Stop raising sacrifices

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This picks up where my earlier piece 'Born unwelcome' left off. After the unwelcome birth of a girl comes her next unforgivable crime: the right to be educated. And what a crime it is!

There are all kinds of parents. Some don't even toy with the idea of educating their daughters. A boy is born and before his umbilical cord is cut, he's already a future doctor or a shaandaar pilot — even if he ends up pushing a vendor cart with one hand and a dream long dead in the other. Still, he's called a qismat ka maara while the girl never even gets a foot in the door.

Some refuse to educate her out of spite, unable to stomach her enriching someone else's home one day. After all, why pour into a cup that others will drink from?

Some school her until the first financial bump — that's when the axe falls on her education. Never mind if she's in matric or doing a master's, her dreams are the first to be axed, shelved, forgotten. Not the son's bat, the satellite dish or the daily pack of cigarettes.

Then come the cowards hiding behind society. Log kya kahengay? is their battle cry, their excuse draped in decency. They shrink when they should shield. They crumble like stale bread under the dead weight of whispers — neighbors, relatives, the village imam — all ready to don black robes and pound gavels: she's loose, aazaad, manly, bay-sharam. Worse, the more she studies, the less marriageable she becomes.

Many hold back education, scared she'll grow wings. But plenty of girls without wings still manage to fly, don't they? So much for education being the threat.

Some fall back on even more absurd logic: "If she studies too much, she won't adjust in susraal." Really? So it's education — not the abusive mother-in-law, the deadbeat hubby or the toxic in-laws who think adjustment means silencing her soul — that ruins marriages? The irony: even the aalima-in-training learns fast — just from breathing in the air around her - that susar and saas will have no haq over her. Calamity ahead, right?

Some slap on the shackles the moment she hits puberty. Her body becomes a public security threat, as if her biology is a ticking bomb waiting to go off. But boys can flirt, harass, stir scandal and no one bats an eye. Apparently, only girls come with shame stitched to their skin.

Some educate her only to turn her into a walking paycheck. The job-holder girl is kept unmarried, her proposals nitpicked just to keep her on a leash. She becomes the family's golden goose. And by the time she realises the loss, it's too late.

Some send them to school but it's always a case of feeding one and starving the other. The boy goes to a gleaming private school; the girl trudges to an overcrowded public one. He's told to study, play and rest while she's handed a schoolbag in one hand and dirty dishes in the other. He's urged to aim for the skies. She's yanked from study to stir daal and warned not to dream too big — the kitchen's her destiny. God forbid she says she wants to be a doctor or a pilot — they scoff. He gets the family phone for online classes. She's left to make do. He brings home a B-grade and out comes the mithaai. She earns a distinction and gets a bored nod.

This is the national mantra: we plant two trees, cut water to one and blame it for not blossoming.

Even the system plays its part in this farce. The curriculum - of confinement and patriarchy — trains girls to accept second-class status. Men are shown as the scientists, leaders, innovators; women as cooks, tailors or smiling mothers. Where will the girl draw inspiration from — the stove? And what message does it send? That your worth begins and ends in service to others. That leadership isn't for you. That brilliance isn't expected from your gender.

Education isn't a gift, a favour, a privilege or a bribe for future returns. It's a right. Denying it — through silence, mockery, jealousy, fear or control — isn't just bad parenting. It's abuse.

Let's stop glorifying obedience. Let's stop punishing girls for having dreams. Let's stop pretending we're raising daughters. We're raising sacrifices!