Taller fences, but borders can’t stop flow of language, memory

Is a borderline 1 to beryllium crossed, oregon feared? Or 1 that’s imaginary and permeable?

The different day, portion surfing the Internet, I came crossed a speech by the philosopher and spiritual teacher Sri M. He was offering a lucid mentation of the ‘Isha Upanishad’, and successful the process, shared a funny small communicative from his younger days.

Back then, inactive aboriginal successful his spiritual journey, Sri M’s guru had advised him to walk clip with antithetic sects. One specified congregation helium joined was of the Iskcon monks successful past Bombay. Accompanying a radical of them connected a money thrust for a temple, helium happened to conscionable Haji Mastan, the underworld don. Mastan was generous with his donation, and the speech soon veered towards his smuggling activity. When asked wherefore helium wouldn’t springiness up his amerciable profession, the don offered a benignant of philosophical counter. “Does this satellite beryllium to God?” helium asked. Everyone nodded. “And is everything successful it created by God?” Again, everyone agreed. Mastan past expounded that it was antheral who had created barriers, borders, countries successful God’s world. And each that helium did was transport goods from 1 portion of God’s satellite to another. “That doesn’t marque maine a smuggler, but a businessman,” Mastan smugly said.

Sri M shared this communicative not to glorify Mastan, of course, but to illustrate, with a interaction of humour, the cardinal thought of the ‘Isha Upanishad’ — the indivisible, seamless unity betwixt the aforesaid and the supreme. While the deeper doctrine is beyond my remit, the thought of borders struck. Especially astatine a clip erstwhile wars, displacements and rising nationalism predominate planetary discourse.

In a carnal sense, what does the borderline of a federation oregon a territory mean: is it conscionable a enactment connected the map? Is it a people of inclusion and, therefore, of exclusion too? Is a borderline 1 to beryllium crossed, oregon 1 to beryllium feared? Or 1 that’s imaginary and permeable? Borders evoke images of barbed wire, migration checkpoints, and agelong walls slicing done landscapes. In the existent clime — heavy with fear, individuality politics, and suspicion of the ‘other’ — we perceive louder and louder calls for stricter borders, taller fences, and yes, “big beauteous walls”. Which makes 1 wonderment astir the lines connected the map, successful the archetypal place.

Exactly 140 years ago, pursuing what is known arsenic the Scramble for Africa for its affluent resources, assemblage powers sought to parcel retired their territories by drafting arbitrary lines connected the representation of the continent. Quite akin to the Radcliffe Line, which was drawn up by a British lawyer who had ne'er been to India and ne'er adjacent knew however to gully maps. In simply 5 weeks, Cyril Radcliffe presided implicit the part of the sub-continent connected spiritual lines. Did that hasty enactment trigger the horrors of Partition, oregon was it conscionable a last enactment successful a calamity already unfolding — 1 wherever intelligence and affectional borders had agelong since been drawn?

In this context, 1 enactment lingers from the publication ‘Land of Lost Borders’ by Kate Harris, which recounts her cycling travel on the Silk Road. She writes: “What if borders astatine their astir basal are conscionable desires written onto lands and lives, trying to foist permanence connected the information of flux?” A beauteous abbreviated film, ‘Wagah’, by Supriyo Sen, captures an guiltless position of specified divisions. It follows children successful a borderline village, who merchantability DVDs of the theatrical parade astatine Wagah border. One lad says, “I looked done binoculars erstwhile and saw idiosyncratic truthful adjacent that I told him to determination speech — lone to realise helium was lasting acold mode successful Pakistan.” Another lad wishes kids from the different broadside could travel and play with them.

For each their arbitrary origins, borderlands are incredibly vibrant spaces. They’re not conscionable wherever cultures conscionable — they’re wherever cultures intertwine. I retrieve chatting with a cab operator from Kasargod, a territory successful Kerala that borders Karnataka. Over the adjacent 1 hr of the journey, I was treated to an impromptu masterclass successful section linguistics: a complex, surviving mosaic of Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Beary Bhashe, Marathi, and more. He adjacent rang up a person mid-ride to show the subtle differences successful dialects. It made maine wonderment astir each the different borderline regions successful India — each with its ain kaleidoscope of taste expressions, often overlooked successful the sound of parochial connection and borderline politics.

Maybe this is what Jean-Jacques Rousseau was informing america astir erstwhile helium wrote, “The archetypal antheral who, having fenced successful a portion of land, said ‘this is mine’, and recovered radical naïve capable to judge him — that antheral was the existent laminitis of civilian society.” Borders whitethorn service a intent and the lines connected the representation mightiness disagreement us, but what flows crossed them — language, memory, story, opus — punctual america that we were ne'er truly abstracted to statesman with.

— The writer is simply a Bengaluru-based contributor