Almost two and a half score years ago, a great American, under whose symbolic shadow of equality we stand today, enunciated the famous speech. And today when the time of graduation has come, I feel like re-visiting the dream. “Having a dream” takes a new dimension at this stage of life. Dreams mean jobs, dreams mean higher education, dreams mean starting up, dreams mean relaxing and figuring out what dreams mean. As kids we were taught to dream, to dream big and to work hard in the direction of realizing those dreams but, from what I have seen growing up is about learning to systematically kill those dreams and be the slaves of education as we know. The terrible pleasure in the entire transition from being a school kid to a college graduate is the eternal hope, the never dying spirit that one day everything will fall in place. So yes I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day the human race will rise up and live out the true meaning of education: “Freedom”.

I have a dream that one day people would be accepted not for what they are but, what they could be. The day the world would wake up to the potential of every human being.

I have a dream that one day the ink on paper wouldn’t represent the strength that rests within us.

I have a dream that one day you wouldn’t be judged by your LinkedIn profile, but the content in your character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day people would be hired for the humility with which they handle success and the courage with which they face failure.

That would be the day when progress would be marked by liberation of the soul and not the enslavement of the mind.

Let freedom ring from the University of Delhi.

Let freedom ring from the IITs and IIMs.

Let freedom ring from the VITs and the Manipals.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every college and every university, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, engineers and doctors, managers and architects, civil servants and entrepreneurs, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

PS: Based on the famous I Have a Dream Speech by Martin Luther King