Dylan Winthers

Dr. Kaustav Mukherjee

ENGL 212

9 February 2014

Society Forces the Ideology of Borders upon Us

Borders dissect every map into varying areas which society labels territories, countries, nations, and other districts. Maps portray these districts and educators teach students that they are a part of a single perhaps couple of the districts. This is false. Unfortunately, individuals are born into this notion and will raise their children with the same. Society forces borders upon individuals based on an ideology that a single individual cannot belong to the entirety of the world, but only to a specific and localized space. The labeled regions force difference upon otherwise equal people, which has continually initiated tragedy over time.

A literary analysis of a 1955 short story, Toba Tek Singh by Saadat Hasan Manto agrees, borders and countries are perspective. To summarize from the story:

There he stood in no man’s land on his swollen legs like a colossus… no further attempt was made to push into India. He was allowed to stand were he wanted… on one side, lay India and on the other side, Pakistan… on a bit of earth which had no name.

Saadat Hasan Manto captures a moment when a prisoner is being transferred between India and Pakistan. The prisoner recognizes that at that very moment, he is not associated with either India or Pakistan, and is therefore free. This feeling of freedom that Manto captures, suggests the boundaries and borders individuals adhere by are imprisoning. This inescapable ideology which delegates a region to any location, instigated thousands of wars, starting with territory fights between uncivilized humans to the Civil War and more.

            The borders used by this ideology mean to prevent chaos by adding order, in terms of recognition of space and land. While order holds societies together, true freedom would allow anyone to move as they please across land without consequence at a border. South Dakotans, for example, are not able to travel too far north without encountering a Canadian border patrol unit. Strangely enough, affiliation with a particular region jeopardizes one legitimacy when located in a different region. Meaning, someone from the Middle East is instantly affiliated with the pop-culture and its media oriented negativity, in the eyes of many Americans, solely because of the region from which they hale. Understandably, the negativity does not come from the land but the actions of the few, however the region, which is labeled by borders, often consists of an assembly of similar beings.

            Literary analysis of Manto’s Toba Tek Singh represents a captured feeling of freedom from a forced and mandatory ideology that a single individual cannot belong to the entirety of the world but only to a specific region. This labeling of borders and regions, while organizing, causes disgust between regions just because of differentiating labels. Although individuals are born into this notion, seeking freedom from borders and understanding equality is a conception that is border-less.

494 word count.