Dr. Beloo Mehra’s essay titled ‘Spiritual Nationalism and Its Significance for Today’ was recently published in the special commemorative volume of Ritam, a bilingual journal published by Uttarpara Sri Aurobindo Parishad. This special volume brings together articles from various scholars in Sri Aurobindo Studies, and presents a good overview of some of the essential facets of Sri Aurobindo’s vision and works.
An Excerpt from the Article
Through the pages of Bande Mataram Sri Aurobindo reminds Indians of the Indian vision of nation and nationalism. He says that because of our west-centric education we have learned to ape the thoughts and language of the West forgetting our own deeper ideas of what constitutes a nation. While to the Western mentality, a nation is about primarily the externals, the land, the people who speak one language and live under one political rule. He adds:
“When the European wishes to feel a living emotion for his country, he personifies the land he lives in, tries to feel that a heart beats in the brute earth and worships a vague abstraction of his own intellect.” [1]
But to an Indian, the idea of nationality ought to be deeper than this, Sri Aurobindo says. That is because, the Indian thought and philosophy “looked through the gross body of things and discovered a subtle body within, looked through that and found yet another more deeply hidden, and within the third body discovered the Source of life and form, seated for ever, unchanging and imperishable.”
Reminding us of another fundamental truth of Indian thought, Sri Aurobindo says that what is true of the individual is true also of the nation.
[1] CWSA, Vol. 7, pp. 1115-1116
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