Table of Contents
A Guru's View of World Government (Cont.)
(With world government being such a controversial subject these days, given the
United Nations' abject failure to address humanity's problems, World Citizen
News continues the serial reprinting of Guru Nataraja's 1956 Memorandum on World
Government, which treats the subject holistically or, as he wrote,
"geo-dialectically." Viewed within the context of the guru's wisdom-though he
passed away in 1973 and despite his gender-exclusionary language-readers can
enjoy a fresh and timely perspective on an engrossing subject.)
3. How to practice world politics from inside
When once elected to a local or national body on a World Government ticket, the
man or woman concerned takes a course of action in keeping with the principles
of humanity and world morality or value comprised between the two poles of bread
and freedom. Taking his stand on the norms and standards of geo-dialectics the
World Citizen generally takes a middle-of-the-road position in respect of
leftist or rightist parties, and generally supports the president when Absolute
Justice, Morality or the Ideal are not violated by his position. When
resolutions are moved or voting is explained he gets a chance of placing before
those who are politically minded a new approach based on global human interests.
He can bring token cut-motions on armament budgets when disproportionate, and
the people's sense of justice can be appealed to. If he should be ousted from
the Council the people will follow him into the street if his cause is just and
in the name of the interests of the common man and humanity at once. Here, for
the present, the possibilities of such action from inside must be left to the
imagination. When permanent support to the world approach is certain,
'mundialization' within such units is not impossible. Symbolic acts in keeping
with the code of honour or morals proper to the World Citizen could be resorted
to, resembling Tolstoyan or Gandhian methods as revised in the light of a
stricter geo-dialectical science.
4. The practice of world politics from above
Men, and more especially women, who occupy positions of influence or who have
resources at their command, can study the plans of World Government and bring
their weight to bear on the side of supporting human rights and preserving the
best in the heritage of mankind, whether in art, culture, or wisdom. Dante,
Shakespeare, and Kalidasa belong to humanity first, and the claims of particular
nations for them are only incidental. There is also the one perennial
contemplative tradition based on a science of the Absolute which is the common
property of humanity. In preserving these and in protecting the common wisdom
heritage of mankind the best interests of the common man will be secured also.
Poor men, who have to make a living wherever it is at present available to them,
are kept from freely reaching out to their God-given opportunities by artificial
man-made rules. These rules must be broken down. Travel becomes more and more
difficult and rules are piled upon rules by nations big and small for no valid
or justifiable reason except to retaliate in the name of national pride or
exclusiveness. Parochialism, tribalism, casteism, and nationalism have much in
common with fanaticism or blind orthodoxy. A world philosophy and religion
critically and scientifically ordered will help to relieve the existing
asphyxiating conditions wherein miserable men and women have to live in the
prison of criss-cross rules which is the present world. All modern people are
keenly aware of this stifling atmosphere. The well-to-do, the influential, or at
least their wives, must take interest in the poor, not to disrupt anything or
anybody, but to bring just that kind of legitimate pressure which will ease the
trouble of the common man. There can be a World Order of Ladies or Knights who
could function as supervisors, permission authorities, world guards or witnesses
of natural integrity, peacemakers or arbitrating advisers in the numerous walks
of life in all matters ranging between the gaining of bread and the gaining of
personal or spiritual freedom. Premarital, post-marital, and familial
arbitration or advice, helping juveniles and children from possible
maladjustments, the re-education of delinquents, psychological guidance, a
pedagogy which respects the personality of the child, co-operative centers for
the reclamation and relaxation of persons caught in the stress of life or in
conditions of tension, and occupational guidance or treatment-these are only a
few of the fields in which the World Citizen could help the lot of humanity from
wherever he or she might be living. A complete philosophy and a way of life
shaped on unitive and absolutist lines is of course presupposed here. It will
be the task of the World Institute of Human Affairs to elaborate, formulate, and
make this available in the different languages of the world.
5. The practice of world politics from below
Individual men and women are caught in the barbed wire frontiers, both
ideological and actual, of rules and interdictions against freedom to pursue
happiness freely and peacefully on the surface of the God-or-Nature-given earth.
There has been no way hitherto for the articulation of their grievance. Not
content with enforcing the rules of his own country, police belonging to
stranger countries have begun to help the other country in enforcing wrong rules
in the name of internationalism. There is thus a double barrage of many absurd
rules which themselves are multiplied beyond reason or necessity. The clever
ones get away with every restriction somehow, but the lot of ordinary man
becomes difficult. One has to linger only for a few minutes at passport or
permit offices to be convinced of the large volume of suffering to which men and
women are subjected. To refer even to a few typical cases would be outside the
scope of this Memorandum and would mar the sobriety of style which we wish to
preserve here as far as possible. In one of his works Ruskin got a paragraph
from a daily newspaper printed in red ink, because the subject was shocking to
all decent human sentiment. The untold sufferings of the common man because of
red-tape and regulations would have to be printed in some other ink if it is to
find a place in a Memorandum such as this is intended to be.
What the common man could do is to register with the World Government as a World
Citizen and try to bring a vertical conceived pressure to bear on the situation.
He has to rely on numbers here to cope with the machinery of governments which
have a great deal of inertia in them. All shoulders have to be applied to the
wheel to set affairs going normally. The trumpet blasts for absolute fairness
from outside the walls of Jericho have to resound in consonance with the trumpet
blasts from above, or inside.
...To be continued
Table of Contents