In Absentia of political modernity in Sudan (Article 2)
18 February, 2013
Khartoum (Sudanow Info.)– Sudan has been suffering from the absentia of the State and its institutions since its independence in 1956 till now. This situation may even continue for years to come. This odd absentia of the State has not been accidental or random but it is deeply rooted in the Sudanese political culture due to past, contemporary and present reasons that would keep pursuing it in the future if the rising generations failed to apprehend the lesson and institute for the rule of institutions and law in a transparent and fair context.
This paper is a serious invitation for thinking and working in an untraditional manner to find a way out towards the future.
Historical hierarchy for pre-modernity evidences:
Human communities have been known to be travelling and moving around in forms of small clans. Each clan had to have a chieftain whose job to issue orders, while the rest of the members of the clan were to abide by those orders. Gradually the clans started grouping under a tribe and authority of a bigger leader. When conflicts over leadership started to appear, emerged the strategy of tribal grouping where the big tribe allies the small tribes in one group so that they could protect one another with the big tribe posing its authority over the small ones.
Afterwards emerged the big divine religions and with them appeared the issue of sanctity for the texts and messages therein, verbal or written. The sacredness of the written text or message used to rapidly transform into a personal sanctity represented in a powerful person who wraps himself in this sanctity and leads his community. Such a person usually remained the sole master with his sanctity, and whatever he practiced, regardless of what was sacred, became sacred orders and actions- even his mistakes used to be regarded sacred.
The followers of the divine religions increased and the competition among their leaders for power heightened. Therefore, the competition extended from what was sacred to forms of disputes, violence and exclusion of the other. Consequently, there appeared the sects or hence sectarianism. The sect usually belongs to its founder and bloodline hires where the leader of the sect remains a spiritual leader whom nobody should oppose his orders or rebel against him.
Strangely, the leader of a sect is usually not from the same tribe but he is still given the leadership simply because he somehow maintains bloodline relationship with the first spiritual leader and also because he keeps some of the sacred texts behind which he hides.
With the surfacing of the political geography and emergence of homelands and their boundaries, appeared a simple and holding form of rule, and with the establishment of armies, the soldiers developed a desire for leadership. However, such a leadership could not be achieved without exchanging the roles with the sectarians and therefore, the sect leads the army on one occasion and the army leads the sect on the other occasion without any apparent difference. An example here is how the big sectarian parties had supported each military coup with the aim to contain it or share it in the power.
Lessons learnt from pre-modernity evidences:
The sectarian, religious, tribal and clannish fatherhood has kept on exercising its powers in controlling their communities in the name of what is sacred while in fact it was working in politics.
This fatherhood continued in exercising its absolute powers in the communities and entirely locked them within its boundaries, thus preventing these communities from making contacts with the international community via exploitation of the ignorance of those communities or by misleading them or adopting the policy of the stick. The result was that these communities have kept on repeating their mistakes and remained still and unaware of the importance of the moving time.
Those fragile institutions have provided nothing to their communities or the other communities of the world around them and even the well-educated categories focused only on occupational and craft posts that have not reached for the outer world. Sudan’s long history has not told us about a leap in the field of human rights, social justice, or the rule of law or even in technological sciences.
What has happened and still happening in Sudan might have happened somewhere else in the world, some way or another, but the difference is represented in the fact that the world communities have developed because of the political modernity where they have provided great intellectual effort, theoretically and practically, and led destructive wars to get rid of the trio of the priest, king and military men. In return, they have presented their peoples a realistic and human alternative while our communities, particularly the elites and those responsible of the modernity work, remained still, sticking only to the past and repeating its advantages to reaffirm that there is no way out but to it.
Conclusion:
Nobody or a country can run away from what is going on in the world around us. We are far behind because of stubbornness and non-acknowledgment of the other or its accomplishments despite the fact that its accomplishments are in every part of our lives.
The promoted for political modernity does not mean cancellation of the self or subjugation to the other, but it means further self-confidence so that we can be productive in what we eat, drink, dress or breath in the open air of freedom, democracy, justice and dignity.
Promoting for modernity, even theoretically, should involve the whole community so that the future modernity address would be from the base to the top and not otherwise.
There is a siege around the social research in general, and the political researches in particular under the pretext that they touch what is sacred or that they offense our old or new masters. (All the parties and civil community institutions do not have a single office concerned with researches) and therefore, there is no way to political modernity but by an accompanying scientific and field modernity that should free itself from the grip of the usual and head towards the possible and the future.
Political modernity project is not a revolt or coup:
Shortly after the emergence of the modernity project in arts and critic and before it is developed into a human and political modernity project, it has been rejected by the advocates of the past and heritage from all corners, not for a defect in the project itself, but to consolidate for the advantages of the old legacy which ensured them their interests because the new would devastate those interests.
It is apparent that the modernity project, whether we agree or disagree on it, was not an outcome of an absolute gap and could not come out from the exclusion of the other or cancellation of the cultural and civilizational history of peoples.
Though the project is an intellectual and scientific effort that is implemented by human, yet it remains a natural outcome and a legitimate son of the ceaseless human quest to be more human.
We must reiterate that the modernity project does not stand in the face of the human nature or human instincts. It further does not oppose the ideological or traditional texts, which were introduced by previous civilizational and modernity projects, to be opposed by the enemies of whatever is new.
Positive and rational evidences for modernity:
The first evidence is that the political modernity makes of time an essential component or material like water, because the nature of time is to change whether during the day, night, summer or winter. Time, with its unchanged nature, moves forward and cannot go back. This is a natural law which the modernity projects are working to utilize.
The second evidence is that the modernity project accepts the texts in their different forms, including previous modernity projects, but rejects the exploitation of those previous texts in a manner that subjugates the nations.
As for the third evidence, the inherited practices, whether old or modern, came out with disappointing results to humankind in all features of life. Top of these disappointments is that the advocates of the old and their peoples are still at the bottom of the ladder of development that resulted from the scientific and creative thinking which is the second principle of the modernity project.
Modernity is a rational approach searching for future:
When reading the Sudanese political speech, we will find that there is no any sign for the future or reference to the past experiences or the present. Additionally, if we visit the libraries or research centers (strategic or non-strategic), we will not find any criticism for the past or any future plans, not even supposedly. This current situation was one of the reasons behind the political stalemate and stillness on one part and another reason behind the blind adoption of the foreign method without any attempt to conform between what is coming from outside and what is suitable, relaying in all cases on the past method.
The Sudanese method remained Sudanese as with regard to content because it proposes a Sudanese method. It is also Sudanese in terms of the technique because it adopts a certain style of thinking that is apparent in all those who have not been opened to other cultures and who have remained closed within the Sudanese context. On the contrary, there are those who have adopted the western modernity method, committed themselves to it and completely denied the Sudanese method, though this might be expressed in Sudanese language supported by religious texts. However, there are few who try to combine the two methods and criticize and adjust them for the future.
The political modernity is not a revolt.
The local fear always assume that the political modernity means the full adoption of what is coming from outside without study and verification. This addictive local fear was originally the transporter of all the political and religious practices from the Arab and Islamic base as slogans that have not been followed by actions, even in the civilizational Islamic project. The transportation of the other’s modernity (whether eastern or western) would not produce a Sudanese modernity.
Another fear resulted from a kind of unjustified concern to preserve the heritage and the past under the argument that nothing could be better, and from full sheltering behind what is sacred as undisputed argument that is not subject to debate despite the fact that the sacred text is full of the importance of dialogue, debate and change through thinking, reasoning and forethought.
Now it is apparent that the first and second fears were natural results of the intellectual and scientific laziness to search for the future embodied inside us and which we could not release by experience, adjustment and lawful openness. Definitely this laziness caused the individuals and groups to lose their confidence and duty to approach modernity in general and the political modernity in particular.
For all the above, the call for the political modernity is not an invitation to revolt against the heritage and it is not a call for cutting and transporting from somewhere else, and above all else the writer of these articles does not claim that he keeps a comprehensive project for the political modernity for which he advocates but it is a call for opening the doors widely, freely and away from the restrictions of the past to think and answer a question that everybody asks but nobody answers: Where does the glory of Sudan lie, in the past or the future?
END
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