World Union
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World Union is a non-profit, non-political organisation founded on the 26th November 1958 in Pondicherry, inspired by Sri Aurobindo's vision of carrying forward a movement for Human Unity, World Peace and Progress on a Spiritual Foundation. For the ordinary humanitarian and religious outlook and motivation are inadequate to meet the demands of the New Age which is already in the process of manifesting under the inevitable programme of the evolutionary nature on earth.
The Mother became the President of the first World Council of World Union on 20 August 1964, and since then, 20th August is celebrated as World Union Day.
A. B. Patel was the leading figure in the organisation for many years, he was succeeded in that role by M.P. Pandit.
The organisation also publishes a quarterly journal with the same title, which draws inspiration from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, particularly from The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity.
- At the instance of Surendra Mohan Ghosh, J. Smith and Anil Mukherjee along with other prominent persons formed an Association named ‘New World Union’ on the 26th November 1958 in Pondicherry
- A. B. Patel joined in May 1959, and then on April 23, 1960 the name was changed to 'World Union' on The Mother’s advice.
- The Mother became the President of the first World Council of World Union on 20 August 1964, and Surendra Mohan Ghosh, the Chairman.
- Present office-bearers of the World Executive of World Union
- Samir Kanto Gupta - Chairman
- Jagdish Gandhi - Vice-chairman
- Ananda Reddy - Vice-chairman
- Anjali Roy - Vice-chairperson
- Suresh Ch. De - General Secretary plus Treasurer
- Prakash S. Patel - Asst. General Secretary plus Treasurer
- Editorial Board - Samir Kanto Gupta, Ananda Reddy, and Suresh Ch. De
- Location - Rue Desbassyns de Richmont, Puducherry - 605002, India. Phone - (0413) 2334834
Select articles from the Journal
- Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo. Indra Sen July-Sept 1968
- The Integral Culture of Man. Indra Sen April-June 1970
- Integral Philosophy and a New Civilization. Karl Heussenstamm April-June 1971
- Unity and Harmony in Practical Prospects. H. Maheswari March 2006
- Drive to Higher Integrations. Purnendu Prasad Bhattacharya June 2006
A free world-union: Sri Aurobindo Social and Political Thought Volume-15
A free world-union must in its very nature be a complex unity based on a diversity and that diversity must be based on free self- determination. A mechanical unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit altogether; it would arrange its system probably by continents and subdivide the continents by convenient geographical demarcations.
In this other quite opposite idea, the geographical, the physical principle of union would be subordinated to a psychological principle; for not a mechanical division, but a living diversity would be its object. If this object is to be secured, the peoples of humanity must be allowed to group themselves according to their free-will, and their natural affinities; no constraint or force could be allowed to compel an unwilling nation or distinct grouping of peoples to enter into another system or join itself or remain joined to it for the convenience, aggrandisement or political necessity of another people or even for the general convenience, in disregard of its own wishes.
Nations or countries widely divided from each other geographically like England and Canada or England and Australia might cohere together. Nations closely grouped locally might choose to stand apart, like England and Ireland or like Finland and Russia. Unity would be the largest principle of life, but freedom would be its foundation-stone.
In a world built on the present political and commercial basis this system of groupings might present often insuperable difficulties or serious disadvantages; but in the condition of things in which alone a free world-union would be possible, these difficulties and disadvantages would cease to operate. Military necessity of forced union for strength of defence or for power of aggression would be non-existent, because war would no longer be possible; force as the arbiter of international differences and a free world-union are two quite incompatible ideas and practically could not coexist.
The political necessity would also disappear; for it is largely made up of that very spirit of conflict and the consequent insecure conditions of international life apportioning predominance in the world to the physically and organically strongest nations out of which the military necessity arose. In a free world-union determining its affairs and settling its differences by agreement or, where agreement failed, by arbitration, the only political advantage of including large masses of men, not otherwise allied to each other in a single State, would be the greater influence arising from mass and population. Page-517
Throughout the world, the idea and fact of union once definitely prevailing, unity of interests would be more clearly seen and the greater advantage of agreement and mutual participation in a naturally harmonised life over the feverish artificial prosperity created by a stressing of separative barriers. That stressing is inevitable in an order of struggle and international competition; it would be seen to be prejudicial in an order of peace and union which would make for mutual accommodation. The principle of a free world-union being that of the settlement of common affairs by common agreement, this could not be confined to the removal of political differences and the arrangement of political relations alone, but must naturally extend to economic differences and economic relations as well. To the removal of war and the recognition of the right of self-determination of the peoples the arrangement of the economic life of the world in its new order by mutual and common agreement would have to be added as the third condition of a free union. Page-519
The idea of a world-Parliament is attractive at first sight, because the parliamentary form is that to which our minds are accustomed; but an assembly of the present unitarian national type could not be the proper instrument of a free world-union of this large and complex kind; it could only be the instrument of a unitarian World-State. The idea of a world-federation, if by that be understood the Germanic or American form, would be equally inappropriate to the greater diversity and freedom of national development which this type of world-union would hold as one of its cardinal principles. Rather some kind of confederation of the peoples for common human ends, for the removal of all causes of strife and difference, for interrelation and the regulation of mutual aid and interchange, yet leaving to each unit a full internal freedom and power of self-determination, would be the right principle of this unity. Page-522
On the other hand, in a free world-union though originally starting from the national basis, the national idea might be expected to undergo a radical transformation; it might even disappear into a new and less strenuously compact form and idea of group-aggregation which would not be separative in spirit, yet would preserve the necessary element of independence and variation needed by both individual and grouping for their full satisfaction and their healthy existence.
Moreover, by emphasising the psychological quite as much as the political and mechanical idea and basis, it would give a freer and less artificial form and opportunity for the secure development of the necessary intellectual and psychological change; for such an inner change could alone give some chance of durability to the unification. That change would be the growth of the living idea or religion of humanity; for only so could there come the psychological modification of life and feeling and outlook which would accustom both individual and group to live in their common humanity first and most, subduing their individual and group-egoism, yet losing nothing of their individual or group-power to develop and ex- press in its own way the divinity in man which, once the race was assured of its material existence, would emerge as the true object of human existence. Page-524
[edit] See also
- World government
- World citizen
- World Service Authority
- Democratic World Federalists is a San-Francisco-based civil society organization with supporters worldwide, advocates a democratic federal system of world government.
