The nation has been convulsed by the fate of Rizwana, the teenage maid to a civil judge in Islamabad who was beaten so badly by the judge’s wife that her wounds became infested, at which point she was hastily handed over to her parents, and she was admitted to hospital where she is still under treatment. Perhaps the most evident lesson from this is that there are no easy solutions. Education does not appear to have worked on the civil judge or his wife, as it failed to make them more humane. Their treatment of the maid was no advertisement for civilizing effects of education. The entire episode also made it clear that the purpose of education was to make one person a civil judge, another a maid. Access to education seems to make all the difference, not in a person’s behaviour, but in whether he or she has been equipped with marketable skills.
This episode also showed how our society is based on child labour, and thus on disobedience of the law. Children are not educated by parents, but pitched into low-paying jobs or apprenticeships, in the hope that they will at least keep themselves, and hopefully help increase the family income. It is an attitude reflected in the nation sending abroad its best and brightest and then living off the remittances they send home. The problem of overpopulation is also highlighted, but seems to be more the beginning rather than any sort of conclusion. Too many people strains the education system, for example, and the first task is to send children to school.
It is not the first time that such an incident has happened.
One reason for the prominence the case has gained is perhaps the horrible nature of poor Rizwana’s injuries, another is their being inflicted by a civil judge’s wife. It might be remembered that a similar case occurred a few years back, when an additional session judge’s wife in Islamabad also beat her maid and injured her. Where these two cases have come into the public eye, the question has to be asked how many other girls are there, who should be at school or playing, not forced to clean for an entire household or take care of little children scarcely younger than themselves, who depend on the goodwill of another woman for escaping injury?
