‘Is daughter a burden’ sounds a banal in this age of scientific advancement when computer technology has swooped down to lift the social stigmas in its talons. It has eradicated all the difference between genders.
Gone are the days when women were treated as weaker sex and they were thought to be dependable on men. They have proved their worth. They can do what even men cannot. Are not the great women like Florence Nightingale, Fatima Batool, Mary Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Semao Bandranaike, Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhuto and the German Chancellor Angela Markel the geometrical proof of the fact?
Science has provided man with a third hand and little scope is left for menial tasks where women could not compete with men and still they were degraded as second rate human beings. It is the male chauvinism that has thrown her into the subjugation in all ages and all the societies. Even America drunk with the technological bravado has never brought forth a woman as its president. Doesn’t it speak of the mental sickness of the so called modern society?
How backward are the parents who treat the boys as blue eyed preferences and pull a long face when a girl is born? And when she reaches the walking age we start training her for the service of men or taking care of the younger siblings. We hardly think that she is a human being with all the faculties of a rational with parents shooting more and more stars into her little lap and simultaneously lending her innocent brain a maternity effect. As soon as she leaves the mother’s breast she enters the world of the mother. That is where her grasp on the rights as a child comes loose and she looses her way to a goal oriented life. She falls apart from the struggle of self realization.
A baby, may it be a boy or girl, despite some physical difference is provided with the same mental faculties and how come there be a division of functions.
The prophet of Islam said that when she is born the gates of heaven are thrown open and when she gives birth the paradise is beneath her feet. This implies that without her the world is bleak and colourless. It is she who changes the world into a paradise. That is why Allah’s apostle said that he loved three things – prayer, perfume and women as a legal companion of man.
Think of the world which is womanless. It would be a loveless hell where men would be wandering like the hairy apes. It is the girl who becomes a mother and is endowed with the power to pick up the angelic soul and transform it into a human being – man or woman. Can a man do the same? Never on earth. Can a man bring out his heart and let it walk beside him? It is only the mother who can do it and prove it. That is why William Ross Wallace has said that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
It is because of the male dominance that her blooming childhood is wasted in the slavery of parents and when she reaches her mistressness we dovetail her to the people of our choice for further duties. All this is due to our narrow mindedness. Have we ever tried to hunt the talent hidden in the tender frame? We are unmindful of the fact that there are dark horses in the feminine world also and unfortunately we are labouring under the misconception that she is a burden.
When she comes to the world we try to find in her eyes not a scientist, pilot, a captain, a teacher or a philosopher but the greatest grandmother. We look for grimmest jawed gyves to tether her to the family system where she has to beg for the breathing space. I’m not advocating an absolute liberty for the girl child but a liberal atmosphere where she grows.
- The author is a lecturer in English.
