New Delhi, July 5 -- "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased." - Alexander Hamilton

There is a young man standing at a desk in 1775. He is barely 20 years old. He has no family name behind him, no wealth, and no country he can call his own. He picks up a pen and writes one of the most powerful sentences in the history of political thought. That sentence is the one above.

The quote opens with a rejection. Rights are not found in parchments or records. This is a deliberate challenge to the dominant argument of the time. Loyalists and defenders of Briti...