A White Globe

                       

If someone asks me, “why is there so much of border problems in the world?”, my answer would be, “we have border problems because we have borders.” This sounds funny but indeed it’s not. During the winter, birds from, as far as Siberia, come to Chilika Lake in Odisha. Lakhs of birds from various parts of the globe, including the local birds live there together harmoniously, making it a visitor’s paradise. They don’t have to show visas or take permissions. The world is their’s, wherever they wish they go; wherever they wish they live.

I was too much fascinated when I heard the concept of “A white globe” in the movie “Paa”. A globe without borders, without boundary lines, as it existed 10000 years down the line when whole world was free for mankind. There was no political boundary as such. Gradually man became civilized, developed scientific temper and logic. They felt the need of each other, hence communities were formed. They felt the need of communication among themselves. Hence languages came into existence. They were horrified by the ire of the nature. Hence they started preaching nature. The various forces of nature were given a figure of human being with super natural powers. They became God.

Living in communities, men became secure. Languages made it easy to express their feelings. Preaching nature (turned into God) made them fearless. God became supreme. They now loved and feared God. The civilisation thrived further, so is the lust of men for power and women. The contemporary intellectuals felt the need of invoking morality into humanity. This was a tedious task, seemed next to impossible. Yet again God came to help humanity. The intellectuals created stories about incarnations of God, where God stood for righteousness and punished the wrong-doers. The intension was to invoke morality into human life using the fear of God. The following thousands of years, men used God as a tool to terrorise people, to do what it wanted. The unfortunate part of this development was, the Gods were put into cartels or groups. They were called religion. One religion fought with the other to prove that their God is superior. Moral teachings were put into back-burner. The imaginary stories of cult figures, which were created to impart morality, were now considered to be real. Ayodhya, Mathura, Kailash became pilgrimage spot. Customs and rules dominated over ethics and morality in religion. Superstitions over-powered intuition.

On the other hand, language which was built to express mankind, over the years became a tool to divide people into groups on the basis of languages they spoke. Modern linguistic states in India and elsewhere in the world have a history of violent blood-baths.

Religion and language formed to unite mankind became a sword to divide humanity into two hundred pieces, which came to be known as “Nation States”. Land was divided; water was divided; air was divided; space was divided. Few concepts like nationality, patriotism and sovereignty emerged. The love for their limited space of land, air and water was called “Patriotism”.

In last one century, the dividing lines have become darker and deeper. If a person crossed the boundary he was considered to be an infiltrator. Boundaries were guarded by armed men, came to be known as Army. A person needed permission of the other side, the so called nation state, to cross the boundary. The nation states became so much sceptical of each other that they developed huge army, arms & ammunitions weapons of mass destruction like atom bomb and hydrogen bomb. Post the treaty of Westphalia, sovereignty became so eminent a phenomenon that any provocation of boundaries may lead to wars as deadly as World War I & II.

 Studying the history of mankind, I realised “Patriotism” is the most misused word. In the Trojan war, thousands of the soldiers died without knowing that, they were dying not protecting their nation, but protecting their kings ego. Two thousand years back, a deadly war took place in my state, the Kalinga war. Lakhs of soldiers died. The state became men-less protecting its soil. Two thousand years later Bihar and Odisha are two states of India. There is no scepticism or animosity of Odisha towards Bihar and vice-versa, because there is no more concept of sovereignty. We co-exist harmoniously. Now if there is a conflict between Odisha and Bihar, Odisha police and Bihar police will not wage a war against each other. They will go to the centre or Supreme Court or some tribunal. I am not saying, those who died in Kalinga war, died for a vague reason, but the reason is no more relevant today. So is the case of Indo-Pak border. So many soldiers have died protecting it. But who knows if thousands of years later, there won’t exist any Indo-Pak borders. Then the contemporary people will think unnecessarily thousands of people died protecting it.

Religion, Language and community (turned into Nation-state) were formed to make the life of human easy. But we have used it to kill humans. If not stopped, it will lead to human extinction.

Let’s shake off the delusion of MAYA. Let’s break the non-existent imaginary boundary lines that divide us. Let’s make our’s a dream world, where the world will become a nation and the nations will become its states. United Nations (UN) will become our world parliament. Every nation will be answerable to it. No more protection of boundaries. No more arms race or proliferation regime. Earth will be our motherland and humanity our religion. Then we will realize that we have attained the dream world/heaven/Jannat as depicted in our religious scriptures.

Written By

Gupteswar Mahapatro