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Good morning. A few days ago, it was announced that the key to the Robben Island prison cell that Nelson Mandela spent 18 years in is returning to his country rather than being sold at auction. In the words of one South African government minister, “The key symbolises South Africa's painful history whilst also representing triumph of the human spirit over evil.” In a remarkable coincidence, it was exactly 100 years ago this week that keys for the treasury of the Harmandir Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, were finally returned to the Sikh community. They had been seized in the name of Queen and Empire in the mid-19th century, and the British authorities had maintained tight control over the central Sikh shrine’s treasury ever since. A number of political prisoners who had protested for the return were set free at the same time as the keys being handed back, with Mahatma Gandhi sending a telegram to the Sikh leadership, saying “First decisive battle for India’s freedom won. Congratulations.” Keys are an obvious representation of freedom, symbolising the ability to do things that would otherwise be impossible. I remember being given novelty plastic ones for my 18th and 21st birthdays to mark the fact that adulthood had finally arrived. But the question of who holds a set of keys also tells us something about the dynamics at play, who is to be trusted and who isn’t. I’ve always been struck by the fact that the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the site of Jesus’s crucifixion and tomb, have been held by a Muslim family down the generations. For almost 900 years they have been a neutral and trusted guardian of a place which is sacred to different Christian denominations. This is symbolically important. By contrast, even though the control that the British Empire had over the Sikh community by holding a set of keys was nominal, it was what it symbolised that mattered most. Sikhs had gone from having their own nationhood and empire, one rich enough to cover the Harmandir Sahib in gold to give it its nickname of the Golden Temple, to becoming subjects of a foreign monarch and paying taxes to benefit a distant country that they believed could not be trusted. It would be another quarter of a century before India would gain its independence. Being in charge of their own destiny may still have been a dream but controlling their own places of worship was something that they could, and ultimately did, achieve. A century later, there are many aspects of our society in which we can still appreciate that desire to reclaim control, for wanting to be our authentic selves, no matter how hard or difficult a path it may be. Ultimately it comes down to whether we believe in the triumph of the human spirit, even against the odds.