Would Pakistan’s 'troublemaker' be supported today?

It was February 1947, the struggle for independence from the British and the civil disobedience movement was at its peak. 
In protest at the incarceration of female leaders of the Muslim League, a 14-year-old girl climbed up the Civil Secretariat building in Lahore, removed the Union Jack and replaced it with the Muslim League flag she had fashioned out of her dupatta. 
Another young girl helped her by climbing over the wall of the Secretariat and handing her the green cloth bundle. Shouts of “Pakistan Zindabad” (”Long live Pakistan”) rang out as men joined the women to support their protest. 
The 14-year-old was Fatima Sughra, an icon of rebellion. By the time of her death last September at the age of 85, she had been forgotten by Pakistan’s history books, but was remembered in newspaper obituaries.
In an interview published in the British newspaper The Guardian in 2007, she recalled the historic day: “When I took down the British flag and replaced it with our Muslim League one, I don’t think I really knew what I was doing. It wasn’t planned. I was rebellious at that age, and it seemed like a good idea. I was not prepared for it to become such a big symbol of independence.”
Symbols are powerful things, and somehow her act was more powerful for her spontaneous gesture in her taking the dupatta. This scarf is a marker of identity for Muslim women, just too as the Union Jack was a symbol of occupation and oppression placed on a government building where the British colonial machinery operated. 
In the movement for independence from colonial power, a skinny teenage Muslim girl had channeled her rebellion into a larger political struggle. A “troublemaker”, she called herself.
In the same interview, Sughra recalled how she wanted to protect her family during the 1947 riots leading up to and following independence from British rule. 
“Nowhere was safe and I wanted to go back to my family,” she said. She had been sent to Peshawar and wanted to return to Lahore, where Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs had lived harmoniously for centuries.
“I went to a Muslim major in the army and said I wanted a gun to protect my family. He asked me how a skinny little girl like me could handle a weapon. I answered that this skinny little girl hoisted the Muslim League flag in the face of the British Empire, so he let me have two. I got a rifle, a pistol and 24 bullets.”
Social and political upheaval galvanizes change. In the UK, women — and even then only those over age 30 — won the right to vote after the First World War in 1918. First women had proved themselves at a time of destruction – physical and social.

For all the symbolic women who redefined what it means to be powerful, perhaps what needs to change is the definition of power, or men’s understanding of it, as something to be shared.

Amber Rahim Shamsi

In South Asia, it was during the struggle for Independence that Muslim women broke from traditional roles as homemakers and care-givers to participate in political life.
Dr. Rubina Saigol writes in her paper ”Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Pakistan”: “The larger struggle created the space to break traditional norms, become politically active in the public sphere and violate the traditional boundaries of ‘good Muslim womanhood’. They (Women) could cast off the veil, talk to strangers, enter politics, take out processions, shout slogans, hoist flags and face police brutality. The national struggle made it possible to transgress traditional boundaries, an act which otherwise would receive disapprobation.”
Pakistan’s 70-year history is replete with exceptional women and girls who have symbolized rebellion in extraordinary circumstances. Fatima Jinnah, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s sister, who pitted herself against a military dictator after her brother’s death. Benazir Bhutto, who rose to lead her father’s political party against another military dictator; Asma Jahangir, who fought in the streets and the courts for human rights and democracy; Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls’ education rights. As a result of their actions, these women were accused of disloyalty to their country, and they received personal attacks on their character and even death threats. 
A powerful woman provokes strong reactions, particularly from men. For centuries, a women’s power derived from her youth, fertility and beauty – transient gifts without the enduring power conveyed by participating in politics and gaining political authority. For a woman to step outside of the traditional role assigned to her by society, should not be seen as an act of rebellion or defiance, but the norm.
It wasn’t until 1975 that the UN began to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8. What is truly astonishing is how many small battles have been fought and won by women all over the world to be recognized as active agents in their own lives in the last century – to vote, to hold political office, to run businesses, to divorce, to marry whoever they choose or not to marry, to be given equal employment opportunities and fair pay. In France married women could not work without their husband’s consent until 1965. 
But even now, the majority of women do not have the privilege of choice and opportunity that men take for granted. When they do exercise a choice, there may be a backlash through harassment at the workplace or honor-killing at home.
In other words, for all the symbolic women who redefined what it means to be powerful, perhaps what needs to change is the definition of power, or men’s understanding of it, as something to be shared. Fatima Sughra once said she doesn’t believe men support women any more. “The women won’t take to the streets for a cause they believe in and, if they did, the men would never support them.”
— Amber Rahim Shamsi is an award-winning multimedia journalist who hosts the Newswise news and current affairs show on Dawn News. She has worked with the BBC World Service as a bilingual reporter, presenter and producer. Twitter: @AmberRShamsi