 "Sri Aurobindo’s third dream and a quest for global unity")
A world union that’s necessary. An outlook that’s international. A life that’s fairer. A space for smaller nations that’s larger. A security for larger ones that’s sturdier. A citizenship that’s multilateral. A new human race that’s bound together by the oneness of spirit.
These are gleanings from Sri Aurobindo’s third dream, articulated for a 15 August 1947 programme that All India Radio had requested and broadcast a day earlier. Compressed into 281 words, Sri Aurobindo’s vision for an entity called earth—divided and bordered by man into 193 countries—is as eternal as it is practical, as timeless as it is immediate. And it is the only foundation for any attempt at global unity, an effort repeatedly attempted but failed for lack of this fundamental base.
Sri Aurobindo was 75 when India became an independent nation on 15 August 1947. He was a political activist and organiser, an intellectual edifice, author of purna swarajya—a compromise-free complete freedom—and one who had preordained India’s Independence decades earlier. In a September 1935 letter, he wrote to a disciple: “Have I not told you that the independence is all arranged for and will evolve itself all right?” A March 1946 statement to Amrita Bazar Patrika said, “He (Sri Aurobindo) has always stood for India’s complete independence which he was the first to advocate publicly and without compromise as the only ideal worthy of a self-respecting nation.” To him, the new challenge was the actions of a free India: “It’s what she (India) will do with her independence that is not arranged for—and so it is that about which I have to bother.”
Bringing India’s freedom and her place in international affairs together, Sri Aurobindo’s third dream sets out the vision. A “world-union,” he said, “is under way; there is an imperfect initiation organised but struggling against tremendous difficulties. But the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and conquer.”
Earlier attempts at uniting the world had failed. The Concert of Europe had two incarnations, both of which died, first in 1860 and then in 1914. The League of Nations collapsed in 1946. And under the assault of Xi Jinping from Beijing, Vladimir Putin from Moscow, and Donald J. Trump from Washington D.C., the third attempt—the United Nations—is on its deathbed today. All treaties, all negotiations, all checks and balances have been swept aside by the force of raw power—political, religious, ideological. Minus the scale, but factoring in the nuclear threats from the US, the Russian Federation, and even the failed terrorist state of Pakistan, we are at the brink of a war uncertainty that defined 1939.
India’s role here, according to Sri Aurobindo, is to develop a “larger statesmanship” that is not limited by the present but looks into the future. “Her [India’s] presence may make all the difference between a slow and timid and a bold and swift development.” We can see the green shoots of such a development in the balance New Delhi is attempting by goading leaders to eschew war, embrace peace, while condemning religious terrorism and political expansions.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“Unification,” Sri Aurobindo wrote, “is a necessity of Nature, an inevitable movement.” The interim may be marked by catastrophes or interruptions, but the future is preordained. All countries—from large hegemons such as the US, China, and Russia to small nations like Lesotho and Taiwan, and intermediate rising powers like India and Indonesia—are clear about the virtues of unity. “Without it (unity) the freedom of the small nations may be at any moment in peril and the life even of the large and powerful nations insecure,” he wrote.
Here, Sri Aurobindo warns the world against pushing for unity in the garb of uniformity. “A political and purely outward unity with a mechanical uniformity and centralisation would prove a failure,” he wrote in June 1947. “Whatever we decide let us preserve the principle peculiarly suited to the unique psychological and physical conditions of this great land and the life of its people which was to develop through numerous autonomous centres of culture and power.”
This applies equally to defining unity through diversity within borders for nations as it does to planetary cross-border unity. He conceded that while human imbecility and stupid selfishness can prevent unity, these “cannot stand for ever against the necessity of Nature and the Divine Will.” The former is in full glory, playing in every global theatre of power; the latter is, perhaps, a stream that may flow from India.
So, what defines a true unity that is not uniformity? An international spirit and outlook, and institutional forms. These include developments such as dual or “multilateral citizenship, willed interchange or voluntary fusion of cultures.” Such an approach will end the necessity of present nationalism—crucial today for self-preservation—and evolve into a future unity. “A new spirit of oneness will take hold of the human race.” Unity of the spirit rather than uniformity by domination is the way forward. Resting on the idea of fraternity of men (if the ‘union of souls’ is culturally inconvenient), this is the future of geopolitics and international relations.
Thus far, the field of geopolitics has evolved—from the race for imperial hegemony; through the Cold War of US-Soviet Union binary versus emerging multipolarities; to finally, an eastward swing towards China from the 2000s onwards and India as it readies to embrace a Viksit Bharat by 2047. The present is a sliver of confrontations; the future is a vast intermingling of interests, values, and harmonies.
In an atmosphere of deals, bombs, or weaponisation of trade, technology, and turmoil, these ideas may seem out of sync. When the unit of power dominates the unit of harmony, a global unity may seem aspirational and not practical. But when viewed through the prism of the evolution of man, his countries, his institutions, and his quest for growth, these ideals articulate and envision the future like none other. Sri Aurobindo’s is not a defeatist stance couched in utopia; it is a destined aphorism of the future.
The other four dreams Sri Aurobindo articulated were freedom through a revolutionary movement; resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia; the proliferation of Indian spiritual traditions to the world; and India as the central creator of the evolution of consciousness for humanity. These five dreams can be seen as the material-philosophical-spiritual grand strategy designed for India, and through it the world.
Author and writer, Gautam Chikermane is Vice President at Observer Research Foundation. He tracks grand strategy, international relations, geopolitics and economics. His latest books are India’s Grand Strategy (Observer Research Foundation), Reform Nation (HarperCollins, 2022) and Reading Sri Aurobindo (Penguin Random House, 2022, co-edited). Follow him on Twitter @gchikermane. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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