Biswas Baral

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the emancipation proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of Negro slaves who have been seared in the flames of withering injustice.”

Those are the opening lines of Martin Luther King Jr’s famous speech delivered to over 200,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on August 28, 1963. When I first read it, I was so influenced by the speech that I memorised nearly half of it by heart! King has ever since remained one of my unsung heroes.

In an age where it’s hard to draw a line between US “hegemony,” King’s great causes of equality and justice have clearly been forgotten.Democratic presidential nominee Senator John Kerry pledges to set the record straight by adopting a more tolerant foreign policy. He has pledged to look into detention of prisoners without trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has vowed to build a greater international coalition for the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq — mere political jibes? Let us wait and see.

Bloodletting seems to be the byword these days. Be it in the Middle East, Kashmir, Chechnya, Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and the Maoist insurgency in our very own Nepal.But injustice has always been around. Yes, King did a lot to bring the blacks and whites together in America, just as Nelson Mandela stood up against apartheid in South Africa. But the goodwill envisioned by these leaders remain far from realised today.

It is also pathetic to see the Dalits and Janjatis getting sub-humane treatments at the hands of the vaunted upper castes in Nepal. And the caste biases are nonetheless all too evident in our society.

So, I have a dream! King dreamed that one day the little white children would join hands with little black children and walk together as sisters and brothers; I dream that one day there shall be no such distinctions as ‘blacks’ and ‘whi-tes.’ ‘We cannot stand alone,’ he said that famous August day; I dream that every American will realise sooner than later that not only can he not stand alone, standing all alone is not true Americanism, after all. I have a dream that one day our country will find itself out of the quagmire it is now in, and we shall emerge stronger.

And lastly, I have a dream that there will always be dreamers; for without dreams, life is hardly worth living. So keep dreaming folks. Who knows, your Eureka moment may be just around the corner — Hey Presto!