Sudan's independence and a borderless world

Yet another small country celebrates its day of breaking free, with proud military marches, flapping flags and blasting national anthem. South Sudan’s independence has come six months after the southerners voted almost unanimously to split with their former civil war enemies in the north. Now, under mixed comments from people over the world, the country will take its place at the bottom of the developing nations list, as it prepares to chart out a growth track using its abundant oil reserves and other natural resources. Yet, as South Sudan rejoices in its newfound independence, it also stands out as a symbol of a growing debate—is the disintegration of bigger states into smaller ones the way to go in a world increasingly talking about global citizenship and the erasing of boundaries? The division of huge tracts of land into smaller states on linguistic, religious or other such grounds is in fact a remnant of the great predatory bird known to the world as colonialism, which cast its shadow on most parts of the earth. When its victims sought to free themselves from its hold, it scratched across their faces by drawing boundaries arbitrarily, leaving a wave of uprooted, mauled lives and long-drawn enmities in its wake. Freedom is not a word that stands alone unto itself. When people seek to be free, it is always to be ‘free from’ someone or somebody, to be ‘free of’ repression or cruelty or discrimination. And yet, ironically, the creation of boundaries effectively limits human freedom in certain very obvious ways, such as the freedom of movement. Humans, who have never stayed in one place, migrating constantly from time to time, are confined to a certain geographical boundary; their freedom to move and settle in other places facing considerable restrictions. The craving for independence, for having a nation of your own also has something to do with every person’s need for a separate identity, a sense of belonging to a particular group, nation or community. The creature that belongs to everyone, in all fairness, belongs to no one. And the need to belong is one of the basic needs of human nature. Perhaps it is true that growth occurs faster and better among people that share a sense of belonging. But in a world where cultures, identities and origins are getting blurred by the day, most people actually belong to several places at the same time; being born in one, growing up in another, settling down in a third and dying someplace else. The best example of a boundary-less world is the world that almost everyone inhabits now—the virtual world. Universal spaces like Facebook and Twitter are witness to the coming together of people having vastly different identities. But even within this universe, one cannot deny the existence of ‘countries’ in the form of communities that people join according to their convictions, origins and alignments. A free world seems to be a utopian concept, much like free trade. The most vehement advocates of free trade are the very ones who wouldn’t bat an eyelid on imposing restrictions the minute their own interests stood jeopardised. Nonetheless, that cannot be reason enough for the human spirit to not dream of a world where people will not be compartmentalised and can adopt any, or as many, identities as they wish to. After all, the Berlin Wall, too, crumbled down one day.