Globalization, Regional Cultures and International Living

Auroville Today : The Mother once wrote in ‘The Dream’: ‘there should be somewhere on earth a place that no nation could claim as its sole property: A place where all human beings of goodwill sincere in their aspiration could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the Supreme Truth.’ What, for you, does being a world citizen in the 21st Century imply?

Sachidananda Mohanty: The term ‘citizen of the world’, enjoying a wide currency today, means different things to different people: the well-heeled corporate leaders in the international jet set, the globetrotting academics, diplomats, tourists, explorers, businessmen, artists, writers and philanthropists – all of them could pride themselves as being ‘citizens of the world’. However, in order to grasp the significance of the term in the sense The Mother uses it, one has to go back a little in history. The expression has its source in two Greek words – ‘Kosmoi’ and ‘Poleis’. Diogenes, the Greek philosopher, credited with the notion of the term ‘citizen of the world’, was confined paradoxically to his own City State. For him going beyond the boundary of the Greek City States entailed a daring move, an act of faith, indeed a leap in consciousness unimaginable in his times.

In fact, ‘the ‘citizen of the world’ concept has passed through fascinating trajectories, encompassing the Renaissance in Europe to many utopian movements across the world stage. For example, it has acted as a symbol of liberalism, wideness of mind, and cultural emancipation. It has also entailed the transgression of political and cultural boundaries, overcoming narrow definitions of society, polity and worldviews. Contrasting itself to all forms of exclusivism and xenophobia, the movement has advocated the freedom to go beyond national boundaries.

The term has found new meaning in the post-World War II era. In the scholarly world, it is the Foundations and Councils, such as the British, the Humboldt, and the Fulbright, which are the cultural arms of various Governments that have spearheaded the act of international travel for mutual understanding and benefit.

However, clearly, The Mother’s vision of international living is far more radical and progressive than anything conceptualized by mankind so far.

For me, it implies at the deepest level the ability to assimilate in our life and psyche the best experience of mankind as world citizenry. Clearly, this does not mean merely achievements of the conventional kind for an international outreach. Rather, it calls for an attitude of constant openness to new ideas, a refusal to be confined to the beaten path and received wisdom. It embraces a culture of dialogue of respect and a willingness to learn across national and international boundaries. As Sri Aurobindo aptly says, we do not belong to the past dawns but to the noons of the future. To cherish and celebrate the great achievements of the past 20 centuries and to welcome the great possibilities of the 21st – that to me signifies the meaning of the term in the fullest sense. As The Mother says, Sri Aurobindo’s words have Mantric power. To read Him constantly in a state of intellectual openness and peace of mind, to let His thought and vision sink into the depth of our being and consciousness, and to internalize the experience of collective living at the national and international level – that is the best way we can harmonize the warring parts of our being and help usher in the world of the future. It is indeed, as the Mother and Sri Aurobindo explain, a dynamic spirituality, and not creedal religiosity, that we should uphold in our path towards world peace and union.

Two major trends in the world today are globalization and an increasing wish to identify with one’s own culture or group. Can these be reconciled? If so, how?

While the problem is recognized in the contemporary discourse on multiculturalism and identity politics, the answers seem to be elusive, for reason entails a binary approach: it is either this or that. The result is that, in many instances, scholars seem to have reached a dead end.

One way of looking at this problem is to posit an ongoing relationship/negotiation between society and the individual, the universal and the particular, the nation and the province, the community and the family and, finally, between the family and the individual. The drive towards multiple allegiances and multiple loyalties, Sri Aurobindo teaches us, is ingrained in the human soul. Many must coexist at the same time; the one doesn’t necessarily have to give way to the other.

The end of the two devastating World Wars and the creation of the United Nations, in 1945, it was hoped, at one time, would bring about the abolition of all worldwide conflicts and conflagrations – the ideal before mankind.

However, the persistence of conflicts, minor or major, at the national and international level, the deadly ideological oppositions between continental and regional power blocks such as the NATO, CENTO and SEATO, distracted the world from paying necessary attention to the scourge of poverty, illiteracy and destitution for the most part of the 20th century. Beginning with the eighties of the last century, the diabolical upsurge of ethnic bloodletting in zones like Ruanda and Burundi, and the rise of atavistic and regressive fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere, in our own times have been responsible for ethnic cleansing, genocide and widespread destruction, rarely seen after the holocausts in totalitarian fascist, and Bolshevist states in the first part of the 20th century. The dangerous staging of religious conflicts before which the medieval crusades pale into insignificance, and the antinomy between ‘us’ and ‘they’, threaten the long cherished goals of civilized nations.

It is here that The Dream of The Mother, based on the vision of Sri Aurobindo, acquires profound new meaning. The world today shows the utter inadequacy of conflict resolutions based on existing machineries, both unilateral and multilateral. New approaches, far more radical in nature, must be quickly found to address the crisis of contemporary international order. We need to turn our attention to newer world views if we are to save the world from a further slide into the abyss.

Sri Aurobindo tells us that it is not by the deployment of a formula or mechanism, however ingenious in the political sense, that we can find the answers. Rather, it has to be an approach based on the deeper psychological or spiritual kinship – and affinity of the soul, a spiritual comradeship, based on our common origin and common destiny – that could be the answer to a genuine reconciliation of the conflicts manifest today between globalization and localization.

As Rabindranath Tagore aptly remarks, one can understand world literature better if one can understand one’s native literature.

What do you see as being the importance and prime function of the International Zone in Auroville?

The prime function of the International Zone to my mind is to enable us to participate in an international experience in the richest, most variegated and diverse manner. The aim here would be to enjoy and learn from the cultural legacy of the different nations of the world, as group souls that have journeyed through the ages in history. The aim would be to discover, as Sri Aurobindo puts it in The Ideal of Human Unity, oneness in diversity.

Mother wanted there to be pavilions of the different cultures in the International Zones, yet some people feel this concept is outmoded in the modern world where national boundaries seem to be dissolving. Your thoughts on this?

This question goes back to the globalization – localization and universal – particular debate. This issue has been debated for long in academic and/ scholarly circles as well as in the public domain without a viable answer. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in Multiculturalism and Politics of Recognition (1992) advocates the recognition of particular group identities by public institutions as part of multicultural education; others, like Steven Rockefeller, caution against favouring particularism cultural identity over the universal identity of democratic citizens. Yet others, like Susan Wolf, see the need to correlate the demand for multicultural education with the American sense of who they essentially are.

On the other hand, in his book, Identity Against Culture: Understanding of Multiculturalism (1994), Kwame Anthony Appiah, one of the leading thinkers of multiculturalism, offers a close and incisive study of multicultural education. He advocates the need and possibilities of ‘maintaining a pluralistic culture of many identities and subcultures while retaining the civil and political practices that sustain national life in the classic sense.’

I am inclined to agree with Taylor and Appiah’s view and would like to take it forward. I do believe that The Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s ideas of national and international living, based on freedom and unity, continue to have relevance. In fact, in all of Sri Aurobindo writings on this theme, he has steadfastly maintained the importance of discovering and preserving the group souls. Of course, he cautions us against egoistic formations that are hegemonic and domineering: hyper-nationalism and jingoism must be eschewed. We need to refer to his chapter, ‘True and False Subjectivism’ in The Human Cycle to understand the fundamental distinction he had made.

However, it must be added that cultures of different nations are not static; they are constantly evolving. Great care, therefore, has to be exercised in showcasing the different cultures of the nations in the international pavilions so as to avoid mutual antipathy, antagonism, hostility and a sense of superiority among nations. The answer, in the final analysis, rests on a deeper understanding.

Practically, the pavilions of different cultures should, to my mind, avoid being museums or an archive approach to the preservation of the past, although they might have a place for artifacts that belong to the domain of museums and archives. But clearly, the approach must go beyond them: it must be creative, exploratory and open-ended of national life and world cultures. In the final analysis, it is this approach that could lend character to the international pavilions in Auroville.