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The World is One
WE say not only that India is one and indivisible (and for that matter, Bengal too is one and indivisible, since we have to repeat axiomatic truths that have fallen on evil days and on evil tongues) but that also the whole world is one and indivisible. They who seek to drive in a wedge anywhere, who are busy laying some kind of cordon sanitaire across countries and nations or cultures and civilisations, in the name of a bigoted ideology, are, to say the least, doing a disservice to humanity, indeed they are inviting a disaster and catastrophe to the world and equally to themselves. For that is an attempt to stem the high tide of Nature's swell towards a global unity that shall brook no resistance. The distinctions and differences that held good in other times and climes can have no sense or value in the world of today. Race or religion can divide man no longer; even nation-hood has lost much of its original force and meaning. It is strange—perhaps it is inevitable in the secret process of Nature's working—that when everything in conditions and circumstances obviously demands and points to an obliteration of all frontiers of division and separation—economically and politically too—and all drives towards a closer co-operation and intermingling, it is precisely then that the contrary spirit and impulse raises its head and seems even to gather added strength and violence. The fact may have two explanations. First of all, it may mean a defence gesture in Nature, that is to say, certain forces or formations have a permanent place in Nature's economy and when they apprehend that they are being ousted and neglected, when there is a one-pointed drive for their exclusion, naturally they surge up and demand recognition with a vengeance: for things forgotten or left aside that form Page 157 indissolubly part of Nature's fabric and pattern, one has to retrace one's steps in order to pick them up again. But also the phenomenon may mean a simple case of atavism: for we must know that there are certain old-world aboriginal habits and movements that have to go and have no place in the higher scheme of Nature and these too come up off and on, especially when the demand is there for their final liquidation. They have to be recognised as such and treated as such. Radical and . religious (including ideological) egoisms seem to us to belong to this category. In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status that is being forged, it is unity, harmony that is insisted upon, for that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates against that, whatever creates division and disruption must be banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In the reality of things, in the actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole, things that separate are less numerous and insistent than those which unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one simply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of Concordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or twist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the ignorance, selfishness, blind passion—a possession by the dark f9rces of atavism that makes the mischief. We ask for freedom, liberty of the individual, self-determination—well and good. But that does not mean the licence to do as one pleases, impelled by one's irrational idiosyncrasies. The individual must be truly individual, not a fractional being, the self must be the real self, not a shadow or surface formulation in order to have the full right to unfettered movement. Liberty, yes; but that means liberty for all which means again the other two terms of the great trinity, equality and fraternity. Individuality, yes; that means every individuality, in other words, solidarity. The two sides of the equation must be given equal value and equal emphasis. If the stress upon one leads to Nazism, Fascism or Stalinism, steam-rollered uniformity or streamlined regimentation, the death of the individual, the other emphasis leads to disintegration and disruption, to the same end in a different way. But in the world of today, after the victory in the last war over the Nazi conception of humanity, it seems as though the spirit of disruption has gone Page 158 abroad, human consciousness has been atom-bombed into flying fragments; so we have the spectacle of all manner of parochialism pullulating on the earth, 'regional and ideological —imperial blocs, nations, groups, parties have chequered ad infinitum, have balkanised human commonalty. We badly needed a United Nations Organisation, but we are facing the utmost possible disunity. The lesson is that politics alone will not save us, nor even economics. The word, has gone forth: what is required is a change of heart. The leaders of humanity must have a new heart grafted in place of the old. That is the surgical operation imperative at the moment. That heart will declare in its beats that the cosmos is not atomic but one and indivisible, ekam sat, neha nanasti kincana. Page 159 |