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Chapter V Part II
Real and political unities
We shall try to understand Sri Aurobindo’s
first query that whether historically evolved collective egoisms
can be modified or abolished to effectuate a new integer of
external unity? This is a complex question with a differential
response. The case of Austria makes interesting study. The
Napoleonic wars that brought about the end of the Holy Roman
Empire also created an Austrian empire of political convenience
sustained not by any true nationalistic feeling but by the
central Germanic element incarnated in the Hapsburg dynasty. The
empire of Austria was again reorganized into the dual monarchy
of Austria- Hungary but as the empire was a non-national
entity, rather, a politically manufactured aggregate, it
dissolved in the whirlpool of history .When the post- World War
I scenario helped to form Austria as an independent republic, it
could not sustain its independence despite an awakening of
Austrian national sentiment and was annexed by Nazi Germany in
i938.Sri Aurobindo had commented much earlier in 1915-16 that
even in its decadence, the Austrian empire existed not on
internal factors but on external reasons ,notably the force
propelled by the Germanic idea as well as the power of
Austro-Magyar partnership to crush down the Slav nations(The
Ideal of Human Unity,pg286). It was as late as 1955 that the
Austrian republic was restored. Thus even for consolidating an
external unity, Austria had to work through the imperial egoisms
of consecutive configurations of political conveniences.
Sri Aurobindo also emphasizes that a real national unity existing in
the psyche of a race, if broken up by circumstances always
preserves a tendency to recover and reassert its oneness. This
phenomenon is excellently illustrated in the case of Greece.
‘Ancient Greece clung towards her separatist tendencies, her
self-sufficient city or regional states, her little mutually
repellent autonomies; but the centripetal force was always
there manifested in leagues, associations of States,
suzerainties like the Spartan and Athenian’(Ibid, pg 287). That
centripetal force was evident even when Eastern Rome, after the
collapse of Western part of Rome in the 5th century
AD, evolved the Byzantine civilization that preserved the
essence of Greek and Roman practices and culture. The separate
ego of the Greek nation persisted in the Greek psyche and
luckily was not later obliterated by the Ottoman Empire (Ibid).
That is why we see a new integer of external unity in the
revival of the national ego in modern Greece.
Another important example of revival of the
nationalistic ego and sentiment is the case of Poland. Despite
having a golden age of prosperity unto the 16th
century, it was later besieged by successive partitions and
crushed under the weight of the three powerful empires of
Russia, Prussia and Austria and practically ceased to exist
after having been deprived of half the population and one-third
of the land area. In 1916 Sri Aurobindo acknowledged the
strength of the Polish nation-idea in reconstituting Poland
(Ibid, pg 291) but it was only in 1918 that the Polish Republic
was officially established. Sri Aurobindo’s faith in the real
psychological unity that supports the nation-idea was further
validated with Polish nationhood surviving the invasion by
U.S.S.R and Germany in 1939 that precipitated World War II, the effort of the Nazis to purge Polish
culture as well as the large Jewish population, the reoccupation
by Soviet forces in 1945, the rule of the Soviet-dominated
government since 1947 till the Solidarity labour movement
ushering in free elections as late as in 1989.
In the same write-up, Sri Aurobindo wrote
‘Alsace after forty years of the German yoke remained faithful
to her French nationhood in spite of her affinities of race and
language with the conqueror’ (Ibid, pg 291). This 1916 statement
is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, even after Sri
Aurobindo wrote this, Alsace was again occupied by Germany in
World War II before finally being restored to France. Secondly,
the affinity with German culture and language did not obliterate
the French nationalistic identity and to date, both French and
German are taught in schools while Alsatian, the German dialect,
remains the lingua franca. That is why Sri Aurobindo boldly
stated that old racial and cultural unities are powerless
against the ‘nation’ as the one living group-unit of humanity.
‘The Catalonian in Spain, the Breton and Provencal and Alsatian
in France, the Welsh in England may cherish the signs of their
separate existence; but the attraction of the greater living
unity of the Spanish, the French, the British nation has been
too powerful to be injured by these persistences’( Ibid, pg
290-291) . In the same 1916 write-up, Sri Aurobindo had
expressed faith in the ‘Serbian national Idea’ (Ibid, pg 287)
that finally got consolidated nearly a century later, in 2003.
If group-unity has a sufficient psychological base and
uniqueness, then subconscious forces will awaken a sense of
political oneness leading to an inevitable external unity. Such
instances are found in the unification of Saxon England,
mediaeval France and in the formation of the United States of
America (Ibid, pg 288).
Thus it is true that historically evolved
collective egoisms and nationalistic sentiments can be modified
and abolished to form new integers of external unity. At times,
voluntary fusion of cultural and racial characteristics as well
as dissolution of imperial egoisms may be needed in the interest
of a more viable group-unit. ‘In some cases even an entire
change of name, culture and civilization has been necessary, as
well as a more or less profound modification of the race.
Notably has this happened in the formation of French
nationality. The ancient Gallic people, in spite of or perhaps
because of its Druidic civilization and early greatness, was
more incapable of organizing a firm political unity than even
the ancient Greeks or the old Indian kingdoms and republics. It
needed the Roman rule and Latin culture, the superimposition of
a Teutonic ruling caste and finally the shock of the temporary
and partial English conquest to found the unequalled unity of
modern France. Yet though name, civilization and all else seem
to have changed, the French nation of today is still and has
always remained the old Gallic nation with its Basque, Gaelic,
Armorican and other ancient elements modified by the Frank and
Latin admixture’(Ibid, pg 290).
Date of Update: 18-Nov-11
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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