Author:
Publication: Tara TV
Date: August 24, 2008
URL: http://www.taratv.com/west_bengal.php?task=full&newsid=827
Rubinisa had a dream of becoming an engineer.
But instead of helping her make it a reality, her father turned her dream
into a nightmare.
He felt an unmarried Muslim girl should not move out of home to study and
take up a job. So, he forced her to join a science course at a local women's
college in Karaikudi.
"Since we are Muslims, he didn't even
let me go to college. But I have convinced him to let me join an arts course,"
she says.
Defying this diktat, Rubinisa's mother sent
her to the engineering counselling without her husband`s knowledge. She got
an Electronics and Communications Engineering seat at a college outside her
village. But her father would not give up. He threw both of them out of the
house and ensured that the local women's college didn`t return Rubinisa's
original certificates she had submitted to take up the science course.
Fathi Muthu Jegara, Rubinisa's mother, adds:
"I was married off early. Why should my daughter face the same. Whatever
struggles, I will educate my girl."
As a last resort, Rubinisa filed a petition
against her father in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court. The court
came to the rescue of the girl. The arts college was directed to return the
certificates to Rubinisa and she has now submitted them at Anna University
and joined the engineering course..
It has been a difficult journey for this mother-daughter
duo. But a happy ending has taken them out of a conservative mould.