Page 15 - NAMAH-Oct-2025

Namah Taking Stock....

It is difficult to predict how global forces thus an inevitable and expected, if protracted,
will move in the near future. I would like process by which nations arrive at some
to suggest however, that Sri Aurobindo’s semblance of harmony. Let us consider each
Works allow us to view global movements point in turn.
within a useful, long-term perspective. This
is a perspective that is anchored not in the Back to the Future
immediate frictions these conflicts have
generated but in the deeper, subliminal The major conflicts we see on the global stage
forces that drive them. Consistent with Sri today are not new; nor are they simply a
Aurobindo’s claim that gross, material events regression to our baser instincts. Present-day
are the effects of subtler causes, it is useful conflicts represent the surfacing of long-held
to reflect on the underlying forces that are and often latent tensions in the world order.
driving current events: Let us quickly canvass present-day conflicts
to consider what this means. The original
“Nothing is more obscure to humanity or sin of British land carving in 1948 has been
less seized by its understanding, whether in festering between Israel and Palestine in the
the power that moves it or the sense of the years since. The sense of national ignominy
aim towards which it moves, than its own from Mikhail Gorbachev’s capitulation persisted
communal and collective life. Sociology does after the fall of the Iron Curtain, with Bill
not help us, for it only gives us the general story Clinton and his successors in NATO rubbing
of the past and the external conditions under healthy doses of salt in the wound by
which communities have survived. History their eastward expansion driven by the
teaches us nothing; it is a confused torrent pathological need for rivalry. American
of events and personalities or a kaleidoscope ‘addiction to oil’, as George Bush Jr. put it,
of changing institutions. We do not seize the has fuelled endless foreign wars and coups,
real sense of all this change and this continual the lasting effects of which have resurfaced
streaming forward of human life in the channels in the recent Iranian conflict revolution.
of Time (9).” The transatlantic rift between America and
Europe, now apparent, was decades in the
Taking a cue from this orientation, two making. The post-war enthusiasm that led
underlying points emerge. The first is that to the European compact had to deal with
current global conflicts have their roots in internal divisions one day. The skewed
older, unresolved rifts. One way of looking distribution of the benefits of globalisation
at current events is as part of a rebalancing was waiting for a Donald Trump or a Boris
process with the recrudescence of subtler Johnson to light the fire of parochialism
causes of conflict baked into the global and populism. The long timidity of Asia,
order which keeps simmering under the Africa and the Global South was preparing
surface post the Second World War. The for an assertive return to call out Western
second point that is worth reflecting on is hypocrisy, with its ensuing frictions between
that the path to unity in Sri Aurobindo’s BRICS and the G10. The skewed policy
evolutionary scheme, as also that of others, imperatives of the Bretton Woods institutions
is through conflict. Current global events are and the World Trade Organization favouring

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