after many
\ncenturies of political non-existence, again possesses its separate
\nbody, because it has preserved its separate ego and therefore
\nreally existed under the covering rule of the Turk. So has it been with all the
\nraces under the Turkish yoke, because that powerful suzerainty, stern as it was in many respects, never attempted
\nto obliterate their national characteristics or substitute an Ottoman
\nnationality. These nations have revived and have reconstituted or are attempting to reconstitute themselves in the measure in which they have preserved their real national sense. The
\nSerbian national idea attempted to recover and has recovered all
\nterritory in which the Serb exists or predominates. Greece attempts to reconstitute herself in her mainland, islands and Asiatic colonies, but cannot now reconstitute the old Greece since
\neven Thrace is rather Bulgar than Hellenic. Italy has become
\nan external unity again after so many centuries because, though
\nno longer a State, she never ceased to be a single people. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis truth of a real unity is so strong that even nations
\nwhich never in the past realised an outward unification, to which
\nFate and circumstance and their own selves have been adverse,
\nnations which have been full of centrifugal forces and easily
\noverpowered by foreign intrusions, have yet always developed a
\ncentripetal force as well and arrived inevitably at organised oneness. Ancient
\nGreece clung to her separatist tendencies, her self-sufficient city or regional states, her little mutually repellent autonomies; but the centripetal force was always there manifested in <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-45<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nleagues, associations of States, suzerainties like the Spartan and
\nAthenian. It realised itself in the end, first, imperfectly and temporarily by
\nthe Macedonian overrule, then by a strange enough development, through the
\nevolution of the Eastern Roman world into a Greek and Byzantine Empire, and it
\nhas again revived in modern Greece. And we have seen in our own day Germany,
\nconstantly disunited since ancient times, develop at last to portentous issues
\nits innate sense of oneness formidably embodied in the Empire of the
\nHohenzollerns and persistent after its fall in a federal Republic. Nor would it
\nat all be surprising to those who study the working of forces and not merely the
\ntrend of outward circumstances, if one yet far-off result of the war were to be
\nthe fusion of the one Germanic element still left outside, the Austro-German,
\ninto the Germanic whole, although possibly in some other embodiment than
\nPrussian hegemony or Hohenzollern empire.* In both these historic
\ninstances, as in so many others, the unification of Saxon England, mediaeval France, the formation of the United States of
\nAmerica, it was a real unity, a psychologically distinct unit which
\ntended at first ignorantly by the subconscious necessity of its being
\nand afterwards with a sudden or gradual awakening to the sense
\nof political oneness, towards an inevitable external unification.
\nIt is a distinct group-soul which is driven by inward necessity and uses outward
\ncircumstances to constitute for itself an organised body. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut the most striking example in history is the evolution of
\nIndia. Nowhere else have the centrifugal forces been so strong,
\nnumerous, complex, obstinate. The mere time taken by the evolution has been prodigious; the disastrous vicissitudes through
\nwhich it has had to work itself out have been appalling. And yet
\nthrough it all the inevitable tendency has worked constantly,
\npertinaciously, with the dull, obscure, indomitable, relentless
\nobstinacy of Nature when she is opposed in her instinctive purposes <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*<\/i> This possibility realised itself for a time, but by means and under circumstances which made the revival of Austrian national sentiment and a separate
\nnational existence inevitable, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-46<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nby man, and finally, after a struggle
\nenduring through millenniums, has triumphed. And, as usually happens when she is
\nthus opposed by her own mental and human material, it is the
\nmost adverse circumstances that the subconscious worker has
\nturned into her most successful instruments. The beginnings of
\nthe centripetal tendency in India go back to the earliest times of
\nwhich we have record and are typified in the ideal of the Samrat
\nor Chakravarti Raja and the military and political use of the
\nAswamedha and Rajasuya sacrifices. The two great national
\nepics might almost have been written to illustrate this theme; for
\nthe one recounts the establishment of a unifying dharmarajya<\/i> or imperial
\nreign of justice, the other starts with an idealised description of such a rule pictured as once existing in the ancient
\nand sacred past of the country. The political history of India is
\nthe story of a succession of empires, indigenous and foreign,
\neach of them destroyed by centrifugal forces but each bringing
\nthe centripetal tendency nearer to its triumphant emergence.
\nAnd it is a significant circumstance that the more foreign the
\nrule, the greater has been its force for the unification of the
\nsubject people. This is always a sure sign that the essential nation-unit is
\nalready there and that there is an indissoluble national vitality necessitating the inevitable emergence of the organised nation. In this instance, we see that the conversion of
\nthe psychological unity on which nationhood is based into the
\nexternal organised unity by which it is perfectly realised, has
\ntaken a period of more than two thousand years and is not yet
\ncomplete.* And yet since the essentiality of the thing was there,
\nnot even the most formidable difficulties and delays, not even
\nthe most persistent incapacity for union in the people, not even
\nthe most disintegrating shocks from outside have prevailed
\nagainst the obstinate subconscious necessity. And this is only
\nthe extreme illustration of a general law. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt will be useful to dwell a little upon this aid lent by foreign <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* But it must be remembered that France, Germany, modern Italy took
\neach a thousand or two thousand years and more to form and set into a firm oneness. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-47<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nrule to the process of nation-making and see how it works.
\nHistory abounds with illustrations. But in some cases the phenomenon of foreign domination is momentary and imperfect,
\nin others long-enduring and complete, in others often repeated in various forms.
\nIn some instances the foreign element is rejected, its use once over, in others
\nit is absorbed, in others accepted with more or less assimilation for a longer or briefer
\nperiod as a ruling caste. The principle is the same, but it is
\nworked variously by Nature according to the needs of the particular case. There is none of the modern nations in Europe which
\nhas not had to pass through a phase more or less prolonged, more
\nor less complete, of foreign domination in order to realise its
\nnationality. In Russia and England it was the domination of a
\nforeign conquering race which rapidly became a ruling caste and
\nwas in the end assimilated and absorbed, in Spain the succession
\nof the Roman, Goth and Moor, in Italy the overlordship of the
\nAustrian, in the Balkans* the long suzerainty of the Turk, in
\nGermany the transient yoke of Napoleon. But in all cases, the
\nessential has been a shock or a pressure which would either
\nwaken a loose psychological unity to the necessity of organising
\nitself from within or would crush out, dispirit or deprive of
\npower, vitality and reality the more obstinate factors of disunion.
\nIn some cases even an entire change of name, culture and civilisation has been necessary, as well as a more or less profound
\nmodification of the race. Notably has this happened in the formation of French nationality. The ancient Gallic people, in spite
\nof or perhaps because of its Druidic civilisation and early greatness, was more incapable of organising a firm political unity
\nthan even the ancient Greeks or the old Indian kingdoms and
\nrepublics. It needed the Roman rule and Latin culture, the superimposition of a Teutonic ruling caste and finally the shock
\nof the temporary and partial English conquest to found the
\nunequalled unity of modern France. Yet though name, civilisation <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n* Here there was no single people to be united but many separate peoples
\nwhich had each to recover their separate independence or in some cases a coalition or kindred peoples. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-48<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand all else seem to have changed, the French nation of
\ntoday is still and has always remained the old Gallic nation with its
\nBasque Gaelic, Armorican and other ancient elements modified
\nby the Frank and Latin admixture. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThus the nation is a persistent psychological unit which
\nNature has been busy developing throughout the world in the
\nmost various forms and educating into physical and political
\nunity. Political unity is not the essential factor; it may not yet be
\nrealised and yet the nation persists and moves inevitably towards
\nits realisation; it may be destroyed and yet the nation persists
\nand travails and suffers but refuses to be annihilated. In former
\ntimes the nation was not always a real and vital unit, the tribe,
\nthe clan, the commune, the regional people were the living
\ngroups. Those unities which in the attempt at national evolution
\ndestroyed these older living groups without arriving at a vital
\nnationhood, disappeared once the artificial or political unit was
\nbroken. But now the nation stands as the one living group unit
\nof humanity into which all others must merge or to which they
\nmust become subservient. Even old persistent race unities and
\ncultural unities are powerless against it. The Catalonian in
\nSpain, the Breton and Provencal and Alsatian in France, the Welsh in England may
\ncherish the signs of their separate existence; but the attraction of the greater living unity of the Spanish,
\nthe French, the British nation has been too powerful to be injured by these persistences. The nation in modern times is practically indestructible, unless it dies from within. Poland, torn
\nasunder and crushed under the heel of three powerful empires,
\nceased to exist; the Polish nation survived and is once more
\nreconstituted. Alsace after forty years of the German yoke
\nremained faithful to her French nationhood in spite of her affinities of race and language with the conqueror. All modem
\nattempts to destroy by force or break up a nation are foolish and
\nfutile, because they ignore this law of the natural evolution.
\nempires are still perishable political units; the nation is immortal And so it will remain until a greater living unit can be found <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-49<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ninto which the nation idea can merge in obedience to a superior attraction. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd then the question arises whether the empire is not precisely that destined unit in course of evolution. The mere
\nfact that at present not the empire, hut the nation is the vital,
\nunity can he no bar to a future reversal of the relations. Obviously, in order that they may be reversed the empire must cease
\nto be a mere political and become rather a psychological entity.
\nBut there have been instances in the evolution of the nation in
\nwhich the political unity preceded and became a basis for the
\npsychological as in the union of Scotch, English and Welsh to
\nform the British nation. There is no insurmountable reason why
\na similar evolution should not take place on a larger scale and an
\nimperial unity be substituted for a national unity. Nature has
\nlong been in travail of the imperial grouping, long casting about
\nto give it a greater force of permanence, and the emergence of the
\nconscious imperial ideal all over the earth and its attempts,
\nthough still rude, violent and blundering, to substitute itself for
\nthe national, may not irrationally be taken as the precursory sign
\nof one of those rapid leaps and transitions by which she so often
\naccomplishes what she has long been gradually and tentatively
\npreparing. This then is the possibility we have next to consider
\nbefore we examine the established phenomenon of nationhood
\nin relation to the ideal of human unity. Two different ideals and
\ntherefore two different possibilities were precipitated much
\nnearer to realisation by the European conflict,\u2014a federation of
\nfree nations and, on the other hand, the distribution of the earth
\ninto a few great empires or imperial hegemonies. A practical
\ncombination of the two ideas became the most tangible possibility of the not
\ndistant future. It is necessary to pause and consider, whether one element of this possible combination being
\nalready a living unit, the other also could not under certain
\ncircumstances be converted into a living unit and the combination, if realised, made the foundation of an enduring new order
\nof things. Otherwise it could be no more than a transient device
\nwithout any possibility of a stable permanence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-50<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER V   NATION AND EMPIRE: REAL AND POLITICAL UNITIES   THE problem of the unification of mankind resolves itself into two distinct difficulties. There…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-ideal-of-human-unity","wpcat-63-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148","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=3148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}