COSMOPOLISES: A Necessary Interpretation of The World of The Future

COSMOPOLIS. That is an exciting word that is full of positive connotations. The original Greek expresses this idea by pairing Kosmos (“world” or “universe”) with Polis (“city-state”). Cosmopolis thus translates into “world-city”, which in short signifies the ideal of a unified political com-munity that absorbs and accepts—and in the process, minimises conflicts between—the multitude of nations, ethnicities and tribes. A global order is imagined that is inclusive, and within which every human is a citizen. This coherent whole, however, is an urban one. We cannot but conceive of cosmopolitan centres as places that are maddingly crowded, ethnically diverse and culturally fluid.

If we now shift to the Indian civilisational sphere, we find that there are at least two terms in Sanskrit that approximately express the spirit of the abovementioned thought. One is “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakan”, an ethical term suggesting the unity of all creation; the other is “Chakravala Chakra-vartin”, the universal sovereign who rules the dvipas, i.e. the world’s constituent continents.

Chinese political thought, in turn, owns the term Tianxia, often translated as “All under Heaven” and denotes the known world, or more probably, the imperial polity as a whole. The Indian and Chinese ideas, however, do not assume the world to be made up of cities; they are more indicative of territorial overview. The Greek Cosmopolis clearly imagines crowded cities exhibiting a matured world civilisation and globally inclusive order.