|
Mother's
War
You
have said that you have begun to doubt whether it was the
Mother's war and ask me to make you feel again that it is.
I affirm again to you most strongly that this is the Mother's
war. You should not think of it as a fight for certain nations
against others or even for India; it is a struggle for an
ideal that has to establish itself on earth in the life of
humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully
and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm
the earth and mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces
behind the battle that have to be seen and not this or that
superficial circumstance. It is no use concentrating on the
defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit
serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have
ranged themselves in the struggle. It is a struggle for the
liberty of mankind to develop, for conditions in which men
have freedom and room to think and act according to light
in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot
be the slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be
an end of all such freedom and hope of light and truth and
the work that has to be done will be subjected to conditions
which would make it humanly impossible; There will be a reign
of falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation
for most of the human race such as people in this country
do not dream of and cannot yet at all realise. If the other
side that has declared itself for the free future of humanity
triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and
conditions will have been created in which there will be a
chance for the Ideal to grow, for the Divine Work to be done,
for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to establish itself
on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting
for the Divine and against the threatened reign of the Asura.
29-7-1942
- Sri Aurobindo
What
we say is not that the Allies have not done wrong things,
but that they stand on the side of the evolutionary forces.
I have not said that at random, but on what to me are clear
grounds of fact. What you speak of is the dark side. All nations
and governments have been that in their dealings with each
other,—at least all who had the strength and got the
chance. I hope you are not expecting me to believe that there
are or have been virtuous governments and unselfish and sinless
peoples! But there is the other side also. You are condemning
the Allies on grounds that people in the past would have stared
at, on the basis of modern ideals of international conduct;
looked at like that all have black records. But who created
these ideals or did most to create them (liberty, democracy,
equality, international justice and the rest)? Well, America,
France, England—the present Allied nations. They have
all been imperialistic and still bear the burden of their
past, but they have also deliberately spread these ideals
and spread too the institutions which try to embody them.
Whatever the relative worth of these things—they have
been a stage, even if a still imperfect stage of the forward
evolution. (What about the others? Hitler, for example, says
it is a crime to educate the coloured peoples, they must be
kept as serfs and labourers.) England has helped certain nations
to be free without seeking any personal gain; she has also
conceded independence to Egypt and Eire after a struggle,
to Iraq without a struggle. She has been moving away steadily,
if slowly, from imperialism towards co-operation; the British
Commonwealth of England and the Dominions is something unique
and unprecedented, a beginning of new things in that direction:
she is moving in idea towards a world-union of some kind in
which aggression is to be made impossible; her new generation
has no longer the old firm belief in mission and empire; she
has offered India Dominion independence—or even sheer
isolated independence, if she wants that,—after the war,
with an agreed free constitution to be chosen by Indian themselves...
All that is what I call evolution in the right direction—however
slow and imperfect and hesitating it may still be. As for
America she has forsworn her past imperialistic policies in
regard to Central and South America, she has conceded independence
to Cuba and the Philippines. ...Is there a similar trend on
the side of the Axis? One has to look at things on all sides,
to see them steadily and whole. Once again, it is the forces
working behind that I have to look at, I don't want to go
blind among surface details. The future has to be safeguarded;
only then can present troubles and contradictions have a chance
to be solved and eliminated....
For
us the question does not arise. We made it plain in a letter
which has been made public that we did not consider the war
as a fight between nations and governments (still less between
good people and bad people) but between two forces, the Divine
and the Asuric. What we have to see is on which side men and
nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right
side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine
purpose in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and
actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities.
The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open
for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side
would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead
even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, as
others in the past evolution failed and perished. That is
the whole question and all other considerations are either
irrelevant or of a minor importance. The Allies at least have
stood for human values, though they may often act against
their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler
stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated
in the wrong way until they become diabolical (e.g. the virtues
of the Herrenvolk, the master race). That does not make English
or Americans nations of spotless angles nor the Germans a
wicked and sinful race, but as an indicator it has a primary
importance....
The
Kurukshetra example is not to be taken as an exact parallel
but rather as a traditional instance of the war between two
world-forces in which the side favoured by the Divine triumphed,
because the leaders made themselves His instruments. It is
not to be envisaged as a battle between virtue and wickedness,
the good and the evil men. After all, were even the Pandavas
virtuous without defect, quite unselfish and without passions?...
Were
not the Pandavas fighting to establish their own claims and
interests just and right, no doubt, but still personal claims
and self-interest? Theirs was a righteous battle, dharmya-yuddha,
but it was for right and justice, in their own case. And if
imperialism, empire-building by armed force, is under all
circumstances a wickedness, then the Pandavas are tinted with
that brush, for they used their victory to establish their
empire, continues after them by Parikshit and Janamejaya.
Could not modern humanism and pacifism make it a reproach
against the Pandavas that these virtuous men (including Krishna)
brought about a huge slaughter that they might become supreme
rulers over all the numerous free and independent peoples
of India? That would be the result of weighing old happenings
in the scales of modern ideals. As a matter of fact such an
empire was a step in the right direction then, just as world-union
of free peoples would be a step in the right direction now,—in
both cases the right consequences of a terrific slaughter....
We
should remember that conquest and rule over subject peoples
were not regarded as wrong either in ancient or mediaeval
or quite recent times but as something great and glorious;
men did not see any wickedness in conquerors or conquering
nations. Just government of subject peoples was envisages
but nothing more—exploitation was not excluded. The modern
ideas on the subject, the right of all to liberty, both individuals
and nations, the immorality of conquest and empire, or such
compromises as the British idea of training subject races
for democratic freedom, are new values, an evolutionary movement;
this is a new Dharma which has only begun slowly and initially
to influence practice,—an infant Dharma which would have
been throttled for good if Hitler succeeded in his "Avataric"
mission and establishes his new "religion" over
all the earth. Subject nations naturally accept the new Dharma
and severely criticised the old imperialisms; it is to be
hoped that they will practise what they now preach when they
themselves become strong and rich and powerful. But the best
will be if a new world-order evolves, even if at first stumblingly
or incompletely, which will make the old things impossible—a
difficult task, but not absolutely impossible.
The
Divine takes men as they are and uses men as His instruments
even if they are not flawless in virtue, angelic, holy and
pure. If they are of good will, if, to use the Biblical phrase,
they are on the Lord's side, that is enough for the work to
be done. Even if I knew that the Allies would misuse their
victory or bungle the peace or partially at least spoil the
opportunities opened to the human world by that victory, I
would still put my force behind them. At any rate things could
not be one-hundredth part as bad as they would be under Hitler.
The ways of the Lord would still be open—to keep them
open is what matters. Let us stick to the real, the central
fact, the need to remove the peril of black servitude and
revived barbarism threatening India and the world, and leave
for a later time all side-issues and minor issues or hypothetical
problems that would cloud the one all-important tragic issue
before us.
P.S.
Ours is a Sadhana which involves not only devotion or union
with the Divine or a perception of Him in all things and beings
but also action as workers and instruments and a work to be
done in the world or a force to be brought in the world under
difficult conditions; then one has to see one's way and do
what is commanded and support what has to be supported, even
if it means war and strife carried on whether through chariots
and bows and arrows or tanks and cars and American bombs and
planes, in either case ghoram karma: the means and
times and persons differ but it does not seem to me that X
is wrong in seeing in it the same problem as in Kurukshetra.
As for violence etc. the old command rings out for us once
again after many ages: "Mayaivaite nihatäh pürvameva
nimittamätram bhava Savyasäcin." (By Me and
none other already even are they slain, do thou become the
occasion only. O Savyasachin. Gita, Ch. XI, 33)
...
3-9-1943
- Sri Aurobindo
|
