MALALA - the girl story

It’s almost a year now. On  October 9, 2012, a young girl was returning home from school on an open -back truck. The truck was waylaid by a group of armed men. They asked the name of each of the child, and finally zeroed on a teenage girl. They put a gun barrel on her forehead and ran a bullet through her head. The girl was Malala Yousafzai. Armed hotheads were Taliban extremists. Location was Mingon town of Swat district. Country – Pakistan.

The cause of her being shot was a trifle matter for a death sentence. Malala had raised objection against Taliban’s diktat  preventing girls from going to school.

Malala survived the attack. She along with her family is living in Britain. Despite the attack, Malala had stuck to her position. She continues to oppose the Talibani fatwa, and  continues to champion the cause of girlchild education. 

Malala has now spoken about her wish to become a politician to fight for  girlchild rights, among other things.

Rise of Malala as a child activist is an interesting story. The forces which chiseled Malala’s character and convictions lay around her while she grew up in backwaters of Pakistan. The very fact that a  teenage girl from an underdeveloped region  should have such sharpened insight and worldview points to moulding forces alive in her neighbourhood. 

What were her influences ? Her schoolteachers and fellow schoolfriends, her parents and relatives.

Obviously, subjugation of the girlchild must have been a potent emotion among her influences. Among her school friends and teachers, the feeling about treatment meted out to the girlchild must have been very strong. They couldn’t vent those feelings. Malala had the opportunity and zing to take Taliban front-on.

The backstory of Malala points definitively to one fact. Modern day repressive societies have a strong undercurrent of revolt. The young of the society primarily nurse this sense of revolt and angst. Even if revolt doen’t come from the young, it is fuelled by youth-power. Arab Spring revolt is a case in the point.

It was well that Malala was not given the Nobel Peace Prize. To have done so would have deified her. She is too young for that. She should be allowed to flower, to develop her own path of activism, find her own voice and worldview.