By recognising that Malala Yousafzai rightfully deserved the Nobel Peace Prize the world at large has demonstrated its readiness to recast its future to make it different from its present and near past. Abounding in symbolism this award is different from any in the past; shared as it is by Malala from Pakistan and Satyarthi from India, the two quarrelsome neighbours the world would like them to coexist in peace. No wonder then none of the two governments was present at the awarding-giving ceremony at the level it was expected of them. But that hardly dwindles the grandeur of the ceremony held in the famous Oslo City Hall and watched by millions around the world, or in any way undermines the urgency of the message sent by the two conferees of the prestigious award. Malala, the young scion of the brave Yousafzai clan - a clan that produced among others, man like General Bakht Khan Rohilla of the War of Independence in 1857 fame - dared the-powers-that-be as to why for those 'giving guns is so easy but giving books so hard'. But her message should resonate more loudly in her own country, Pakistan, where to many education is a forbidden fruit and schools should be razed in accordance with the Boko Haram mindset. But she happened to be brave and committed, a rare possibility at that age, and braving threats to her life raised voice for girls schooling. Her co-winner, Kailash Satyarthi, takes pride in liberating 80,000 children from bonded labour in factories and workshops across India. According to the ILO, there are 168 million child labourers in the world, most of them in India and Pakistan. By awarding the two South Asian activists for girl education and anti-child labour movements the world has made a call to both to shun the path of perennial confrontation so as to spare resources to secure better future for their children.
How ironic, however, it is that while the world at large was enthralled watching a teenager being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the response in Pakistan, both at official and political levels, was quite circumscribed lacking a matching enthusiasm. Is it the fear of a backlash by extremists who gunned Malala to silence her or the thinking in some quarters that in aggrandising her mission to educate girls the West seeks to defame Islam; there is of course a debate in Pakistan. But that is not something entirely new: we all know how pathetically the communal mindset has prevailed by denying as yet the state recognition and public applause so richly deserved by Dr Abdus Salam, the only other Pakistani to have received the Nobel Prize. "I will continue this fight until I see child in school," Malala told a 3000-strong gathering in the hall. That is a big dream, but miracles do happen as was her miraculous recovery from the wounds she suffered at the hands of a terrorist. Not far from the place where she was shot at in Mingora in October 2012 the residents of her hometown watched her award-winning ceremony on a big screen. And in Peshawar, however, it doesn't matter much if the so-called forwarding-looking government of Pervaiz Khattak has disallowed the sale of her "I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot by the Taliban"; people danced to tune of Sardar Ali Takkar's song. The song was written by a journalist and the venue of celebration was the Peshawar Press Club. To the world at large she is an icon of girls' education. On her 17th birthday earlier this year she was in Abuja, pleading with Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan to meet the parents of girls who had been kidnapped by the Boko Haram fighters. And to her award-winning function there was this Amina from Nigeria whom Malala had met in Nigeria; and there were four other teenagers, including the two who too were shot and wounded when the terrorist attacked their school bus. Let us join the world by celebrating the Malala's Nobel Prize for it is she who single-handedly has done more to correct misconceptions about Islam, posed a challenge to the laid-back education czars in Pakistan and thumbed down terrorists in an effective and a meaningful manner.
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