Dr Lal Baha was beacon of light for KP women
PESHAWAR: Prof Dr Lal Baha Ali was an embodiment of courage, strength and hard work for millions of Pakhtun women denied education due to cultural barriers across the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The courageous woman, in her mid 70s, died last week and was laid to rest in her ancestral village Tordher in Swabi district on Saturday. In addition to fighting the social and cultural norms since the 1950s, Dr Lal Baha as a noted educationist had scores of achievements to her credit.
She was the first Pakhtun woman to complete her PhD and that too from United Kingdom (UK) even though she was born and brought up in a conservative Pakhtun family. The academician served as the first woman chairperson of the History Department and was later appointed the first female Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Peshawar (UoP). She was also the first female acting vice chancellor of the university for a brief period.
Dr Lal Baha was the first head of the women section of the Islamic University, Islamabad and later became the member of the Federal Public Service Commission for a two-year term in 2000-2002.
She authored a number of books and contributed to research as she had published 42 research papers in national and international journals. Her passion for research took her to the USA, UK, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Jordan.
“My father, a government servant, enrolled me and my sisters in a local school where we studied till lower middle. At that time there was no concept of higher education among the girls but when he was transferred to Peshawar, I insisted on attending high school and after some resistance I was allowed. After passing the high school I requested my father to grant me permission to seek admission to Frontier College for Women that he rejected,” Dr Lal Baha once told this scribe.
However, with the help of one of her father’s friends, she was later allowed to join the college long after the commencement of the session. She graduated from the lone woman college in Peshawar at the time, headed by the renowned educationist and linguist Miss Harbottle who later became the chairperson of the English Department at UoP. After doing Bachelor of Arts, she wanted to do masters from the University of Peshawar but there seemed no way that the family would let her do it as she narrated once.
“I again turned to my father’s friend for help. My family allowed me to join the university under the condition that I would wear a burqa and join any other department except English since it was considered to be the most modern and westernised. So I opted for history,” Dr Baha told this scribe a couple of years back.
When Dr Lal Baha got enrolled at the History Department, there were 12 girls in the class. There was a partition between the male and female section and girls normally used to wear burqas. During the two-year study, majority of girl students left their studies incomplete and only a few graduated.
After obtaining her MA degree in 1962, Dr Lal Baha was offered a job in the History Department that she accepted without asking or telling her father, who was posted then in Dera Ismail Khan.
Soon after she joined the department as lecturer, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Dr Mohammad Ali announced to send 30 newly recruited lecturers abroad for their doctorates on scholarship. Despite knowing that it would anger her family members, she submitted an application and was selected.
She left her home in burqa and landed in a totally different world. On return, she rejoined the Department of History and became its chairperson in 1981 and then served as the Dean of Faculty of Arts from 1990 to 1993.
The educationist served as a visiting professor of the Quaid-e-Azam Chair in University of Amman in Jordan between 1986 and 1990 and as the Director of Centre of Excellence for Women Studies from 1992 to 1994.
Dr Lal Baha was staunch advocate of women education and wanted girls schools to be established in every village and for more women colleges and universities to be set up. She felt girls’ education would improve only when they would have easy access to educational institutions.
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Dr Lal Baha was beacon of light for KP women