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Taking Stock: Some Relections on Geopolitical Disorder in the Light
of Sri Aurobindo’s, The Ideal of Human Unity

Raag Yadava

Abstract
Writing in the midst of the First World War, Sri Aurobindo expounded a rather unique reading
of global conflict, one that lay in the deeper psychological causes of our teleological movement
towards an ‘ideal of human unity’. Standing in 2025, with the resurgence of deep geopolitical
fault lines, it is hard to persuade oneself of any narrative coherence in the movement of global
forces. The promise of liberal internationalism and the post-Cold War optimism for a rules-
based world order have been upset by the rising tide of transactional and mercantile foreign
policy agendas. When, then, remains of the ‘ideal of human unity’ and what can we learn from
Sri Aurobindo’s psychological orientation to make sense of the geopolitical churn today?

Middle-East, Syria being the latest addition
to the list and the brutal prosecution of
the Israeli war in Gaza, the geopolitical
equilibrium in operation since the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been decidedly
unsettled. Alongside, the singular failure
of the United Nations — with a toothless
International Court of Justice, a benign General
Assembly and a gridlocked Security Council —
in securing an end to conflict, let alone secure
The world stage is as uncertain and meaningful agreement on the common
precarious today as it has been since the and existential challenge of climate change,
Second World War. From the Russian war questions the fate of multilateralism. More
in Ukraine, bringing Europe and the United insidiously, it has unleashed the mercenary
States back into Cold War dynamics, and the spirit of interest-driven foreign policy agendas.
brewing Chinese-American conflict to the Amidst these confusing and stark developments,
destabilising effect of regime changes in the
what of the ‘ideal of human unity’, the life

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