Sreelatha Menon: Yes, Farida can!

An illiterate child widow is today a part of an NGO's efforts to educate and empower Muslim women

Farida Khan was barely 15 when she lost her husband and was left to fend for herself and her two children. She had never been to school and her only claim to importance was that she was the daughter of the maulana at Delhi’s Nizamuddin basti. That was 30 years ago.

Today, Farida has not only completed Class XII, but has been teaching umpteen girls in Delhi at her own home in Jaitpur as well as in three villages of Haryana’s backward interiors of Mewat district.

Thirty years ago, Farida was lucky to have met Shabnam Hashmi, a young college student studying in Moscow. Hashmi had visited Nizamuddin basti during her vacation, trying to make sense of the condition of Muslim women in the country. “It was perhaps the miserable life of Farida which made me an activist,” says today Hashmi.

Hashmi’s NGO Anhad has been running literacy classes for Muslim girls ever since its beginning in the Nizamuddin basti, followed by several villages in Bihar and Kashmir, and three in Haryana’s Mewat district. She has now decided to carve out a separate organisation called Pehchaan in Mewat, to be headed by Farida herself, to focus only on literacy of Muslim women. Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, actor Sharmila Tagore and surgeon Harshvardhan Hegde are backing this organisation.

Going back to how it all started. Farida turned out to be a bright student. She finished her Class XII from CBSE in four years, despite starting from the basics of writing alphabets. She then helped a young Hashmi run an adult literacy programme in the Nizamuddin slums for the next seven years till 1988, when it had to be closed down after the Shah Bano judgment and the death of her activist brother Safdar Hashmi. The way these literacy centres function, forever strapped for funds, is a reflection of how adult literacy is not anyone’s agenda. The centres barely survive, paying Rs 2,500-3,000 to women who agree to teach there.

Sakshar Bharat, the adult literacy programme of the government, does not help in any way. The last Census in 2001 showed Muslim women and Muslims in general have one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, much lower than the national average of 64 per cent. It was 50 per cent for Muslim women then. Nothing much has been done to change matters.

The National Literacy Mission by the human resources development ministry has been passive. No initiative has been taken to help Muslim girls who are married early or widowed early.

Hashmi says she is herself a board member of the National Literacy Mission, but except for the first meeting of Sakshar Bharat where she openly criticised the mission, she has never been called for any meeting.

Sarai Khatela was the first village in Mewat where Hashmi and Farida went to set up a centre. The format followed is a six-month course of basic literacy, followed by preparing the women for Class X exams in three-four years. In the entire village, only one girl has managed to do this in the last four years, while about 300 have trained in tailoring, says Farida.

The sole certificate holder is a Jat girl, Jyoti Rani, who used to secretly make her way to the centre. When she was ready to take her Class X examinations, Farida approached her brother. He initially objected, but when Farida told him how education would help Rani find a good match, he took her to Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia University. Later, her father went to collect her marklist.

Thirteen Muslim girls at the centre run by Anhad in Jaitpur sat for their Class X examination this year, mentored by Farida. They are the Faridas of tomorrow.