PART II THE ROLE OF INDIA INDIA ONE AND INDIVISIBLE India is one and indivisible, culturally and spiritually; politically too she must be one and indivisible and is, as a matter of fact, already on the way towards that consummation, in spite of appearances to the contrary. It has got to be so, if India is to be strong and powerful, if her voice is to be heard in the comity of nations, if she is to fulfil her mission in the world. It is no use laying stress on distinctions and differences : we must, on the contrary, put all emphasis upon the fundamental unity, upon the demand and necessity for a dynamic unity. Naturally there are diverse and even

ON SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION I It is one of the great errors of the human mind to take equality as identical with uniformity. When Rousseau started the revolutionary slogan "Men are born equal", men were carried away in the vehemence of the new spirit and thought that there was absolutely no difference between man and man, all difference must be due to injustice, tyranny and corruption in the social system. Rousseau's was a necessary protest and corrective against the rank inequality that was the order of the day. All men are, however, equal not in the sense that all material particles—sea-sands or molecules or atoms, for example—may be equal, that is to say, same in

PART I THE WORLD WAR THE WORLD WAR ITS INNER BEARINGS This is a war to which even spiritual seekers can hardly remain indifferent with impunity. There are spiritual paths, however, that ask to render unto God what is God's and unto Satan what belongs to Satan; in other words, spirituality is kept apart from what is called worldliness, clean and untouched by the dust and murk of Ignorance—Maya. The injunction accordingly is that they who are worldly must remain worldly, they have no business, no right to meddle with spirituality, and they who are spiritual should, on the other hand, remain strictly spiritual, should have nothing to do with worldliness. Because

THE RIGHT OF ABSOLUTE FREEDOM A nation cannot claim the right, even in the name of freedom, to do as it pleases. An individual has not that right, the nation too has not. A nation is a member of humanity, there are other members and there is the common welfare of all. A nation by choosing a particular line of action, in asserting its absolute freedom, may go against other nations, or against the general good. Such freedom has to be curbed and controlled. Collective life—if one does not propose to live the life of the solitary—the animal or the saint—is nothing if not such a system of controls. " The whole of politics is an interference with personal liberty. Law i

THE BASIS OF UNITY I A modern society or people cannot have religion, that is to say, credal religion, as the basis of its organized collective life. It was mediaeval society and people that were organized on that line. Indeed mediaevalism means nothing more—and nothing less—than that. But whatever the need and justification in the past, the principle is an anachronism under modern conditions. It was needed, perhaps, to keep alive a truth which goes into the very roots of human life and its deepest aspiration; and it was needed also for a dynamic application of that truth on a larger scale and in smaller details, on the mass of mankind and in its day to day life. That

NEW WORLD-CONDITIONS It is a trite saying that one must change with the changing times. But how many can really do so or know even how to do so? In politics, as in life generally (politics is a part of life, the " precipitated " part, one may say in chemical language), the principle is well-known, though often in a pejorative sense, as policy or tactics. Anyhow the policy pays: for it is one of the main lines, if not the main line of action along which lies success in the practical field. And precisely he who cannot change, who does not see the necessity of change, although conditions and circumstances have changed, is known as the ideologist, the doctrinaire, the fanatic.

THE WAY TO UNITY Common love, common labour and, above all, as the great French thinker, Ernest Renan,* pointed out, common suffering—that is the cement which welds together the disparate elements of a nation—a nation is not formed otherwise. A nation means peoples differing in race and religion, caste and creed and even language, fused together into a composite but indivisible unit. Not pact nor balancing of interests nor sharing of power and profit can permanently combine and unify connecting *"Dans le passé, un héritage de gloire et de regrets à partager, dans l'avenir un même programme à réaliser; avoir souffert, joui, espéré ensemble, voilà ce qui vaut mieux que de

VANSITTARTISM Germany is considered now, and naturally with great reason, as the arch criminal among nations. Such megalomania, such lust for wanton cruelty, such wild sadism, such abnormal velleities no people, it is said, have ever evinced anywhere on the face of the earth: the manner and the extent of it all are appalling. Hitler is not the malady; removal of the Fuehrer will not cure Germany. The man is only a sign and a symbol. The whole nation is corrupt to the core: it has been inoculated with a virus that cannot be eradicated. The peculiar German character that confronts and bewilders us now, is not a thing of today or even of yesterday; it has been there since Tacitus re

FEDERATED HUMANITY The last great war, out of its bloody welter, threw up a mantra for the human consciousness to contemplate and seize and realise: it was self-determination. The present world-war has likewise cast up a mantra that is complementary. The problem of the unification of the whole human race has engaged the attention of seers and sages, idealists and men of action, since time immemorial; but only recently its demand has become categorically imperative for a solution in the field of practical politics. Viewed from another angle, one can say that it is also a problem Nature has set before herself, has been dealing with through the ages, elaborating and leading to