Mutuality in influence means that the impact of one person or thing on
another is not one-sided. Instead, it's a reciprocal process where both
parties are affected and influence each other. This reciprocal relationship
can be seen in various contexts, from personal relationships and
conversations to cultural exchange and even within the dynamics of a
business.
1. Reciprocal Impact: In a mutually influential relationship, actions,
behaviors, or ideas from one entity (person, group, or even a concept)
elicit a response or change in the other, which in turn, can then influence
the first entity again.
2. Dynamic and Evolving: This type of influence isn't static. It's a
process of ongoing interaction and adaptation where both parties are
constantly shaping and being shaped by the other.
3. Beyond One-Way Causation: Mutuality challenges the idea of simple cause
and effect. Instead, it highlights how interconnectedness and feedback
loops create a more complex and dynamic system of influence.
Supportive Conversations:
In supportive conversations, the way a person seeking support expresses
their needs (e.g., using approach behaviors) can influence the type of
response they receive from the provider, which in turn can affect their
subsequent messages, according to a study on ResearchGate.
Cultural Exchange:
When different cultures interact, they influence each other's practices,
beliefs, and artistic styles. This exchange is not one-way; each culture
adapts and integrates elements from the other, leading to a shared
evolution, according to WisdomLib.org.
Family Dynamics:
In families, particularly in situations like heart failure caregiving, the
level of mutuality between patients and caregivers (e.g., love, shared
activities, reciprocity) can significantly impact their quality of life and
self-care behaviors.
Shared Decision Making:
In healthcare, for instance, physicians and patients influence each other
in shared decision-making. The physician helps the patient articulate their
preferences, and the patient influences the physician's approach. says a
study published on the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
[To the Andhra University on the occasion of the Presentation of
the Sir Cattamanchi Ramalinga Reddi National Prize to him at the
convocation held at the University on Dec.11, 1948.]
“You have asked me for a message and anything I write, since it is to the
Andhra University that I am addressing my message, if it can be called by
that name, should be pertinent to your University, its function, its
character and the work it has to do. But it is difficult for me at this
juncture when momentous decisions are being taken which are likely to
determine not only the form and pattern of this country’s Government and
administration but the pattern of its destiny, the build and make-up of the
nation character, its position in the world with regard to other nations,
its choice of what itself shall be, not to turn my eyes in that direction.
There is one problem facing the country which concerns us nearly and to
this I shall now turn and deal with it, however inadequately,–the demand
for the reconstruction of the artificial British-made Presidencies and
provinces into natural divisions forming a new system, new and yet founded
on the principle of diversity in unity attempted by ancient India. India,
shut into a separate existence by the Himalayas and the ocean, has always
been the home of a peculiar people with characteristics of its own
recognizably distinct from all others, with its own distinct civilization,
way of life, way of the spirit, a separate culture, arts, building of
society. It has absorbed all that has entered it, put upon all the Indian
stamp, welded the most diverse elements into its fundamental unity. But it
has also been throughout a congeries of diverse peoples, lands, kingdoms
times, and, in earlier times, republics also, diverse races, subnations
with a marked character of their own, developing different brands or forms
of civilization and culture, many schools of art and architecture which yet
succeeded in fitting into the general Indian type of civilization and
culture. India’s history throughout has been marked by a tendency, a
constant effort to unite all this diversity of elements into a single
political whole under a central imperial rule so that India might be
politically as well as culturally one. Even after a rift had been created
by the irruption of the Mohammedan peoples with their very different
religion and social structure, there continued a constant effort of
political unification and there was a tendency towards a mingling of
cultures and their mutual influence on each other; even some heroic
attempts were made to discover or create a common religion built out of
these two apparently irreconcilable faiths and here too there were mutual
influences. But throughout India’s history the political unity was never
entirely attained and for this there were several causes,–first, vastness
of space and insufficiency of communications preventing the drawing close
of all these different peoples; secondly, the method used which was the
military domination by one people or one imperial dynasty over the rest of
the country which led to a succession of empires, none of them permanent;
lastly, the absence of any will to crush out of existence all these
different kingdoms and fuse together these different peoples and force them
into a single substance and a single shape.
Then came the British Empire in India which recast the whole country
into artificial provinces made for its own convenience, disregarding the
principle of division into regional peoples but not abolishing that
division. For there had grown up out of the original elements a natural
system of subnations with different languages, literatures and other
traditions of their own, the four Dravidian peoples, Bengal, Maharashtra,
Gujarat, Punjab, Sind, Assam, Orissa, Nepal, the Hindi-speaking peoples of
the North, Rajputana and Bihar. British rule with its provincial
administration, did not unite these peoples but it did impose upon them the
habit of a common type of administration, a closer intercommunication
through the English language and by the education it gave there was created
a more diffused and more militant form of patriotism, the desire for
liberation and the need of unity in the struggle to achieve that
liberation. A sufficient fighting unity was brought about to win freedom,
but freedom obtained did not carry with it a complete union of the country.
On the contrary, India was deliberately split on the basis of the
two-nation theory into Pakistan and Hindustan with the deadly consequences
which we know.
In taking over the administration from Britain we had inevitably to
follow the line of least resistance and proceed on the basis of the
artificial British-made provinces, at least for the time; this provisional
arrangement now threatens to become permanent, at least in the main and
some see an advantage in this permanence. For they think it will help the
unification of the country and save us from the necessity of preserving
regional subnations which in the past kept a country from an entire and
thoroughgoing unification and uniformity. In a rigorous unification they
see the only true union, a single nation with a standardised and uniform
administration, language, literature, culture, art, education,–all carried
on through the agency of one national tongue. How far such a conception can
be carried out in the future one cannot forecast, but at present it is
obviously impracticable, and it is doubtful if it is for India truly
desirable. The ancient diversities of the country carried in them great
advantages as well as draws. By these differences the country was made the
home of many living and pulsating centres of life, art, culture, a richly
and brilliantly coloured diversity in unity; all was not drawn up into a
few provincial capitals or an imperial metropolis, other towns and regions
remaining subordinated and indistinctive or even culturally asleep; the
whole nation lived with a full life in its many parts and this increased
enormously the creative energy of the whole. There is no possibility any
longer that this diversity will endanger or diminish the unity of India.
Those vast spaces which kept her people from closeness and a full interplay
have been abolished in their separating effect by the march of Science and
the swiftness of the means of communication. The idea of federation and a
complete machinery for its perfect working have been discovered and will be
at full work. Above all, the spirit of patriotic unity has been too firmly
established in the people to be easily effaced or diminished, and it would
be more endangered by refusing to allow the natural play of life of the
sub-nations than by satisfying their legitimate aspirations. The Congress
itself in the days before liberation came had pledged itself to the
formation of linguistic provinces, and follow it out, if not immediately,
yet as early as may conveniently be, might well be considered the wisest
course. India’s national life will then be founded on her natural strengths
and the principle of unity in diversity which has always been normal to her
and its fulfilment the fundamental course of her being and its very nature,
the Many in the One, would place her on the sure foundation of her Swabhava
and Swadharma.
This development might well be regarded as the inevitable trend of
her future. For the Dravidian regional peoples are demanding their separate
right to a self-governing existence; Maharashtra expects a similar
concession and this would mean a similar development in Gujarat and then
the British made Presidencies of Madras and Bombay would have disappeared.
The old Bengal Presidency had already been split up and Orissa, Bihar and
Assam are now self-governing regional Peoples. A merger of the
Hindi-speaking part of the Central Provinces and the U. P. would complete
the process. An annulment of the partition of India might modify but would
not materially alter this result of the general tendency. A union of States
and regional peoples would again be the form of a united India.
In this new regime your University will find its function and
fulfilment. Its origin has been different from that of other Indian
Universities; they were established by the initiative of a foreign
Government as a means of introducing their own civilisation into India,
situated in the capital towns of the Presidencies and formed as teaching
and examining bodies with purely academic aims: Benares and Aligarh had a
different origin but were all-India institutions serving the two chief
religious communities of the country. Andhra University, has been created
by a patriotic Andhra initiative, situated not in a Presidency capital but
in an Andhra town and serving consciously the life of a regional people.
The home of a robust and virile and energetic race, great by the part it
had played in the past in the political life of India, great by its
achievements in art, architecture, sculpture, music, Andhra looks upon
imperial memories, a place in the succession of empires and imperial
dynasties which reigned over a large part of the country; it looks on the
more recent memory of the glories of the last Hindu empire of Vijayanagar–a
magnificent record for any people. Your University can take its high
position as a centre of light and learning, knowledge and culture which can
train the youth of Andhra to be worthy of their forefathers: the great past
should lead to a future as great or even greater. Not only Science but Art,
not only book-knowledge and information but growth in culture and character
are parts of a true education; to help the individual to develop his
capacities, to help the forming of thinkers and creators and men of vision
and action of the future, this is a part of its work. Moreover the life of
the regional people must not be shut up in itself; its youths have also to
contact the life of the other similar peoples of India interacting with
them in industry and commerce and the other practical fields of life but
also in the things of the mind and spirit. Also, they have to learn not
only to be citizens of Andhra but to be citizens of India; the life of the
nation is their life. An elite has to be formed which has an adequate
understanding of all great national affairs or problems and be able to
represent Andhra in the councils of the nation and in every activity and
undertaking of national interest calling for the support and participation
of her peoples. There is still a wider field in which India will need the
services of men of ability and character from all parts of the country, the
international field. For she stands already as a considerable international
figure and this will grow as time goes on into vast proportions; she is
likely, in time to take her place as one of the preponderant States whose
voices will be strongest and their lead and their action determinative of
the world’s future. For all this she needs men whose training as well as
their talent, genius and force of character is of the first order. In all
these fields your University can be of supreme service and do a work of
immeasurable importance.
In this hour, in the second year of its liberation the nation has to
awaken to many more very considerable problems, to vast possibilities
opening before her but also to dangers and difficulties that may, if not
wisely dealt with, become formidable. There is a disordered world-situation
left by the war, full of risks and sufferings and shortages and threatening
another catastrophe which can only be solved by the united effort of the
peoples and can only be truly met by an effort at world-union such as was
conceived at San Francisco but has not till now been very successful in the
practice; still the effort has to be continued and new devices found which
will make easier the difficult transition from the perilous divisions of
the past and present to a harmonious world-order; for otherwise there can
be no escape from continuous calamity and collapse. There are deeper issues
for India herself, since by following certain tempting directions she may
conceivably become a nation like many others evolving an opulent industry
and commerce, a powerful organisation of social and political life, an
immense military strength, practising power-politics with a high
degree of success,
guarding and extending zealously her gains and her interests, dominating
even a large part of the world, but in this apparently magnificent
progression forfeiting its Swadharma, losing its soul. Then ancient India
and her spirit might disappear altogether and we would have only one more
nation like the other and that would be a real gain neither to the world
nor to us. There is a question whether she may prosper more harmlessly in
the outward life yet lose altogether her richly massed and firmly held
spiritual experience and knowledge. It would be a tragic irony of fate if
India were to throwaway her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in
the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for
spiritual help and a saving Light. This must not and will surely not
happen; but it cannot be said that the danger is not there. There are
indeed other numerous and difficult problems that face this country or will
very soon face it. No doubt, we will win through, but we must not disguise
from ourselves the fact that after these long years of subjection and its
cramping and impairing effects a great inner as well as outer liberation
and change, a vast inner and outer progress is needed if we are to fulfil
India’s true destiny. –SRI AUROBINDO
Mutuality advocated failed by congress and the impact is felt till
date
K Rajaram IRS 4825
On Mon, 4 Aug 2025 at 07:23, Jambunathan Iyer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Influence is Art, not Title Power isn’t about position. It’s about presence
>
> It’s about understanding people better than they understand themselves,
> seeing the moves before they happen, and knowing when to act—and when to
> wait. Chanakya didn’t just study power; he embodied it. And those who
> understand his lessons don’t need to chase influence. It comes to them
> naturally.
>
>
> *N Jambunathan , Chennai " What you get by achieving your goals is not as
> important as what you become by achieving your goals. If you want to live a
> happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things "*
>
>
>
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