I am borrowing the title of this column from the speech of Martin Luther King Jr, as seasoned readers would have noticed already. Thrust into national spotlight after the bus protest march in Birmingham, where he was duly arrested and incarcerated, King built on that momentum and months later led a massive march to Washington, DC, on Aug 28, 1963. On the steps of Lincoln Memorial, he evoked the conscience of a nation in the name of Honest Abe in his ‘I have a dream' speech, which amassed cross-sectional support for desegregation culminating with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

I felt the same evocation while listening to Professor Shamsul Amri at the National Affairs Policy Dialogue. The Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) organised this event, and high on the agenda and in the ensuing discussions was the imperative to revert to need-based ethnic relations and public policies. Shamsul Amri is the co-ordinator of ethnic relations courses taught in local universities.

I postulate the following questions as a means to examine the situation in Malaysia. Can every Malaysian dare to dream King's ideal and therefore claim our rightful place under the Malaysian sun? Can every Malaysians thereby be treated with dignity, respect and honour? Where then do we find such a guarantee other than in our Constitution, as Raja Nazrin Shah so ably reminded us?