The time to cross our own Mason-Dixon Line has come

On Monday, Americans with an eye on history, will quietly celebrate (or bemoan) a simple geographical line, drawn on maps 243 years ago. The Mason-Dixon Line was ostensibly meant to solve a border dispute between Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virgina and Delaware.

The fact that it would eventually become a divide that separated the two warring US ideologies of the abolitionists and slavers was foreseen, but only by a fringe.

In India today, we have our very own Mason-Dixon Line being drawn, albeit an intellectual one. It grows every year, carefully being etched in the psyche of two factions locked in an ideological battle that simmers, yet has not come to the boiling froth of anarchy and violence.

If there was anything the Ayodhya verdict proved on Thursday, it is that the nation has progressed beyond the shackles of religion, politics and its conspiratorial minions. And that’s thanks in a large part to a younger generation seeking a material god rather than one created by his ancestors.

Across the country, young people questioned not only the reasons behind the politico-religious imbroglio, but why the country had to come to a standstill while fogeys looking for a bloody legacy sparred over things that barely matter to a nation on the move.

The fact that religion is intrinsically divisive will not be argued here, neither will the fact that in India, religion is a mere political tool, and has long since ceased to govern ways of life. But the admirable trend emerging among the new generation to rise above anachronisms and aspire to the ideals laid down in Lafayette’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen must be encouraged.

We demand the liberty of thought and action, we demand the rights to defend our property against any and all usurpers (be they government or private), we demand the security we deserve and pay for, and above all, we demand an end to oppression, both political and religious.

No longer will India or her citizenry be held hostage by the grimy hands of those looking for rewards in the afterlife, or next life. No longer will we stumble along the path to the illusion of prosperity, constantly tripping over petty and pseudo-cultural bumps. If we must maintain our identity as a scientifically progressive and peaceful people then we must assert our right, and lay claim to the land that belongs to its people and not those who govern it.

The citizens of this country may be decades from finding its Robert E Lee or Ulysses S Grant, to take them across the Mason-Dixon Line and into the heartland of the ‘enemy’. But we must start looking beyond current political dynasties and governmental asylums of power and in the academies of learning and houses of thought and rationality.

The search has already begun, though it may not seem so to many. But the road to freedom may run through thickets of violence and anarchy. It may run through places of electoral famine, where the people refuse to cast that which is their right in the hope of righting that which is wrong.

In a letter to General Beauregard, Robert E Lee wrote: “True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them — the desire to do right — is precisely the same.”
Politicians and the houses of religion will claim to guide your conscience; they will claim to have your best interest at heart; they will claim to mentor your children, and children’s children. Call them out, and test their claims. You will find them woefully wanting.

Thwart their aims by thinking of the future, for the generations that will pursue you through history. Will you give them a world where free will is more than just a propaganda tool; where their rights are inexorably linked with those laid down by Lafayette and Paine in the enlightened centuries of mankind? Or will you leave them in shackles…their thoughts chained to the bricks and mortar of oppression? What is your legacy?

So the next time a youngster claims he does not know what the Ayodhya fuss was all about, pat him on the back and congratulate him. For he is a pioneer, and legions like him will take India to the pantheon of nations who cast off the dual yoke of politics and religion to inspire history.