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Namah Vol. 33, Issue 3, 15th October 2025

warfare in the first Gulf War to name a few and almost impose it, especially the scientific
instances (7). Its promise was more as a “ghost discoveries which have made our earth so small
story”, “a spectral presence” than a reality. that its vastest kingdoms seem now no more
Nonetheless, twenty years and a Cold War than the provinces of a single country (8).” I
later, we come full circle to Fukuyama. We do not mean to suggest that the “ideal” Sri
can’t seem to help ourselves. Aurobindo speaks of in this paragraph aligns
entirely with the work of Kant, Rawls and
others. Indeed, there are significant internal
differences between (and problems within)
the “liberal” commitments of these thinkers,
each of whom spoke in vastly different
contexts. I club them together at the risk of
caricature only to stress the common thread
of an underlying idealism committed (at least
formally) to a rule-governed, equal and free
society of nations.

This aspiration to liberty, equality and Is this persistent dream of a just and peaceful
fraternity in the community of nations global order a romantic fantasy? Or is it an
finds expression in Sri Aurobindo’s, The insistence on moral and spiritual resilience
Ideal of Human Unity. Its persistence in our sure to justify itself? In the current climate
imagination, Sri Aurobindo argues, reflects of 2025, the precarity of global affairs makes
our spiritual nature. It is constantly beset optimism difficult to justify. Consider the
by the universal endowment of ignorance cruel irony of the inhuman prosecution of
and violence encoded in our egoism, yet it the war in Gaza, courtesy the American veto
remains ever-present behind the thick cloak on the Security Council, the resurgence of
of darkness and shines through in rare Cold War dynamics and proxy battles in
moments of idealism. It is as seductive in Ukraine, the naked threat of American
its appeal as it is difficult to realise. Modern expansionism and economic coercion with
conditions of globalisation, rationalism the ongoing global tariff war, the fragile state
and science, in particular, have pushed the of the Chinese-American conflict, deepening
allure of this ideal to the fore. Writing in the cracks in NATO and internal fissures within
Arya in the heat of the First World War, Sri the European Union, the concurrent rise of
Aurobindo noted that “… today the ideal of nationalism and populism, the inability of
human unity is more or less vaguely making the international community to collaborate
its way to the front of our consciousness.” This on climate change and much more.
ideal, he went on to say, “… having once made
its way to the front of thought, must certainly
be attempted, and this ideal of human unity is
likely to figure largely among the determining
forces of the future; for the intellectual and
material circumstances of the age have prepared

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