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The Ideals of Human Unity
THE unification of humanity is also a thing decreed. For it is the goal towards which Nature is proceeding slowly but inevitably, bringing into play factors and forces that work out that consummation. Man is a gregarious animal, a social being. He forms groups and collectivities and lives as a member among others with whom he is related and connected in various ways. These groupings are the units round which man's life crystallises and develops, the nuclei of a growing, an increasingly complex and unified organism.
The earliest and the most persistent unit is the family: it may be called the atomic unit of the social body, ultimate and unbreakable, considered as such at least till now. Larger units were formed in course of time or simultaneously out of this original unit. Clan, tribe are extensions of the family. For the movement of extension, of continual enlargement is natural to a living organism, and the urge of the social life in man, his gregarious instinct, his sense of solidarity with his kind is so strong and irrepressible that he cannot rest content with the family alone, but extend its boundaries or make new adhesions to it for the formation of a still larger and more composite unit. The village was such a unit in the early days. It was a collective organization on a territorial basis: originally, however, the village too seems to have been if not wholly, at least in its major portion, an extended family. It gradually grew into a heterogeneous body, yet strongly unified, not consisting merely of blood-relations but others needed for the social economy.
Various other regional and parochial units also
developed: baronies, kingdoms and princedoms, city states, all
seeking to further extend and enrich the denotation of the social
unit. A Page – 108 critical stage was reached when, out of the welter of all these various types of social unities, yet another type, of momentous consequences, emerged, called the nation. The nation absorbed all other lesser unities and soon grew into an extremely composite and yet living unity: its strong cohesiveness, in spite of a diversity of the component elements, no less than its ardent aggressiveness, is a remarkable characteristic attending the phenomenon. It looks as though – at least it looked so till the other day – all the other previous attempts at a larger unity, since the formation of the original family unit, had one purpose in view, viz., the bringing forth of the national unit. Next to the family, the nation seems to be the stable unit, the other intervening ones were unstable comparatively and had only a temporary and contributory function.
Nationhood, however, developed into such a firm, solid,
self-conscious and selfishly aggressive entity that it has now become
almost a barrier to a further enlargement of the unit towards a still
greater and wider unification of mankind. But nature cannot be
baulked, its straight urge hampered; it takes to by-ways and indirect
routes and roundabout channels for its fulfilment. On three different
lines a greater and larger unification of mankind has been attempted
that goes beyond the unification brought about by the ideal of the
country or people or nation. First, the political, that leads to the
formation of Empires. But the faults and errors in this type of
larger unit have been made very evident. It acts as a steam-roller,
no doubt, crushing out and levelling parochial differences and local
narrownesses; but it also means the overgrowth of a central organism
– called the metropolis-at the expense of other member organisms
forming part of the larger collectivity, viz., colonies and
dependencies and subject races, which must in the end bring about a
collapse and disruption of the whole structure. The Roman Empire was
the typical example of this experiment. Next, there was what can be
called the racial line. Many attempts have been made in this
direction, but nothing very successful has taken shape. Pan-Slavism,
Pan-Arabism, Pan-Jewry are some of the expressions of this movement.
It has the fatal fault of a basis that is uncertain and doubtful: for
a pure race is a myth and in modern conditions the cry must
necessarily be a cry in the wilderness. Many races and peoples
Page – 109 have in the course of human history been thrown together, they have to live together, are compelled to lead a common social, political, economic and cultural life. That indeed was the genesis of nationhood. The hegemony of a so-called Nordic race over the world was one of the monsters produced by this attempt, a reductio ad absurdum of the principle. The third is the religious principle. Religion, that is to say, institutional religion has also sought to unify mankind on a larger basis, as large indeed as the world itself. The aim of Christendom, of Islam was frankly a conquest of the whole human race for the one jealous Lord. Buddhism and Hinduism did not overtly or with a set purpose attempt any such worldwide proselytism, but their influence and actual working had almost a similar effect: at least in the case of the former, it was like a flood throwing down many local boundaries, over-flooding distant countries, and peoples, giving them all one unified religious life and culture. But here too we meet the same objectionable feature as there is in the attempt at unity through the racial principle. For religious imperialism cannot succeed in unifying humanity, as amply demonstrated by the Roman Catholic Church; and like political imperialism it was more or less an experiment in the line, effecting nothing beyond a moral atmosphere. Even a federation of religions, contemplated by some idealists, seems hardly a practicable proposition; for it is only a mental conception and has no compelling vital force in it. At best it is only a sign-post, a pointer to the goal Nature and humanity have been endeavouring to evolve and realise.
A new type of imperialism – for imperialism it is in
essence has been developing in recent times; and it seems it shall
have its day and contribute its share of experimentation towards the
goal we are speaking of. I am of course referring to what has been
frankly and aptly termed as the Dictatorship of the Proletariate.
It is an attempt to cut across all other boundaries and unities
of human groupings – racial, national, religious, even familial. It
seeks to unify and consolidate one whole stratum of humanity in a
single stream-lined steel-frame organisation. At least that was the
ideal till yesterday; there seems to be growing here too a movement
towards decentralisation. Naturally, even as an organisation that is
top-heavy is bound Page – 110 to topple down in the end, likewise an organisation that is bottom-heavy, that is to say, restricts to that portion only of its body all sap and dynamism, is also bound to deteriorate and disintegrate. A tree does not live by its branches and leaves and flowers alone, no doubt, nor does it live by its roots alone.
A different type of wider grouping is also being experimented upon nowadays, a federal grouping of national units. The nation is taken in this system as the stable indivisible fundamental unit, and what is attempted is a free association of independent nations that choose to be linked together because of identity of interests or mutual sympathy in respect of ideal and culture. The British Empire is a remarkable experiment on this line: it is extremely interesting to see how an old-world Empire is. really being liquidated (in spite of a Churchill) and transformed into a commonwealth of free and equal nations. America too has been attempting a Pan-American federation. And in continental Europe, a Western and an Eastern Block of nations seem to be developing, not on ideal lines perhaps at present because of their being based upon the old faulty principle of balance of power hiding behind it a dangerously egoistic and exclusive national consciousness; but that may change when it is seen and experienced that the procedure does not pay, and a more natural and healthier approach may be adopted.
Now out of this complex of forces and ideals, what seems to stand out clearly is this: (i) the family unit remains for practical purposes, – whatever breaking or modification affects its outward forms, the thing seems to be a permanent feature of life organization; (ii) the nation too has attained a firm stability and inviolability; it refuses to be broken or dissolved and in any larger aggregate that is formed this one has to be integrated intact as a living unit. The other types of aggregates seem to be more in the nature of experiments and temporary necessities; when they have served their purpose they fade and disappear or are thrown into the background and persist as vestigial remains. It seems to us that the clan, the tribe, the race are such formations. Regionalism, Imperialism (political, economic or religious) are also not stable aggregates.
Still it is difficult to say as yet what would be the
exact form of the intermediate grouping between the nation and Page – 111 humanity at large, even if a grouping of nations appear to be a necessity as an intermediate stage, whether such groupings or commonwealths are going to be a permanent feature or whether the nation will finally remain the ultimate unit and humanity will consist of such free equal nations, independent units, all together forming a unified whole.
Anarchism-a certain school of philosophical or spiritual
anarchism-presages, however, an agglutinative type of humanity. That
is to say, there will be no hierarchy of groupings, in fact there
will be no aggregates at all, the individual will be the sole, the
first and the last unit. The individual, it is said, will have so
developed and perfected its self-nature that by following the law of
that nature, it will automatically and spontaneously live and move
harmoniously with all the rest; each will be a self-contained unit
and there will be a kind of pre-established harmony among all. Even
if it be so, however, a hierarchical form of groupings in human
organisation need not necessarily be barred out. Page – 112
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