A MUCH more perfect union : Tagore

Less than a year ago, Barack Obama, currently the most powerful man in the world, gave a speech titled "A more perfect union". An excerpt follows:

" 'We the people… in order to form a more perfect union..'

Two hundred and twenty-one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars, statesmen and patriots who had traveled across the ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence. The document they produced was eventually signed, but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution  — a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part — through protests and struggles, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk — to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this presidential campaign: to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction: towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."

And yet, there is still something missing. There is inspiration here, no doubt, motivating us to strive towards a better future, but there is also resounding silence as to what that better future entails for the people. Unless it is made clear that "better future" does not translate into more cars, bigger houses and extravagant lifestyles, but rather into prudence, humility, respect for others, and tolerance; that Change comes not just by electing the better candidate as most powerful man in the world, but it comes from within; and that a Union must be perfected, not just between the peoples of the world, but among all life, we will remain on the path to self-destruction, albeit a longer one.

In the light of the above statement, the all-encompassing nature of a poet who lived under the subjugation of foreign rule, reveals unnatural insight into the heart of a problem that is as old as man :
"According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our own selves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in perfect union."

Unless we all realize this, our greatest hope can be but a temporary postponement of a common catastrophe.