Why so many Boundaries?

Well, I am in Paris for the last six months now. And last month I got an intern in Madrid finally after much effort (pun intended). So far everything had been smooth. But, things were going to change very soon. I was going to face the Visa monster. Yeah that's how fed up and scared of Visa I am now. Apparently in spite of having a valid Schengen Visa I was required to get the Spanish student's Visa I don't know why! Anyways, I started realizing I needed some typical documents to be able to apply for this Visa. And hence started the vicious cycle. There was one particular doc which asked me to get a police clearance certificate for the last 5 years. I said Gosh, hypocrites!! But then I had to visit the Indian embassy like 10 times in about 10 days to finally get that doc, which included getting to know things like Fax machine out of order, phone not working, passport office Bhopal is lying, their Email is bouncing. Bureaucracy at its best!

Anyways I gave up after wasting 10 days to no use and was going to get a plane ticket for India, when I got the call from the Amb-Inde that my doc was ready. Finally some relief I thought, and then I got the doc after 2 more days, taking which I happily reached the Spanish Consulate, only to know that now there was some problem with my sponsorship documents. Apparently they couldn't convert the money which was obviously shown in Indian Rupees in my accounts and affidavits to Euros. I felt like pulling the hair off my head. On the other hand, I was under pressure from my university as well my employer, and I was losing all hope slowly if I would ever be able to get this Visa in time.

Amidst all this fuss, I started thinking why are there so many boundaries? Why is there a separative force inside humans? What is the need that comes out in various forms like, having own identity, a cultural group, a smaller and smaller community which one can call one's own, and this tendency never seems to be satisfied, however pieces people do themselves, however lines people draw between each other, they want more and more. Everyone wants to be different, first they divide lines on countries, then color, religion, then race, caste, sub caste, language, economy, work, cities, on practically anything and everything conceivable we want to differentiate from others and be someone or something specific. Although I totally fail to understand what is the root of this desire, since the effects of this desire are definitely disastrous, it makes sense to question the cause.

Probably people want to take pride in belonging to a particular group. Feel dedicated and loyal to some community or cause or region. Probably they want to be part of a smaller group where people are closer to each other than the rest of the world. This probably has to do with a feeling of security and belongingness, like in case of a family, where one can trust each other and stand up for each other without a second thought. Another reason might be devotion or belief in a certain common cause, probably political parties or terrorist groups can be cited as examples (no hidden meanings in keeping the two together).

All of the above sound like good reasons to come together and be for each other, or reasons where being a group is better than being alone. But doesn't justify the tendency to keep breaking groups into smaller and smaller ones, does it?

If I see Indian context for example, I see joint families breaking down into smaller ones, I see economically there are much more clearly defined divisions now, (upper middle, lower middle, middle, upper lower classes etc) If I count the number of states of India, I have the toughest time, because every time I remember the new number, there is another new state. And demands for even more new ones never stop. There are even demands for separate countries within India, northeast, Kashmir are no new issues. And obviously how can we forget the formation of Pakistan and Bangladesh itself. The same is true almost globally. Everywhere differentiation based on any conceivable parameter is prevalent.

The major problem with this differentiation is that, although it makes the members of a certain group more favorable and suitable for each other (an Indian would support an Indian in say France). But on the other hand it invariably leads to a feeling of supremacy for one's own group and a feeling of intolerance or lack of understanding of beliefs and behaviors for everyone outside their group. It makes people narrow minded to be part of strictly defined groups of people. Because these groups make their own culture and norms and tend to block certain ideas and practices or perhaps because the group is closed can't accept or aren't open to outside influences. As we have seen from history whenever this has happened it has lead to revolts, violence, massacres, wars, racial injustices and atrocities.

The world seemed to realize this after the world wars, and there were efforts to mitigate some boundaries and create free movement of people across boundaries, the united Europe we see today is one testimony to that effect, but the problem is far from over. The countries have still withheld their cultural identities perhaps even more dearly now. The French government for example is pouring in a lot of money to keep people from moving towards English as a language. Even back in India, there are states which are making Hindi encouragement an agenda. Of course it's not the best example to quote from India, better examples would be Shivsena, bajrangdal, SIMI and separationist forces in telangana, vidarbh, Kashmir, the BODO group, maos etc.

I know these as facts but still fail to see who benefits from partitions, from creating walls and boundaries, from dividing one man from another. Undoubtably someone is using the situation, to their advantage. What's showed to people is the advantage of making groups, but what happens behind the walls, is something else, the real motives of the leaders in this case or probably the executioners is shady. And what should have ideally been a place to improve a group to take each other forward, turns into a race of taking the other groups backwards, instead of focusing on themselves and loving the group, they start hating other groups and being jealous.

Something, somewhere is very wrong, I just can't reach it yet…