A woman’s struggle for human dignity 

As a humble peasant, against all possibilities, she led a silent revolution which changed the face of a region of her country

The May 2008 edition of the  magazine Reader`s Digest published a reporting article of Robert Kiener entitled “ A Woman can make the difference”. It was about Mukhtar Mai, from the small rural village of Mirvala, in the south of the Pakistani province of Punjab.

After being raped, the path she should have taken according to local custom was to commit suicide. But she decided to live, to fight for justice and to help other women to have a more dignified life. With the support of her family and strengthened spiritually by the lessons of the Koran, she used to say: “I am only a first drop of water, but the rain will come. And many drops of rain end up forming a great river.”

Nobody in her family (father, mother, and four brothers) knew how to read or frequented school. They were devotee Muslims, who prayed five times a day. Mukhtar had a privileged mind and was able to memorise passages of the Koran. She was quiet and meekly spoken. This tall woman, 1.70 metres in height thought, keeping her deep black eyes looking down, “The Koran will protect me”.

The Mukhtar family was of the lowest cast (of the Gujar) and made a living from the scarce resources of the sugar cane and wheat fields. The house was made of mud and they had only a few goats and cattle, a cow and a piece of land. They did not have electricity, a telephone, or running water. Mukhtar got married when she was 18 years old and did not have children. It was an arranged marriage and she was not happy. Divorce was rare in rural Pakistan – the woman was frowned upon, but her parents supported her decision and, in less than a year, Mukhtar received the talaq (in Islamic law, the disavowal from the husband towards the wife) from her husband, which officially freed her from the marriage and allow her to go back to her family house in Mirvala.

The aggression occurred during the night of 22^nd June 2002, when Mukhtar Mai was 28 years old. On August 31, 2002, five of six condemned mastoi (a higher cast) (four of them for rape) were acquitted and freed. The sixth had his death penalty changed to life imprisonment. 

What is really needed is a school”, said Mukhtar, on receiving money from the government 

Human rights activists protested against the verdict. There was also an international protest and the Pakistani government ordered the mastoi to be sent back to prison. They waited in prison for a new judgement.

Ghulam, Mukhtar Mai’s father, taught her to respect the elderly and forbade her to lie. “We have little, but we have our honesty”, he used to say to his daughter, which made her develop a strong sense of what is right or wrong.

When, by government order, the federal minister for women, Attiva Inayatullah, gave her a cheque to the value of half million rupees (about 8,200 US dollars – more than her father had earned in decades)) Mukhtar, who had never seen a cheque before, said: “I do not need this money. What I really need is a school”. She had this idea on realising that the majority of people, who sympathised with her, were educated. The payment – said the minister, was not compensation, but a small symbol of “our identification”, of the suffering which Mukhtar went through. So she agreed to receive the cheque, so long as she could use the money for the construction of a school for girls.

Determined, she bought a piece of land near her house and contracted workers to build a primary school. She also helped out, by making bricks and transporting them to the construction site. The Mukhtar Mai Model School for Girls took shape and opened its doors in December 2002. The government paved a road and brought light and telephone to Mirvala.

Accompanied by police body guards, she went from house to house to ask parents to send their daughters to the new school. The task was not easy, as she always heard the same answer: “Girls do not need to learn to read” or “Only boys need to be educated”. Mukhtar committed herself to sending a van to pick the girls up. 

In a short time, more than 700 children of all casts were being taught 

The school was was basic. Mukhtar used to sit down besides the girls, so that she could also learn how to read and write. Searching for resources, she sold her earrings and a cow and, when the media reported the story, many donations came her way. She then contracted carpenters to make wooden seats and desks for the lessons. Fans were installed in the ceilings, turning the lessons from a suffocating into a pleasant environment. To maintain balance, she opened a school for boys in Mirvala and another for girls in nearby village. More than 700 children of all casts (including the mastoi cast)
mixed with each other freely in the schools.

The praiseworthy action did not stop there. Women, some who had been raped, others mutilated, beaten up, with horrible scars in their face (victims of acid attacks) or without nose or ears (punishment for supposed adulteress), looked to Mukhtar. Then the Mukhtar Mai Centre for Assistance for Women in Crisis was created and located next to the first school. Around five victims a day come to the assistance centre in search of help. And nobody left without being seen to.

“Mukhtar”, said the reporting article, “speaks very quietly and rarely look into the face of strangers. Although she has travelled a lot and obtained international recognition, she is very shy and prefers that others talk for her. Her kind manners impose respect.” Whenever she enters the school’s playground, the students see her and politely touch her shawl and shake hands with her. “When I am with my students, I feel in peace” she says.

Mukhtar smiles when she sees Sidra Nazaru, one of the most intelligent students of the school. The 10 year old girl, with light coloured eyes says that she wants to be a medical doctor. In the previous year Sidra’s parents threatened to remove her from the school because they had committed themselves to marrying her to a 30 year old man. Mukhtar confronted the family who then gave up the idea. Sidra carried on in school, free to pursue her dream. 

Men and women, Spiritism teaches, must possess equal rights

With the schools and the Centre for Assistance, Mukhtar saved and continues to save Pakistani women from the repression of traditional justice, the same obsolete system which turned her into a victim of collective rape. Now, women resort to her, instead of submitting themselves to the local panchayat. As the Pakistani human rights activist, Hashid Rehman says: “Against all possibilities, this humble peasant has headed a silent revolution”.

Through ignorance and by not having knowledge of Jesus’ teaching, though more than two thousand years have passed since his passage on Earth, events like this take place, in which a human being is discriminated against for the plain fact of being born a woman!

The answers from the Higher Spirits to the questions 817 to 822 of The Spirits’ Book clarifies that God gave man and woman intelligence of good and evil and the faculty to progress. The moral inferiority of woman in certain regions of Earth comes merely from the unfair and cruel dominance of men over women.

Women are physically weaker than man, in order to distinguish particular functions to her. But both must help each other mutually in their tests.

For that legislation must be perfectly fair – Spiritism teaches -, it must consecrate equality of rights between man and woman. Every conceded privilege to one or the other is contrary to justice. Women’s emancipation follows the process of civilization, whilst their slavery marches with barbarism. Difference in genders exists only in the physical organisation, as Spirits can take on one or the other gender, There are no differences between sexes in this respect. In face of this, the sexes must evidently have the same rights.

In the chapter of the aforementioned book, published by FEESP, there is a footnote by the translator J. Herculano Pires, which clarifies that husband and wife, are not master and slave, but companions who carry out a common task, with identical responsibilities for the task’s realisation.

Allan Kardec, on dealing with the subject, asserted that God adapts the organisation of each being to the functions that it must play. If God gave women less physical force, at the same time He gave them greater sensibility in relation to kindness of maternal functions and the frailty of the beings entrusted to their care. The functions are different but their rights must be equal.