Crossing the Boundary

For as long as the ordered society has been an integral part of Man's life, invisible but omnipresent boundaries have existed alongside it. The boundaries, put in place by political and social thinkers, supposedly help to prevent the masses from going back to "anarchy before civilization". Yet these very boundaries seem to put human rights outside it, into the "unknown, foreign zone".

True enough, even up till today, there are some societies without the notion of "rights" - somehow to their governments, they are "wrongs", "evils", only serving to poison and destroy social order. Political freedom, especially the freedom of speech, and human rights, like the equality of all Man, are kept outside the boundaries, living an unknown existence to all inside the boundaries. The situation has always seemed to be like that globally, until daring souls bravely took a step forward, across the boundary, to call for change - to do away with the borders.

Crossing the boundary is an act of courage. It is the standing up for what is right and going against any attempt of wrongdoing. It is not for selfish gratification, neither is it because of what others might do, but simply because it is right.

In the Commonwealth of 1945, we have had the Indians breaking away from the British, a result of Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent struggle and his ideal of civil disobedience. Opposing the British discrimination and against their unreasonable monopoly of the salt trade, Gandhi led the Indians out of the boundaries of law, the ancient Hindu caste and their ignorance. What the Indians saw was not disaster, not anarchy and barbarism either. Instead, the Indians saw the liberties and riches lying ahead of them, denied from them by the colonial British.

And yet this was not a recent phenomena. Way back in the 1600s, the British Empire itself had one such boundary - a divine boundary that made the King's orders the Word of God. William of Orange, seeing the plight of the Protestants in England oppressed by the radical Catholic King James, led his men into battle to abolish the borders that estranged the non-Catholics out of the Divine Law. After the dethronement of the tyrant, and the subsequent crowning of William himself as king, the latter was careful enough to not recreate another boundary, and thus drafted the world's first formal Bill of Rights 1689, that guaranteed all monarchies would never abuse their powers in the name of God again, and laid down the tenets of democracy in their first modern forms.

Even in modern, established countries thought, people were still being discriminated within the law. The founding fathers of America had drafted the Constitution of the United States to respect the equality of all men impartially, yet a boundary had been placed to put those of Afro-American origins outside it. Martin Luther King's struggle began to gain strength in the 1950s after an Afro-American woman, aware of her right to be equal, went against the law by boarding the bus from the front, which was unjustly against the laws of that time. Martin Luther King started his message of peace against the racist laws of that time. The Blacks fought hard and bitter for their equality and they walked out of the borders and into true happiness. In the end, they won their cause, as the boundary was "wiped out".

The faces of Gandhi, William and Martin Luther might be forgotten, but their message will live on. Today, entire societies remain brainwashed of the fact that it is in their right to be equal, to be human, to find that liberty and enlightenment actually was lying ahead of them all the time.

When will they cross the boundary?

Learn more about this author, Ajani Mgo.
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