Human Society Is One and Indivisible

Geographically, the Earth ours is divided into distinct zones:

1. The snow-covered poles
2. The hot, sandy and dreary deserts
3. The roaring and ruffled seas and oceans extending up to the distant horizons
4. The silent and motionless, high and intractable mountains.

In some places, rivers cut vast plains into two.

• At other places, high waves break upon the banks of great lakes with a thudding sound.

Since their advent onto this earth, human beings found themselves confronted with these types of conflicting natural environments.

They had to fight tooth and nail against those particular adverse circumstances to preserve their existence.

• That process brought about marked changes in their outward physical structures.

The greater the heat of the sun, the greater the amount of ultraviolet rays in the sunlight.

Geography tells us why there are differences in the degree of heat of the sun’s rays.

• Where the sun’s rays fall on earth obliquely, there is less heat of the sun
• Where the sun’s rays fall straight on the earth, the heat is greater.

In very hot countries, white-skinned people find it very hard to live because their skin has less melanin.

• They are unable to stand much heat.

Body skin with a lot of melanin in it turns jet black.

• Less melanin makes one’s skin white.

If ever white people are forced to live long in a hot climate, their colour turns brown.

In 1939-40, when British soldiers came to India for war purposes, their colour became brown due to the great heat. Naturally, as the skin of these soldiers had to adjust with the hot climate of India, there were some necessary changes in their skin to effect acclimatisation.

In hot countries the irises of people’s eyes are generally black, because more melanin is required to protect the eyeball from the scorching rays of the sun.

The nostrils of people in hot countries are comparatively large and the front of the nose is extended. Why does this happen?

Because external heat makes the internal air heated. The body temperature having increased, the internal heat tries to force its way out rapidly. As a result of the rapid exhalation of heavy, hot air, the diameter of the front portion of the nose increases.

People who live in cold countries develop fatty tissues in their bodies. These tissues are particularly helpful in maintaining body temperature. And though their noses are high, their nostrils are comparatively small because if a large amount of chill air enters the body it will inevitably affect the lungs and vocal chord. That is why nature has made the constitution of the inhabitants of cold countries so ideally suited as not to allow a greater than necessary amount of air to enter the body at the time of breathing.

In the same way the variation in natural environment and climate has variously effected other changes in the physical structure of human beings. Some people are jet-black, some reddish white, some yellow, while others are brown. The one species of Homo Sapiens has become divided into four distinct races (living under different circumstances), but basically they all originated from one and the same source – from Australopithecus to Homo Erectus to Homo Sapiens.

The same stock is divided into various so-called races – white, black, brown and yellow. These races are as different from one another as the rivers Ganga, Meghna, Padma and Bhagirathi, which spring from one common source, the Gangotri in the Himalayas. There are four main races in the world today – the Aryans, the Austrics, the Negroes and the Mongolians.

The Aryans first moved from West Asia and migrated to different parts from the Black Sea to the Danube Valley and then to Central and West Europe. They advanced and settled in Iran, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Spain, and along the Mediterranean coast. They spread out from West France to the British Isles, and later spread to Afghanistan, the Indus Valley, the Red River Valley, and Korea and Japan in the Far East.

The Mongolians had China as their main homeland.

• Later, they spread out from the Arctic Ocean to the Bering Straight and to the White Sea.
• They could not move westward because of the obstruction of high mountains in Asia.
  • So they advanced eastward and southward and reached Burma, Siam (Thailand), Indochina, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the Philippines and Japan, and joined the original inhabitants of those places.

The Negroes lived near the equator in Africa and New Guinea, near the southern coast of the Indian Ocean.

• Their descendants are found in South India, the Andaman Islands, the Malayan Peninsula and the Philippines.

Human society comprises these various branches of various races.

There is no reason to recognize one race as superior to another race.

The external differences in constitution among these human groups cannot alter their basic human traits – love and affection, pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst.

These basic biological instincts and mental propensities equally predominate in human beings of all complexions in all countries and in all ages.

A mere rustic, unlettered, half-naked tribal mother of an unknown hamlet of Chotanagpur Hills (in Bihar in India) bears deep maternal affection for her young children; in the same way, a well-educated mother of a locality of New York pours out of her heart a great love for her own children.

The subterranean flow of love and affection exists in all hearts alike. Every person cries out in pain, everyone feels pleasure when there are occasions of joy and happiness.

In different geographical, cultural, social and other environments the lifestyles of different human groups may vary – a few special psychic traits of some of those groups may assert themselves – but fundamentally their mental existence flows along the same channels of ideas and consciousness.

Containing the same cosmic momentum and under the same cosmic inspiration, they all have set out for a tryst with the same destiny.

From the unknown past until this day, the various branches of the human society have given rise to different civilizations.

The Alpines and the Mediterraneans (two branches of the white race) produced the following civilizations:

• Hellenic
• Sumerian
• Egyptian

The Nordics and the Dravidians were responsible for the Indus Valley civilizations.

The yellow race produced the Chinese and Japanese civilizations.

The Red Indians built up the American civilizations.

Black people did not lag behind either.

• Compared with other races their contribution to human civilization is less impressive.
• But this is not because of their racial inferiority, but because:
  • the so-called civilized races (for their selfish political interests) deprived them of sufficient scope in their development.
  • the hostile natural environment did not allow introversion of their psychic potentialities.

There is still:

• the burning desert of the Sahara right in the heart of Africa, surrounded by sea on most sides
• the deep and impenetrable forest thwarting any easy human communication.

This unfavourableness of nature prevented the Africans from looking within and that accounts for their failure to build any civilization in the past.

In spite of that, there are immense human potentialities lying dormant in them too.

And for that the most pressing need is to develop those possibilities by creating a congenial environment.

There is an admixture of blood of different races.

In India, all the 4 prominent races have been inseparably mixed up:

• Aryans
• Mongolians
• Austrics
• Negroes

The present Filipinos are a mixture of Negro, Mongolian and Aryan races, though the Mongolian elements are predominant.

Ethnological research has proved that the present Filipino race grew out of a heterogeneous mixture of people from India, Indonesia, Malaya, China, Africa and Arabia.

Similarly, the Japanese race was evolved out of a blood mixture of:

• the Ainu (a sub-branch of white people) hailing from the banks of the Amur River
• a sub-branch of the yellow race from Korea
• a hybrid community of browny-black coloured people who migrated from Malaya and Indonesia.

The Chinese people are composed of people from:

• South Russia and
• Central Asia.

The population of Great China is a mixture of those different communities.

Only recently, Hitler fed the German nation on the spurious notions of Aryan supremacy and incited the vain and arrogant Nazis to fight a horrible war.

• He raised his arrogant slogan – “The Aryans are not to be ruled but to rule”.

But is this chauvinistic and blind concept of Aryan supremacy supported by the science of ethnology?

No, this science holds that the modern Germans are a mixed, not a homogeneous race.

None of the existing human races are free from admixture of the blood of other races.

Therefore the talk of “purity of blood” of a race is meaningless, for there cannot be any purity of blood of a particular race. Rather, blood is always pure.

In India, the maximum mixture of blood has been in Bengal.

The Bengali race evolved out of the Aryans, Mongolians, Austrics and Negroes.

The people of Bihar and Orissa and the Kayastha (a high-caste Hindu community of East India) belong to this Bengali race.

In southern India, the Dravidians emerged from the mixture of Negro and Austric blood.

Thus in the dim past of unknown history, different human groups came in one another’s contact.

There was unavoidable intermingling of blood, and there arose many new races after gaps of long periods.

The innate migratory nature of human beings has goaded them to journey from one horizon to another, from one hemisphere to another.

For more than one reason, human beings have broken narrow geographical boundaries and set out for other lands and associated with other communities.

The direct and indirect causes of their association with other races are roughly as follows:

1. To preserve their existence, fighting collectively against hostile natural forces.
2. Through wars, victories and defeats of warriors, and expansion of kingdoms.
3. For inner attraction because of common religion.
4. Because of geographical proximity.
5. For reciprocal trade and other communications.
6. Through linguistic and cultural exchanges.

The above-mentioned factors brought the various human groups in close contact with one another.

Goaded by an innate instinct, they freely mixed among themselves. This contact and close relationship among various groups gave birth to the many so-called races of today.

Ultimately this close association amongst themselves culminated in marital bonds. Many small races were fused into a new race through inter-racial marriages.

For instance, in South America, as a result of constant intermingling of the blood of the Negroes, the Europeans and the Indians, a new race has emerged.

Similarly, in Colombia and Mexico, a new Mestizo community has come into being as a result of interracial marriages between the Europeans and Indians.

That is why it is not proper to attach much importance to differences in respect to noses, eyes, hair, height, etc.

Human society is continually striving to arrive at a synthesis through analysis, some sort of unity through diversity.

The natural obstructions of small clans, narrow communal interests, geographical distances and intractable customs and usages – none of these obstacles could hinder the steady and silent movement towards a supreme goal.

That is why the following doctrines could not thwart the progress of human society:

• policy of apartheid
• the vanity of racial superiority
• national chauvinism or regionalism

The outdated ideals of nationalism are crumbling to pieces today.

• The newly awakened humanity of today is anxious to herald the advent of one universal society.

The noble and righteous persons of all countries, bound by fraternal ties, are eager to assert in one voice, with one mind, and in the same tune that human society is one and indivisible.

In this voice of total unity and magnanimity lies the value and message of eternal humanism.