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The Immortal Nation
GIBBON'S Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire must have been the original source of the inspiration that moved later on Spengler and Toynbee and others to posit a life-line for nations and races and mark its various stages of growth and evolution. The general theory put in a nutshell would be like this: mankind is composed of groups or aggregates of individuals and each has a life-history of its own even like an individual human being, in other words, an inescapable cycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and disintegration. All groups – peoples; races, nations – have to pass through these destined stages, although, naturally, at different times and with a varying tempo. The view implies two conclusions or rather postulates: (l) that whatever is born must die, there is no resurrection or rejuvenation, neither in the individual nor in. the collective life and (2) that humanity remains on the whole more or less the same, there is no global progress: there is no continued march forward towards a kingdom of heaven upon earth, even as there has not been a decline and deterioration from some Golden Age in the past.
Is this so, in point of fact or is it bound to be so, in
point of theory? What are the facts? There are at least two human
groups or peoples extant that seem to point to a different
conclusion. I speak of China and especially of India. Egypt and
Greece and Rome, the Minoans, the early Mesopotamians had their day.
They rose, they lived, they died and are no more. But India and
China, although almost contemporaneous with any of those earliest
civilisations, have not vanished; they continue still today. In
respect of India at least it cannot be said that she is not today, is
totally different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her
Harappa and Mohenjo-daro Page – 238 days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles. It is true there were periods of decline and almost total disintegration in India, but she survived and revived. And the revival did not mean a negation of her past and of her origins, a complete severance from her essential life and genius. The spirit and even the fundamental outline of the form in which that spirit moulded itself did not change, they remained constant and the same. It is said the Varna and the Ashrama (roughly translated as caste and order) that give the characteristic structure of Indian society even today characterised also the Vedic society; and the system of village autonomy that survives even today ruled Harappan India also. It has also been pointed out that the administrative system pursued by the British in India was nothing brand new imported from outside, but only a continuation, with minor adaptations, of the system consolidated by the Moguls who again had taken it up from the Mauryas; a system initiated perhaps by still earlier legislators and builders of Indian polity. Mussolini of twentieth century Italy is in no way related to Cato or Julius Caesar of ancient Rome, but Sri Ramakrishna or Sri Aurobindo is a direct descendant of the Vedic Rishis. What is the cause of this 'strange longevity or stability that India or China enjoys? Whence this capacity to renew life, to rejuvenate the past that survives and persists? Before dealing with this question let us turn for a while to another curious phenomenon : which is allied to it and may throw some light upon it.
It is about the life-span of peoples. The life-span of
peoples is not uniform: it differs with different peoples and differs
considerably. The Spanish or Portuguese hegemony in modern Europe was
after all rather brief – a matter of one century or two – in
comparison with the lease enjoyed by Rome or Greece. Indeed it might
seem. that the older the nation the longer it lived. Take, for
example, the oldest nation recognized as such in history, Egypt; her
life-span is to be measured not by centuries but by millenniums. The
Hellenic civilisation that succeeded the Egyptian did not last as
long and yet it lasted more than its own successor, the Roman, did.
How was it then the more ancient people resisted more successfully
the forces of Page – 239 decline and disintegration? What was it that made the later and younger nations less successful in the battle of life? Another fact. The Asiatic peoples or nations endured generally longer than their European brethren. I have spoken of India and China, I may now refer to Persia, the old Persia that has a glorious story to tell for more than a thousand years (from Cyrus to the last of the Sassanides) ending or suffering a sea-change with the advent of the Arabs. The Arabs themselves and also the Hebrews were likewise long-lived peoples, although both of them have this especial characteristic that theirs is not a land-locked civilisation, that is to say, they were not peoples wedded to their own land, a mother-country of their own, theirs was a peripatetic genius which went abroad and sought to make their own or make themselves over to and enter into other countries and other cultures. Perhaps this is their way of securing a long life. The reason for a long life must necessarily be in the mode of life itself. The life lived by later nations had a very dominant politico-economic bias. The government, the political, that is to say, administrative power was of outstanding importance, the economic factor being necessarily an indispensable adjunct. On the other hand, in Egypt, in Greece and in all the Eastern countries, the main stream of life ran in another channel; it was cultural and ideative. What remains of Greece or even of Egypt, what the Eastern countries carry still here and there in a living manner is that element – that which is immortal in mortality, as the Vedic Rishis say. The stone monuments bear a significance and a message even to us, because they embody and point to what moved, inspired and fashioned the consciousness, the inner life of these races. And it is that that outlives the glories of governments and rulers.
What happened usually in ancient times among more
ancient peoples, and in Asia generally, happened with characteristic
emphasis in India. The physical vastness of China or of India, their
teeming populations – much greater than any single nation or
country – are sometimes adduced as reasons of the stability or
longevity of these two Asiatic peoples. But I suppose Matthew
Arnold's graphic vision of the situation – in his famous lines
about the dreaming East and the legions thundering past – hits the
mark closer, although his was a disparaging, Page – 240 not an appreciating note. That is to say, here in India the king, the administrator, the political or economic factor were superficial limbs of the society, they lay at the periphery of the people's consciousness. Wars and revolutions did not affect or touch essentially the life-movement. Here was a people terribly concerned with inner values: these were much more important than an occupation with problems of food and lodging. We are all familiar with the poignant cry of an Indian woman of the Vedic age: what shall I do with the thing that does not give me Immortality? The truth then is this: the stronger the inner life a nation builds up and organises, the longer it lives and the greater the power it acquires to revive when it falls for a time into decline. Naturally, a good deal depends upon the nature and quality of this inner life. There are certain types of inner life which mean the very source of life, there are others that are only secondary sources. Ancient Greece or even modern France has had a well-developed inner life, but this inner life was very strongly wedded to and welded into the outer life, it lay at least at one remove farther from the true source of life. Ancient Egypt less intellectual, less mentally cultivated, was in contact with the occult, the subliminal base of life, more potent and dynamic springs of consciousness. This was the cause of Egypt's greater longevity and some capacity of renewal. The older people generally lived in, or at least, were in living contact with principles of existence more fundamental and therefore more enduring. The gods of the mind and of the inner vital enjoy a longer immortality than the deities that rule man's outer life and body. Viewed from this standpoint India stands as a case sui generis. She did not stop short satisfied with the lesser gods. She aspired for the highest One, the supreme spiritual reality and it was her mission, her destiny, to foster it and keep guard over it for the sake of humanity. Whatever the outer vicissitudes, she maintained throughout the inner continuity of her spiritual life and realisation. That is where she drank of the nectar of immortality and that is how she could always revive and renew herself after a period of decline and almost disintegration, because she possessed the mystery of the self. Other peoples were busy about many other things important or Page – 241 unimportant in some measure, but here was a race that never forgot the one thing needful. India of today, we repeat, is fundamentally and essentially the India of the Vedas, even in a more literal sense than that China of Mao-tse- Tung (or Sun-yat-Sen) is the China of Lao-tse. A race dies out altogether or continues to lead a superficial mechanical existence, that is to say, vegetates as an inchoate mass, when it knows to live only in its body, confined only to the demands of the barest physical necessities. The life of a race gains a meaning and a new vitality when a higher light and aspiration inspire and move its spirit; when a deeper and finer sensibility, a nobler ambition stir its affections, when a superior intelligence and understanding illumine its mental horizon, its lease of life is increased by that and also its power of recuperation and renewal. And the further it enters into these basic constants of existence the greater that power of rejuvenation.¹ We may compare with profit perhaps in this regard the life of an individual person with that of a people or nation. Even as an individual has a soul beyond his body and mind, a spiritual personality behind his apparent name and form, a nation too has a soul apart from its political, economic and cultural life. As in the individual, in the aggregate too a spiritual principle seeks to express and incarnate itself. It is this immortal reality in the individual man that reincarnates in life after life surviving apparent death and disintegration. But only those individuals that live consciously a soul-life, express to some extent at least the soul's light in and through the external personality of a mind and body and vitality and maintain a true individuality and a strong and durable formation through the lives; otherwise, the soul is there no doubt, but in its own world, exerts only a very indirect influence and the rest of the personality, the dynamic members disintegrate and are taken up into the general earth atmosphere. Something of the same kind is likely to happen in the case of collective groups too. A nation like India that hitched her wagon of life to a star-the supreme spiritual reality – is bound to regain her ----------
¹ Toynbee also
speaks of the possibility of, national regeneration-freedom from the
cycle of decline and death-through religion (although he limits
religion to the Christian faith). Page – 242 life always through whatever calamities and catastrophes might befall her.
One may note three or four crises, practically rebirths,
in India's life history. They correspond roughly with the great
racial infiltrations or what is described as such by anthropologists,
what others may describe as operations of blood transfusion. There
was an original autochthonous people, the early humanity out of the
stone age, usually called protoDravidians, whose remnants are
still found among the older and cruder aboriginal tribes. Then the
Dravidian infusion which culminated in the humanity, the Indian
humanity, of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Next the Aryan avatar. One
usually begins Indian history with the Dravido-Aryan civilisation
which is taken as the basic foundation, the general layout of the
whole structure. The first shock or blow the edifice received was
from the Greeks and then the Huns and Scythians – the Tartars–
something that struck at the most essential element of Indian culture
and character. Psychologically the new leaven was brought in and
injected by Gautama Buddha – the un-Vedic Buddha– the external
invasion and penetration was possible because of this opening already
made from within. This injection was necessary as an antidote to the
decline and fall that had set in sometime between the passing of Sri
Krishna and the advent of Buddha. But traditional India absorbed this
new leaven and came out with a renewed and enriched personality. The
next major shaking came with the Islamic inundation. This meant or
would have meant a great and even catastrophic reversal, but this too
in the course of centuries succeeded only in invigorating and
enlarging the life and consciousness of eternal India. The last and
perhaps the most dangerous assault came from the Europeans, the
Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and finally, most of all, from the
British. An absolutely matter-of-fact vitalistic Europe overran and
overwhelmed a predominantly otherworldly spirit and almost succeeded
in obliterating that spirit and replacing it by a replica of its own
life-pattern and Weltanschauung.
Even such a blow India could survive, not only so, could
utilise it for her own purpose, for the greater fulfilment of her
mission in life. She is coming out of that Page – 243 ordeal a towering personality, a godhead for the remoulding of humanity and earth-life. It may be argued that all nations and peoples are a mixture' of various races and foreign strands which are gradually, soldered and unified together in course of time. The British nation, for example, is built upon a base of Celtic blood and culture (the original Briton), to which were added one by one the German (Angles and the Saxon), the Danish, the French. But what is to be noted is that the resultant is at the end some. _ thing very different from the start – something unrecognisable when compared with the original pattern and genius. The resultant seems to be arrived at not by a gradual evolution and continuous transformation but by disparate echelons or , breaks, as it were, in the line. In France also or in Italy the] growth and the unification were achieved through violent ;1 revolutions, eruptions and irruptions. In the former, a Gaelic; and Iberian base and in the latter an Etruscan were all but; swept off by the Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The history of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three different epochs giving us not one but three different personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman conquest; the second catastrophic change was wrought by the Goths and Vandals which was stabilised in the Byzantine Empire and the third avatar appeared with the Turkish regime. At the present time, she is acquiring another life and body.
Indeed, viewed from this angle, the whole conscious
personality of Europe seems to have been cut across by such hiatuses,
two or three of them of a serious kind. Upon a primitive and
mythologic stratum was laid the Græco-Roman
and then there was a strong Hebraic or Old Testament influence,
finally the known Christian or New Testament element; to that must be
added the modern New Enlightenment, that is to say, of Science and
Rationalism and Materialism. These several strands have not been
welded or harmonised together very well. They are very often at
variance with each other and combating each other. It is this
schizophrenia that lies at the bottom of European malady. Europe has
not been Page – 244 able to develop a wholly unified or one-pointed spiritual personality. On the other hand, it has developed very well-defined and sharply separated nations in its bosom, a sign and resultant of the lack of complete integration. India has some-times been spoken of as a continent consisting of many and varied nations, and not as a unified nation, she being more like Europe than a particular nation like England or France. We may answer that India possesses a more unified soul than Europe and that is why her sub-nations do not stand out in any intransigent separativeness like the nations in Europe. Even Asia possesses a more unified and integrated soul-personality than Europe; for, as I have said, her peoples stand upon a deeper strand of life and consciousness, something that is in contact with and is inspired by the Spiritual truth and reality. It is more so in India, where one has the very emblem and exemplar of this spiritual unity and the spiritual personality that derives from there. A nation or people then possesses or is composed of several souls or several layers of an oversoul. Even like the individual it has a physical soul, that is to say, a body consciousness, a vital soul, a mental soul and finally the true or inmost soul, the oversoul. When one lives in any of the inferior souls, one has precarious and disintegrated life – whether it is a nation or an individual. It is only when one is conscious of one's inmost self, then only the person or the people can attain some kind of immortality, the power of rejuvenation in those external parts – the mental, vital and physical – that make up the terrestrial life and that are ever subject to decline, decay and death.
A nation, however, that has achieved something, created
something, made a strong formation in the mental or in the vital
world may die physically, but the formation, the creation, the
achievement remains and continues to be alive in the terrestrial
atmosphere, in the general consciousness of man. Ancient Greece is
dead, Augustan Rome is gone, but the mind of light that Greece
brought into play, the cast of social character that Rome established
are among the permanent acquisitions of human culture and
civilisation. They have gone into the making of the warp and woof of
the standard human life today. Apart, however, from this general
survival, could there be a reappearance of the very soul of a nation
in another Page – 245 nation, in the same way as an individual soul reincarnates itself in another individual body? That question is asked, as sometimes it has been suggested, from certain significant and striking similarities, that ancient Greece incarnated in modern France and that there is a Roman stamp in the British nation. The possibility may not be altogether ruled out of court. But still it must be understood that the two phenomena are not quite identical, there is a difference in nature and kind. Rebirth in the sense of reincarnation is especially an individual phenomenon, the individual forming a divine centre, a focus of consciousness which the group is not; the group is more a field and a frame for the individual in spite of a conscious existence of its own.
In any case, the revival or renaissance of a
nation – a collective consciousness and being – is quite
possible, and the normal curve of life – birth and growth and death
– is not even for it the ineluctable destiny. For like the
individual, the group too has that in it or the possibility of that
in it which is akin, to – an isotope of – the soul or self, the
immortal conscious being. Page – 246
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