AMERICA is convulsing and much of the world has awoken to the realisation of that chronic anguish, “I can’t breathe!”Enough! Among the many viralised social-media outpourings of rage and pain at the continuing gross injustices meted out to the downtrodden, presently focussed on the blacks, is a picture that grabbed my attention. It shows a man and a little girl, both standing, both black, she holding a placard reading, “Who do you call when the murderer wears a badge?”

The concepts of human rights, equality and rule of law — all basic tenets of glorious Islam — have not fared well here either.

Years of Goebbellian propaganda and indoctrination using religiosity as our be-all-and-end-all have stunted thought and growth. Looked at dispassionately, this has really got us nowhere closer to Jinnah’s dream.

Chronic and continued nepotism, corruption and the sham of accountability have near permanently blinded justice. In our current scenario, the unforeseen socio- economic demographic ramifications of the Covid pandemic with a possible additional plague of locusts, piling on our already fragile economy can be catastrophic.

Martin Luther King’s famous, “We shall Overcome” never rang so true as today. The answer is ‘blowin in the wind.’ Just a matter of time.

Dr Mervyn Hosein
Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2020