Muktar Mai ; " In the name of honour"

Throughout the book she describes herself as an illiterate woman, but emerges as one of the most articulate, courageous and insightful women you have ever met. The story of Pakistani peasant woman Mukhtar Mai's gang rape and humiliation in the name of `honour' is told by Marie-Therese Cuny (translated from French by Linda Coverdale) in the book In the Name of Honour (Published by Atria books).
This is a poignant, heart-wrenching tale of the atrocious customs in the tribal regions of Pakistan, where women are made to pay for the sins — real and concocted — of their men. The ordeal of Mukhtar, a 30-year-old divorced Gujar woman in Meerawala village near Muzaffargarh in Pakistan's Punjab region, begins on June 22, 2002, when she is tricked into appearing before the village jirga ostensibly to apologise for the `crime' committed by her 12-year-old brother in daring to talk with a woman from the powerful Mastoi community.
But to their shock her family finds Mukhtar being given the punishment of gang rape.
Under the guise of restoring their honour four Mastoi "drag me away like a goat led to slaughter"; after the gang rape she is thrown out half-naked in front of the entire village, and her father has to cover her nakedness with his shawl and take her home. Most women who get such brutal and dehumanising punishment end up committing suicide, says Mukhtar, adding, "They know that a woman humiliated in that way has no other recourse except suicide. They don't even need to use their weapons. Rape kills her. Rape is the ultimate weapon; it shames the other clan forever."
Initially she too wants to do the same, but her vigilant mother prevents this, till anger and the desire for revenge overwhelms her. But she has neither money nor weapons to get her tormentors killed. As days roll by, she is determined to file a police complaint and get justice. The twists and turns her attempts take, with the police constantly trying to foil her attempts at justice are captured in the moving story.
The fight begins
As the national and international media zeroes in on the story and human rights activists take up her case, Mukhtar defies all attempts by the Pakistani authorities to silence her voice. Finally the administration is forced to take notice and act. But not before she is accused of selling herself to `foreign agents' out to besmirch the image of Pakistan in the international arena.
Under international scrutiny the Pakistan government awards her compensation of $8,500 and her story reported in the American media also fetches more money. The rapists are sentenced to death, but predictably enough the administration system takes its own time to punish the guilty. She is prevented from travelling abroad on invitations from US, Canada and European countries and her passport is taken away as "the President (Pervez Musharraf) himself seems to feel that we must avoid giving the nation a bad image abroad."
Worse, the Lahore High Court reverses the decision of the antiterrorism court granting death penalty to six people; they are acquitted and released from jail, and Mukhtar and her family are petrified about the backlash; their very lives are at stake.
But the most remarkable quality of Mukhtar, by now a woman possessed with a sense of mission, is her tenacity and she refuses to give up. The police pressurises her into signing blank papers that are then filled up with completely conflicting versions of her actual story, angering judicial officers. Her helplessness and frustration at her illiteracy and inability to understand what the judge is saying at the several court hearings her case goes through open her eyes to her greatest handicap — illiteracy.
Apart from taking revenge on her tormentors, Mukhtar is consumed by the passion to ensure that no other girl in her village remains illiterate. With her compensation money, the money raised through the American media and help from the Canadian embassy in Islamabad, she builds a school for girls in her village. Naseem, the principal of her school, becomes not only her solid supporter but also her best friend.
As Mukhtar's story spreads, female victims of the `war for honour' fought by men start coming to her seeking solace and with the zeal of a missionary she listens to their tales and gives them advice and support.
Gender statements
While Mukhtar's story is one of the indomitable human spirit and immense courage in the face of adversities, what comes through most vividly from her narrative are the powerful, eloquent and soul searing gender statements. Throughout the book she reflects on the unequal battle women of her ilk have to fight all the time. Often she admits to feeling broken and defeated; her battle is not an easy one, as she points out: "Both the ordeal that destroyed my peaceful life and this resounding victory hailed by the media depress me no end — I'm tired of talking, of having to deal with men and their laws. People say that I'm heroic, when I'm utterly exhausted. I used to laugh and be merry, but I've lost that gaiety."
Counting her blessing for getting solid support from her family in her ordeal, Mukhtar muses on the plight of most women who do not have such support, and while doing so captures beautifully, and without any fuss or frills, the situation of millions of women in the sub-continent: "A woman here has nothing solid to stand on. When she lives with her parents, she does what they want. Once she has joined her husband's household, she follows his orders. When her children are grown, her sons take over, and she belongs to them in the same way. My destination is to have broken free of that submission. Freed from my husband, childless, I can now seek the honour of taking care of other people's children."
Mukhtar's story also brings out as poignantly, as forcefully, the miserable plight of the Pakistani women entangled in different legal systems — the government's law, Islamic law, and the laws devised by the various tribal and village councils. And, of course, the village council meetings are all presided by men. "Women have always been excluded from meetings, even though they are the ones — as mothers, grandmothers, the custodians of daily life — who understand family problems the best. Men's contempt for their intelligence is what pushes women aside. I don't dare hope that one day, even in the distant future, a village council will accept the participation of women."
She adds that under such law women are "exchanged as merchandise" to resolve conflicts with the "punishment" meted out to them being either rape or marriage by force. "This behaviour is not what the Koran teaches us," argues Mukhtar, who though illiterate, had learnt the Koran by heart by listening to it, and taught passages to children, before this ordeal came her way.
The entire effort has to be complimented for the firm yet calm and dignified manner in which Mukhtar challenges stereotypes, questions Pakistan's judicial system and exposes the rank corruption in the law and order machinery which always favours the rich and the powerful. Thousands of women from Indian villages can glimpse their own grim lives — the helplessness and frustration they live with in a very unequal world — in Mukhtar's story.
As women who are raped or disfigured with acid in the name of `honour' flock to her, Mukhtar ponders: "Sometimes the magnitude of the problem overwhelms me. Sometimes I'm so angry I can hardly breathe. But I never despair. My life has a meaning. My misfortune has become useful to the community."
As her educational venture adds one more school, this time for boys, Mukhtar's comment leaves us with a lot of food for thought. "Educating girls is rather easy, whereas boys, who are born into this world of brutes and learn from their elders' behaviour, present a more difficult challenge. The justice dispensed to women must educate them with each passing generation, since suffering and tears teach them nothing."