Barakwal Myakhel
Malala Yousafzai proved that Pashtun-Afghan, like other peaceful nations of the world, believe that without identical education for both girls and boys we cannot go side by side with developed world and we cannot survive our language, culture and history to be civilized. After receiving the world’s most valuable Nobel Peace Prize, she gave a very strong message to the world, that the war, terrorism, extremism, obscurantism, tribal disputes and odds in Pashtun society all are purely injected from outside.
The DAWN, Pakistan’s mainstream print media, has allocated editorial to Malala, praising her being a young laureate of Nobel Peace Prize, as well as expressing the Pakistani political psyche of both religious and other elements with dominant mentality, who can never see Pashtuns to be educated, getting world’s largest Nobel Prize is unthinkable and unbearable for them. DAWN editorial writer says, “despite the fact that Malala has been feted around the world, Pakistan, both at the state and public level, has failed to acknowledge this brave girl,” Of course Pakistani state has been depriving the people of the ethnicity of the brave Girl, from their rights, rights to holistic education, living with peace and happiness with self-determination. Interestingly, how can she expect that the successors of colonial establishment will acknowledge her efforts for Girls’ education especially in Pashtun society? What positive could be expected from the people (who criticize Malala) whose minds have been nurtured with the state made political-religious stuff described in Pakistani education curriculum too? Candidly her critics are not to be blamed for they were educated that Pashtun will be uneducated, watchman, bodyguard, peon and like and will live as a slave forever in this county.
DAWN reveals in another phrase, “if Nawaz Sharif was unable to attend, a bipartisan parliamentary delegation from Pakistan should have gone to Oslo to participate in the ceremony. That would have sent a strong message — that the state is proud of the young activist from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and that it is serious about supporting her mission of promoting quality education to counter obscurantism”. If Nawaz Sharif or any delegation from Pakistan would have participated in Nobel Prize Ceremony, they must have given the comments that Malala is the daughter of Pakistan and her campaign for education aspired all the people of Pakistan to be educated, but when they couldn’t participate in this prestigious event, actually they gave the message to all the world, that Malala is the granddaughter of the Malaly of Maiwand and she is the daughter of that soil, for whom we have nothing without occupied it, minds of its people, to exploit their resources, to remove their language, culture and history from the surface of the world.
The negative propaganda and conspiracy theories hatched by some propagandists in Pakistani media against Malala has also indirectly influenced some Pashtuns across Durand line in Afghanistan. They deem Malala’s struggle for education as a ambiguous agenda of west to remove the name of Malaly of Maiwand, but this is the wrong perception, In this era of internet and availability for research about everything, how the facts can be concealed, Malala has described her life, struggle, her father’s thoughts and struggle and family background in her Book “I am Malala”, I don’t know from which source Malala has been found agent of west, in fact all such bacteria have been created politically to prevent Pashtuns especially Girls from education.
The proverb that ‘there is a Woman behind the success of every Man.’ but in Malala’s case a man is behind the prosperity of Woman and this credit goes to her respected father Ziauddin Yousafzai, who is very soft and sincere person, has spent a lot of time to spread awareness and make people sensible and conscious through education. I have seen countless fathers claiming to be enlightened but they discriminate between son and daughter and don’t allow the daughter to get complete education and have rights equal to son, but Ziauddin is one of those pride fathers, to whom the worsened situation of his own People, soil and language gave conscious that this struggle is impossible without combine efforts of Men & Women, there for he didn’t forbid his daughter Malala to be educated and to do struggle for Girls’ education and for peace, in so-called war of terrorism and war on terror in 2009 hell’s era in Swat paradise. In his speeches, Ziauddin always said about Malala that he has never clipped his daughter’s wings and gave her the right of education and encouraged her to represent the oppressed Girls that are not able to get education due to poverty or political-religious preventions. That is what Malala is known today as a strong voice for children’s, girls and boys education. After getting Nobel Peace Prize, she acknowledged that she is thankful to her father because he didn’t clip her wings, there for she is today the representative of those girls and boys who are deprived of schools in the entire world.
Finally, Malala’s univalent aim and wish is to see the Girls be educated to have their due right to decision and choosing the own path of life and of course such candid aims can let the people to pave the path of prosperity to be the part of civilized world and have contribution to create positive values and innovations for the happiness of human beings, if someone dislike this aim of Malala, in fact they want to remain stereotypical thoughts in our society and their only aim is to continue the medieval dark ages in Pashtun-Afghan society. It needs to challenge such antagonistic thoughts with serious rational and progressive approach for evolution for Pashtun-Afghan renaissance as Malala Yousafzai does.
