Pakistan: Educational deprivation in a feudal culture

By S M Naseem

Typically, the big landlords are averse to seeing the children of the poor acquire education as it loosens their grip over them as cheap — often forced — labour

The heart-rending saga of the rape of an 18-year-old college student, Amina, from a poor labouring family in the feudal bastion of Muzzaffargarh in southern Punjab, and her subsequent despairing act of self-immolation as protest against the acquittal of the accused, must outrage any decent human being and shame every Pakistani. It seems, however, that society at large, especially the liberal elite, is becoming inured to such daily occurrences and incapable of displaying any reaction stronger than a temporary show of disgust and outrage.

The Chief Minister’s knee-jerk reaction of going to the dead girl’s house to douse the fire, which should have been extinguished much before the victim was forced to set herself alight, and announcing compensation to the victim’s mother, is nothing less than hypocritical and adds a blatant insult to the bereaved family’s grievous injury. It may have eased the Chief Minister’s conscience — besides projecting his image as a benevolent ruler of the Punjab — but it is hardly likely to assuage the grief of the family, much less to assuage the fears of those who live their daily lives watching the recurrence of similar, or even more gruesome, incidents perpetrated by a feudal culture that the elite wallows in

It is ironic to note that this incident occurred a decade after, and only a few miles away from where a similar incident occurred involving Mukhtaran Mai, which grabbed world attention and sparked a debate about rape and the protection afforded to the accused by powerful feudal lords aided by the police and civil administration. That landmark event has continued to resonate throughout the last decade whenever a major incident of rape, honour crime, child abuse or some similar bestiality has been uncovered by the media, but without any social follow-up to mitigate against the basic causes that are responsible for the occurrence of such dehumanising acts. It was at the pinnacle of the then military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s regime that the attitude towards rape became epitomised by his infamous outburst that Pakistani women ‘get themselves raped’ in order to obtain visas to foreign countries and acquire cheap publicity abroad.

Mukhtaran Mai has valiantly carried on her crusade against rape and injustice in feudal Pakistan with little collaboration from other NGOs and government organisations. She has continued to help and mentor other rape victims, including Amina, although her mission, centred on her village and financed by domestic and foreign donations, has made only modest headway. However, Mukhtaran Mai, despite her lack of any formal education, has the political sagacity to understand that the root cause of the recent wave of crimes against women is the feudal system and its social accessory, the biradari (communal) system. It is regrettable that both the political class and the NGO movement have failed to take any collective steps (legislative or otherwise) to launch a frontal assault on the feudal system. Indeed, some eminent social scientists seem to be in virtual denial about its existence in Pakistan. The failure to perceive feudalism as an existential threat to the universality of education, especially female education, as vividly exemplified by these two horrifying incidents, lies at the heart of the failure of myriad education policies, financed by billions of dollars of official aid, and voluntary efforts to improve our education system.

It is no coincidence that both these iconic cases of feudally-inspired and protected rape occurred in district Muzzaffargarh, a bastion of feudalism in southern Punjab with the lowest education ranking in Punjab (below DG Khan’s) and 76th in Pakistan, out of a total of 140 districts. Its inhabitants are among the most deprived and underprivileged people in the country, whose lives are almost totally at the mercy of a small number of feudal families who own most of the land. Hinjra, Qureshi, Khar, Gurmani, Jatoi, Gopang and Bukhari are the handful of families that since the establishment of Pakistan have dominated the electoral politics of the area (at both the federal and provincial levels).

A major reason for the continued dominance of these families is the deliberate exclusion of the population from access to education. Even where educational facilities existed in the past, they have decayed, become dysfunctional or disappeared through the deliberate actions of the feudal aristocracy and their collaborating petty bureaucrats.

Typically, the big landlords are averse to seeing the children of the poor acquire education as it loosens their grip over them as cheap — often forced — labour. It also deprives them of their main source of political power, especially during elections, as the poor — even those not directly dependent on them for sustenance — can be coerced and intimidated into voting for them. Although the political parties they belong to — it hardly matters which one — pay lip service to education and land reforms, the two most vital concerns of the rural poor, none are really sincere about them. In the legislative assemblies they are too busy pushing their own personal agendas and seeking more and more concessions that benefit their own class to really care about passing legislation and budgets to fulfil the promises they made in their manifestoes. One such promise, made in Article 25-A of Pakistan’s Constitution, is the Right to Education, which states that, “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such a manner as may be determined by law.” However, facts on the ground are in direct contradiction to the intent of that provision and its implementation is far from satisfactory.

Similarly, the oft-heard plaint that NGOs have become vocal standard bearers is to raise the share of education in GNP to 4 percent (in Pakistan, it has stood below 2 percent for over a decade). This remains just a slogan as the government’s priorities lie elsewhere and it is unable to generate enough revenues by taxing the propertied classes, especially the big landlords, who not only oppose land reforms, but also refuse to legislate on an agricultural income tax.

The experiences of the world’s premier market economies, the US and UK, bring out most forcefully the centrality of education, led typically by government initiatives, and radical land reforms as a precondition for sustaining economic and social development. The East Asian countries, including China, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, also adopted broadly the same strategy to promote their development.

Unfortunately, South Asia, especially Pakistan and India, have been left behind in the race for educational progress and economic development — the two are closely linked — by a variety of factors, many stemming from the divisive communal forces unleashed and nurtured under colonial rule that led to the partition of the country. In spite of the leading role assigned to education during the struggle for independence and pro-education rhetoric after independence, progress has been much slower in South Asia and more than half the population of schoolgoing age children still remain out of schools, with a much higher proportion of young girls among them. The colonial legacy of illiteracy and feudalism has persisted far longer than it should. Without erasing that legacy, it is unlikely that the wave of rape, violence and social injustice that is sweeping the subcontinent will recede.