Readings in Chapter VI

Ancient and Modern Methods of Empire

I

From Imperialism to Internationalism

It is interesting why Sri Aurobindo discusses the imperial idea before he embarks to construct a road map for internationalism. Internationalism is a comparatively new movement in the time-field of history, consolidated by the perils of the two World Wars in the 20th century though the 40 years that preceded the First World War in 1914 witnessed international commerce, albeit informally, without state regulations. Prior to the appeal of internationalism, from the times of Alexander the Great to the British Raj in India, any global expansionist strategy was naturally part of an imperialistic design. In a way, the imperialistic urge to expand and unite the world by military conquest and political maneuver preceded the contemporary quest for international unity through goodwill and voluntary co-operation. Just as the psychoanalyst explores the subconscious which is the repertoire of past experiences to understand the antecedents of 'conscious' behavior; the social scientist needs to explore the antecedents of human unity in the imperial movement that preceded internationalism. After all, vestiges of imperialism still exist in the honorific sense of the word from the United Kingdom to Japan and royal marriages at the cost of the State exchequer hold public appeal even in the 21st century.

For Sri Aurobindo, the true problem in his exploration is to understand how the artificial political unity of a heterogeneous empire, heterogeneous in racial composition, language and culture, got translated, if at all, into a real and psychological unity. Logically, one must first understand how a more homogeneous aggregate reflected psychological unity in contrast to a heterogeneous composite empire. He therefore starts by studying the "difference between the imperial aggregate in which the component elements are not divided from each other by a strong sense of their separate existence in the whole and the imperial aggregate in which this psychological basis of separation is still in vigour."(1)

UNITY IN HOMOGENEOUS AGGREGATES

The very concept of empire or an imperial aggregate connotes a composite of several sub-nations, a conglomeration of multiple races, linguistic groups and cultural prototypes. Moreover, due to transnational migration in a world of globalization and market economy, it would be very difficult to find a homogeneous aggregate in 'purity' in the modern world.

Japan was a sort of homogeneous aggregate, "a national whole and an empire only in the honorific sense of the word" (2), but after it occupied Formosa (1894-95) and annexed Korea (1910), "it became a real and a composite empire."(3) Sri Aurobindo wrote that in 1916 though it was by 1920 that the Japanese empire was firmly established so as to merit a permanent seat in the League of Nations. However, Japan was working towards a psychological unity, had instituted a national education system by 1872 and established a bicameral legislature to provide the basis for political unity and stability by 1889.The homogeneity in Japan was facilitated by the fact that the Japanese were mostly a single ethnic group. In the endeavor to construct Japanese nationalism, there were severe conflicts between Japanese leaders but the issue was not about the freedom and greatness of Japan on which all warring factions were in consonance but on methodological approaches and internal organization (4)Sri Aurobindo, Bande Mataram, Oct 23, 1907). However, when Japan annexed Formosa and Korea, it shifted from a homogeneous whole to a heterogeneous conglomerate and this was accompanied by a burning imperialistic desire to expand and dominate - an ambition that culminated in disastrous consequences. However the groundwork of homogeneity was not in vain and when Japan was reconstructed after World War II, it was quick to resurrect its pristine pride, strength and honour.

The case of Germanic homogeneity is worth studying. Though the region that later became Austria with a distinct political identity (in 976 AD) was initially invaded and inhabited by many tribes (Celts, Romans, Slavs), they were subjugated by Charlemagne (crowned as emperor in Rome on Christmas Day,800) and the area became subsequently ethnically Germanic. That is why Sri Aurobindo commented that instead of being burdened with three forcible minor acquisitions (Alsace, Poland, Schleswig- Holstein) with which there was no cultural linkage, if Germany had acquired the Teutonic provinces of Austria, we would have witnessed a homogeneous empire "in the true and not merely in the honorific sense of the word." (5) This would have been "a composite of homogeneous Teutonic nations or, as we may conveniently call them, sub-nations, which would not naturally harbour any sentiment of separatism, but rather, drawn always to a natural unity, would form easily and inevitably a psychological and not merely a political unit".(6) However, he admits that it is difficult to find such form of homogeneity in its purity. The lure of imperialistic expansion disrupts homogeneity and imposes an artificial unity.

LARGE HOMOGENEOUS AGGREGATIONS

In 1916, Sri Aurobindo commented on three large homogeneous aggregations in political thought (7):

1. The dream of a Pan-Germanic empire

2. A great Russian and Pan-Slavic empire

3. The Pan-Islamic idea of a united Mahomedan world.

In footnotes added later, in 1930s, Sri Aurobindo commented (8):

(a)All the three ideas had been broken by the effects of revolution and war,

(b) If communism destroyed the national idea, there might be a possibility of the Pan-Slavic aggregate,

(c)If the nation idea dwindled, the Pan-Islamic idea may again revive.

However, such homogeneous aggregates conceived at that point in time would have to be effected by subjugating heterogeneous elements by political and military compulsion, He gave three such examples (9):

1. The retention by Russia of Asiatic nations under her sway,

2. The seizure by Germany of wholly or partially non-Germanic countries and provinces,

3. The control by the Caliphate of non-Moslem subjects.

In a footnote added in 1930s, Sri Aurobindo commented that though the retention of Asiatic nations by Russia was "modified by the substitution of a Soviet Union claiming to unite these Asiatic peoples voluntarily with Russia: but one is not quite sure whether this is a permanent reality or a temporary apparent phenomenon."(10) Thus, he had envisaged much early that the Soviet Union would disintegrate.

There are actually two reasons why it is difficult for a homogeneous aggregate to reflect human unity:

1. Once an empire or an aggregate consolidates homogeneity, its desire for imperialistic expansion can grow. In the process it has to use military power and political bullying to control the recalcitrant heterogeneous elements. The resistance may be of two kinds. Either a subjugated nation might find it difficult to give up their cherished nationality. Or else, the conquered people might not identify with the culture of the conquering aggregate. What gets sacrificed is the principle of human unity.

2. In a dynamic global vision, it would be impossible to force a symmetrical homogeneity by effacing heterogeneous elements. One cannot straightaway jump on the bandwagon of internationalism by denouncing or effacing nationalism. If such an attempt is made prematurely, the world will witness resistance that may take dogmatic forms like pan-religious and pan-cultural groupings or terrorist organizations or ethnic configurations.

Sri Aurobindo writes, "Vast aggregates of this kind would find enclaves in their dominion inhabited by elements wholly heterogeneous to them or mixed ... Thus a Pan-Slavonic empire would necessitate the control of the Balkan Peninsula by Russia as the premier Slav State; but such a scheme would have to meet not only the independent Serbian nationality and the imperfect Slavism of the Bulgar but the quite incompatible Rumanian, Greek and Albanian elements .Thus it does not appear that this tendency towards vast homogeneous aggregates, although it has for some time played an important part in the world's history and is not exhausted or finally baffled, is ever likely to be the eventual solution; for even if it triumphed, it would have to meet in a greater or lesser degree the difficulties of the heterogeneous type." (11) This 1916 statement, written a year before the Russian revolution, had hints which eventually proved true. Pan-Slavism in the 19th century had some influence on the formation of new Slavic states after World War I. The independent republic of Czechoslovakia was born in 1918 but after World War II, it was compelled to come under the communist rubric. Though the kingdom of Yugoslavia was officially proclaimed by King Alexander I in 1929, it was under communist rule after World War II. All the communist regimes including the USSR had disintegrated by the end of 20th century. Tito's 'symmetrical federalism' aimed to create equality among the six republics and Serbia's autonomous provinces within Yugoslavia could not hold fort against the forces of disruption and dissolution that resented Serbian dominance. This is because 'unity' if symmetrical is bound to be artificial. A real living unity is neither statistical nor symmetrical. It is actually enriched by holding in its bosom the multiplicity, the heterogeneity.

II

Unity in heterogeneous aggregates

Sri Aurobindo next examines how psychological unity was sought to be established in the heterogeneous empire in ancient times. He selects imperial Rome as "one great and definite example" (12) of how an artificial political unity of a heterogeneous aggregate could be transformed into a psychological unity. Even the great empire of ancient China that encompassed five nations and was admirably organized did not have to face the cultural heterogeneity that the ancient Roman Empire had to encounter.

How did imperial Rome deal with the centrifugal pulls of its heterogeneous units, heterogeneous in ethnicity, language and culture? The Roman Empire was consolidated by military conquest and military colonization. However, that was not the end of the story. The Romans knew that neither an efficient administration nor economic well-being would suffice to check dissidence of conquered subjects. On the contrary, once the subjugated units would be accustomed to the efficient organization and economic prosperity of the Roman Empire, they could turn more vociferous to claim these very privileges as independent nations. Therefore, Romans cleverly ventured to assimilate other cultures not by obliterating them but by eulogizing them. They initiated this transcultural symbiosis by acknowledging the superiority of Greek culture and created a Graeco-Roman civilization. But that acknowledgement of the cultural superiority of the Greek did not mean a walk-over to the Greek culture. The Romans cleverly dealt with ground reality. The Graeco-Roman civilization was spread and secured in the East through the Greek dialect. But elsewhere, in the non-Greek, non-Roman dominions, the Graeco-Roman civilization was introduced by the Latin language and Latin education. This served a two-fold purpose. Firstly, a Graeco-Roman perspective was more enriching than the Roman perspective alone. Secondly, Latin being the classical among all European languages, it would be more acceptable to other European cultures, even to cultures like Gaul which had become decadent or inchoate. (This was a correct move as Latin became actually the mother of several modern European languages.) However this process of transcultural symbiosis would not have been able to abolish all separatist tendencies unless supplemented simultaneously by an actual movement of political equality to the subjects of all conquered provinces. Therefore, imperial Rome "not only admitted her Latinised subjects to the highest military and civil offices and even to the imperial purple, so that within less than a century after Augustus, first an Italian Gaul and then an Iberian Spaniard held the name and power of the Caesars, but she proceeded rapidly enough to deprive of all vitality and then even nominally to abolish all the grades of civic privilege with which she had started and extended the full Roman citizenship to all her subjects, Asiatic, European and African, without distinction."(13)

Thus, military colonization, administrative efficiency and economic well-being were supplemented by transcultural symbiosis and political equality to effectuate a sense of psychological unity in the politically united fiefdom of Imperial Rome. Besides, the imperial government was a principate that combined aspects of the republic and the monarchy, a combination that could cross-check dictatorial attitudes - a phenomenon needed to maintain the inner principle of unity. "The result was that the whole empire became psychologically and not only politically a single Graeco-Roman unity. Not only superior force or the recognition of Roman peace and good government, but all the desires, associations, pride, cultural affinities of the provinces made them firmly attached to the maintenance of the empire. Every attempt of provincial ruler or military chiefs to start provincial empires for their own benefit failed because it found no basis, no supporting tendency, no national sentiment and no sense of either material or any other advantage to be gained by the change, in the population on whom the successful continuity of the attempt had to depend." (14)

The Roman Empire lasted several centuries. The Roman State started as a Republic (509 BC), became an empire under the stewardship of Augustus Caesar (27 BC ) and thereafter witnessed uninterrupted peace and prosperity for two and half centuries and thus laid the foundations of development of the Mediterranean world. The Roman Empire persisted till it split into Eastern and Western parts (AD 395), a movement that signaled the beginning of its end. The Western part, under severe pressure from the barbarians, finally disintegrated by the 5th century AD, the east continued as the Byzantine empire until 1453.

Why did the Roman Empire disintegrate? Why did the psychological unity binding the heterogeneous conglomerate succumb to the forces of division after centuries of success? Why did the Roman's experiment fail? Sri Aurobindo explains that the end came not merely by a disruption from within but by the decaying of its centre of life. "By crushing out, however peacefully, the living cultures or the incipient individuality of the peoples he ruled, he deprived these peoples of their sources of vitality, the roots of their force.... In the end Rome could not even depend on a supply of vigorous individuals from the peoples whose life she had pressed out under the weight of a borrowed civilization; she had to draw on the frontier barbarians. And when she fell to pieces, it was these barbarians and not the old peoples resurgent who became her heirs." (15) The Huns, the German tribes, the Vandals, the Franks gradually infiltrated the remnants of the western part of the erstwhile empire. The once acclaimed Roman citizen army became a barbarian mercenary army. In this context, Sri Aurobindo makes a psychologically relevant comment, "For their barbarism was at least a living force and a principle of life, but the Graeco-Roman civilization had become a principle of death." (16) This is a very politically significant observation. In history, whenever a sophisticated ruling elite runs out of the vitality needed to sustain its continuation; it can be replaced by a rustic and unsophisticated ruling group who may lack political vision, aristocracy and foresight but nevertheless can occupy the centre-stage by bringing in a fresh influx of energy.

It would also be pertinent to point out that political equality granted by Imperial Rome to the subjects of the conquered provinces did not mean social equality in terms of the rich/poor divide. It was the rich men from all over the Empire including the conquered provinces who were admitted to the Senate. With the passage of time, the differences in the rights and privileges of the rich and the poor also began to magnify. This too was one of the many factors that facilitated the infiltration by the barbarians.

It is traditionally considered that the greatest change to the Roman Empire was religious. Actually, the Time-Spirit carries in its bosom a wisdom that surpasses political acumen, breaks conventional forms and allows history to surge forward. Sri Aurobindo writes that the Graeco-Roman civilization had "to be destroyed in its form and its principle resown in the virgin field of the vital and vigorous culture of medieval Europe. What the Roman had not the wisdom to do by his organized empire, -- for even the profoundest and surest political instinct is not wisdom, -- had to be done by Nature herself in the loose but living unity of mediaeval Christendom." (17) Yet the very concept of Imperial Rome carried such prestige that Charlemagne, crowned Emperor on Christmas Day, 800 AD, had to use the name 'Holy Roman Empire' (Heiliges Romisches Reich) to claim that his empire was the successor of the Roman Empire. He used the term 'Holy' to establish his status as God's vicar in the temporal realm parallel to the papal status in the religious realm but ostensibly, this religious symbol was not enough and had to be augmented by reference to Imperial Rome!

Thus the mighty Roman Empire had established a psychological unity amidst heterogeneity for a considerable period of time spanning several centuries which even the modern Soviet Republic failed to replicate even for a century. Sri Aurobindo writes, "But, significantly enough, every attempt at renewing the Roman success has failed. The modern nations have not been able to follow Rome completely in the lines she had traced out or if they tried to follow, have clashed against different conditions and either collapsed or been obliged to call a halt. It is as if Nature had said, "That experiment has been carried once to its logical consequences and once is enough. I have made new conditions; find you new means or at least mend and add to the old where they were deficient or went astray." "(18) In his The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo sets out to construct a new integer of unity that is based not merely on the cognitive field of thinkers and the emotional field of mystics and artists but manifests in the flux and turmoil of political reality.

III

Psychological unity in heterogeneous conglomerates

Sri Aurobindo next ventures to study how psychological unity achieved in heterogeneous conglomerates in the past were being replicated in the late 19th and early half of the 20th century. It was a time when European countries were colonizing large parts of Asia and Africa (and also South America). In pre-Roman times, the conquering empires exercised simple hegemony or over lordship over the conquered units, vestiges of which were still found in the shape of "protectorates" but these were preparatory attempts before exploitative occupation could become totalitarian. In fact, unlike the more important agenda of aggrandizement of the imperial ego as in ancient Rome, the European colonization in 19th and 20th centuries was motivated powerfully by commercial exploitation. ( There were few exceptions (19): The nearest to the Roman type had been the English settlement in Ulster, while the German system in Poland developed under modern conditions the old Roman principle of expropriation.)

Commercial colonies of exploitation

Sri Aurobindo points out that as in the case of the ancient Roman Empire, the European colonization maintained by administrative control and military power also bestowed enjoyment of superior civic rights to its citizens but in terms of economic exploitation, the European colonization far surpassed the Roman era. The colonies have been actually "commercial colonies of exploitation". (20) The Spaniards went on merrily looting the Latin American countries. Montgomery Martin wrote in 1838 that the annual drain of 3000,000 pounds on British India amounted in thirty years, at 12 % compound interest, to the enormous sum of 723,997,917 sterling; or at a low rate, as 2000,000 for fifty years, to 8,400,000,000 sterling (21) Amlan Dutta pointed out that the pillage and exploitation of Bengal by Britishers culminated in the terrible famine of 1770 followed by the acceleration of industrial growth in England celebrated under the name of 'Industrial revolution'. In other words, the loot of Bengal contributed to the great leap forward in England (22). The British Empire did extend from England to Bengal but looting a colony or annexed territory to enrich the homeland cannot foster a sense of psychological unity in such a heterogeneous aggregate.

Cultural maneuvers

European colonizers like the British were faced with a problem. On one hand they had to maintain colonies so as to exploit and milk them. On the other hand they had to foster a sense of psychological unity amidst the heterogeneity of their empire or else they would lose their conquered colonies or affiliated units. They tried to achieve this by cultural maneuvering but there was a basic difference from the ancient Roman experiment. Rome attempted to establish psychological unity by transcultural symbiosis but they did not initiate this movement with falsehood. Rome started by acknowledging the superiority of Greek culture which culminated in a Greco-Roman perspective. The Europeans of 19th and 20th century tried not to assimilate but change the indigenous cultures of their colonies by imposing their own culture, language and religion (Christianity) which they thought were 'superior' to that of the 'natives'. Initially, in some places, especially where "a retardatory orthodoxy" was to be overcome, there was an enthusiasm for change (as in Turkey and China under the impact of Bolshevist Russia) but this was a temporary phase. (23) The colonies in the East willingly or in the whirlpool of circumstances assimilated the best in modern European culture but steadfastly refused to part with their age-old spiritual and cultural values. The East took from the West "its science, its curiosity, its ideal of universal education and uplift, its abolition of privilege, its broadening, liberalizing, democratic tendency, its instinct of freedom and equality, its call for the breaking down of narrow and oppressive forms, for air, space, light." (24) But the East refused to be influenced "in the things which are deepest, most essential to the future of mankind, the things of the soul, the profound things of the mind and temperament." (25)

The French tried to change the Islamic culture in Africa, the English tried to change the pristine tradition of India. Both failed. Christianity succeeded to make inroads in places in India among marginalized populations (like the socially downcast and tribal people) "where it could apply its one or two features of distinct superiority, the readiness to stoop and uplift the fallen and oppressed where the Hindu bound in the forms of caste would not touch nor succour, its greater swiftness to give relief where it is needed, in a word, the active compassion and helpfulness which it inherited from its parent Buddhism. Where it could not apply this lever, it has failed totally and even this lever it may easily lose; for the soul of India reawakened by the new impact is beginning to recover its lost tendencies."(26) This 1916 write-up has three notable points. Firstly, the caste prejudices are considered to be a major drawback in the Indian social system that facilitated Christian conversions. Secondly, Sri Aurobindo views Buddhist teachings to have influenced Christianity (This is a seed-idea that needs to be researched *).Thirdly, he had a faith that the age-old social imbalance created by caste prejudices would be finally corrected. It has taken time but the 21st century India is already witnessing a new youthful surpassing of the old decadent systems. In that endeavor, it is not the religious zealots but social activists cutting across all religious and caste barriers who are taking the lead to complete the mission which the late Mahatma Gandhi had initiated in the 20th century.

Cultural hegemony in the West

The European countries could not work out a psychological unity in their Eastern colonies and thus could not bring an element of homogeneity in their large heterogeneous aggregates which they wanted to fashion after the ancient Roman Empire. However, Sri Aurobindo points out with several illustrations that during that same period spanning the 19th and beginning of 20th century, the European countries themselves could not build up a sense of psychological unity in Europe itself where cultural variation was much less than when the West had to deal with "great Asiatic and African masses rooted for many centuries in an old and well-formed national culture." (27) There were attempts to impose one European sub-culture over another, as if benefits of civilization were being passed to 'inferior' races. "It was tried ...in Ireland but although the Irish speech was stamped out except in the wilds of Connaught and all distinctive signs of the old Irish culture disappeared, the outraged nationality simply clung to whatever other means of distinctiveness it could find, however exiguous, its Catholic religion, its Celtic race and nationhood, and even when it became Anglicised, refused to become English.... The German failed to Prussianise Poland or even his own kin who speak his own language, the Alsatians. The Finn remained unconquerably Finnish in Russia. The mild Austrian methods left the Austrian Pole as Polish as his oppressed brother in German Posen." (28) He also commented "The importance even of the smallest States, Belgium, Serbia, as cultural units in the European whole has been lifted almost to the dignity of a creed." (29) It is interesting that Serbia became Yugoslavia after Sri Aurobindo wrote this and this change was added as a footnote in the late 1930s but by the end of 20th century, Yugoslavia was broken up by ethnic conflict and Serbia regained its cultural uniqueness

Two years before the German Empire ( united by Bismarck in 1871) was dissolved in 1918 after the German defeat in world War I , Sri Aurobindo foresaw the futility of the Germanic re-enactment of the old Roman method of imposing cultural hegemony which it executed not by peaceful pressure but by brute force : "An attempt of this kind is bound to fail; instead of bringing about the psychological unity at which it aims, it succeeds only in accentuating the national spirit and plants a rooted and invincible hatred which is dangerous to the empire and may even destroy it if the opposed elements are not too small in number and weak in force." (29) It seems as if Sri Aurobindo had a prevision of Hitler's Germany that came into being nearly two decades after he wrote this passage.

The makeshift solution

The attempt to forge psychological unity in heterogeneous aggregates of 19th and 20th century, both in the case of transcontinental empires where variability was pronounced and among intercontinental European empires where variability was much less, could not be effectuated either by force or by cultural hegemony. "Accordingly there began to rise everywhere a growing sense of the inutility of the endeavour and the necessity of leaving the soul of the subject nation free, confining the action of the sovereign State to the enforcement of new administrative and economic conditions with as much social and cultural change as may be freely accepted or may come about by education and the force of circumstances." (30) This realization that began to dawn in the beginning of the 20th century finally culminated in the setting up of the European Union in 1993.

It is not enough to have a united Europe based on convenience. It is no more relevant to replicate the old Roman model under modern conditions. Sri Aurobindo pointed out that with the passage of time, the "political motive sinks into significance; the world-motive takes its place." (31) A new model of psychological unity in a globalized world-order has to evolve in consonance with the time-spirit. Sri Aurobindo explains that this model should be of a federal or confederate set-up. He attempts to understand how such a federated set-up composed of heterogeneous cultures and races can be welded into a natural and psychological unit. His apprehensions in 1916 have become more relevant today as the ideology of a global world-order might be hijacked by market forces favoring a centralized economy. The result would be disastrous. The late Rajinder Puri, a veteran journalist echoed Sri Aurobindo's line of thinking though he had overlooked that Sri Aurobindo visualized a global world order long before others:

"Globalization has rendered the eventual emergence of a world order inevitable. The dream of one world order goes back to the 1930s when Wendell Wilkie espoused "One World". After he lost the 1940 Presidential election to Roosevelt he was appointed ambassador at large to propagate this view as an antidote to imperialism and war. The question is whether the eventual world order should be imposed by a centralized economy at the cost of political sentiments as the corporate world wants, or should it evolve through a federal approach which respects nationalism and cultural differences. The former would rely on imposition, the latter on evolution." (32) In subsequent chapters of The Ideal of Human Unity, Sri Aurobindo unravels how a federal set-up can be the harbinger of a new world-order.

*[Apropos Sri Aurobindo's comment that Buddhism was the parent of Christianity, interested readers may refer to Delwin Byron Schneider's Chapter titled "The Question of Buddhism's Influence on Christianity Re-opened" in "Fragments of Infinity. Essays in Religion and Philosophy", edited by Arvind Sharma (McGill University), Prism Press, UK, 1991. There might have been monastic influence of Buddhism on monastic communities in Palestine and though historical connections would be difficult to prove, one could not brush away indeterminate categories where the principle of stimulus-diffusion would have been operative.]

References

1. CWSA 25, pg.312
2. Ibid
3. Ibid
4. CWSA 06-07, pg.722
5. CWSA 25, pg.312
6. Ibid
7. Ibid, pg.313
8. Ibid
9. Ibid
10. Ibid
11. Ibid, pg.313-314
12. Ibid, pg.314
13. Ibid, pg.315-316
14. Ibid, pg.316
15. Ibid
16. Ibid
17. Ibid
18. Ibid, pg.317
19. Ibid
20. Ibid
21. Poddar, Arabinda: Renaissance in Bengal: Quests and Confrontations, 1970, pg. 17, quoted in Sri Aurobindo. A biography and a history, by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, SAICE, Pondicherry, 4th Ed, 1985, pg. 11-12).
22. Datta Amlan: Selected Works of Prof. Amlan Datta, Vol.1,Ed by B.B.Dutta et al, Divya Jeevan Foundation,India,2011
23. CWSA 25, pg.321,footnote
24. CWSA 25, pg.321
25. Ibid
26. Ibid, pg.321-322
27. Ibid, pg.319
28. Ibid, pg.318
29. Ibid, pg.319
30. Ibid, pg.318
31. Ibid, pg.321
32. Puri, Rajinder: The Statesman, Kolkata, 6th September, 2011, pg. 6

Date of Update: 22-Nov-21