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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>The World is One</i> </font></b></p>
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<font face="Times New Roman">WE say not only that India is one and indivisible (and for that
matter, Bengal too is one and indivisible, since we have to
repeat axiomatic truths that have fallen on evil days and on
evil tongues) but that also the whole world is one and indivisible. They who seek to drive in a wedge anywhere, who are
busy laying some kind of <i>cordon sanitaire</i> across countries and
nations or cultures and civilisations, in the name of a bigoted
ideology, are, to say the least, doing a disservice to humanity,
indeed they are inviting a disaster and catastrophe to the world
and equally to themselves. For that is an attempt to stem the
high tide of Nature's swell towards a global unity that shall
brook no resistance.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The distinctions and differences that held good in other
times and climes can have no sense or value in the world of
today. Race or religion can divide man no longer; even nation-hood has lost much of its original force and meaning. It is
strange—perhaps it is inevitable in the secret process of Nature's
working—that when everything in conditions and circumstances obviously demands and points to an obliteration of all
frontiers of division and separation—economically and politically too—and all drives towards a closer co-operation and
intermingling, it is precisely then that the contrary spirit and
impulse raises its head and seems even to gather added strength
and violence. The fact may have two explanations. First of all,
it may mean a defence gesture in Nature, that is to say, certain
forces or formations have a permanent place in Nature's
economy and when they apprehend that they are being ousted
and neglected, when there is a one-pointed drive for their
exclusion, naturally they surge up and demand recognition
with a vengeance: for things forgotten or left aside that form</font>

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Page 157<hr>
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&nbsp;<font face="Times New Roman">indissolubly part of Nature's fabric and pattern, one has to<b> 
</b>retrace one's steps in order to pick them up again. But also the
phenomenon may mean a simple case of atavism: for we must
know that there are certain old-world aboriginal habits and
movements that have to go and have no place in the higher
scheme of Nature and these too come up off and on, especially
when the demand is there for their final liquidation. They have
to be recognised as such and treated as such. Radical and .
religious (including ideological) egoisms seem to us to belong
to this category.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status
that is being forged, it is unity, harmony that is insisted upon,
for that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates
against that, whatever creates division and disruption must
be banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In the reality of things, in
the actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole,
things that separate are less numerous and insistent than those
which unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one
simply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of
Concordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or
twist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the
ignorance, selfishness, blind passion—a possession by the dark
f9rces of atavism that makes the mischief.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We ask for freedom, liberty of the 
individual, self-determination—well and good. But that does not mean the licence
to do as one pleases, impelled by one's irrational idiosyncrasies.
The individual must be truly individual, not a fractional being, the self must 
be the real self, not a shadow or surface formulation in order to have the full right to unfettered movement.
Liberty, yes; but that means liberty for all which means again
the other two terms of the great trinity, equality and fraternity.
Individuality, yes; that means every individuality, in other
words, solidarity. The two sides of the equation must be given
equal value and equal emphasis. If the stress upon one leads to
Nazism, Fascism or Stalinism, steam-rollered uniformity or
streamlined regimentation, the death of the individual, the
other emphasis leads to disintegration and disruption, to the
same end in a different way. But in the world of today, after
the victory in the last war over the Nazi conception of humanity, it seems as though the spirit of disruption has gone</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">abroad, human consciousness has been atom-bombed into
flying fragments; so we have the spectacle of all manner of
parochialism pullulating on the earth, 'regional and ideological
—imperial blocs, nations, groups, parties have chequered <i>ad infinitum,</i> have balkanised human commonalty.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We badly needed a United Nations Organisation, but we
are facing the utmost possible disunity. The lesson is that
politics alone will not save us, nor even economics. The word,
has gone forth: what is required is a <i>change of heart.</i> The leaders
of humanity must have a new heart grafted in place of the old.
That is the surgical operation imperative at the moment. That
heart will declare in its beats that the cosmos is not atomic but
one and indivisible, <i>ekam sat, neha nanasti kincana.</i></font>
		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">Page 159<hr>
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