Silencing ‘Gul Makai’
Who or what is ‘Gul Makai’? It is the pseudonym using which a young brave-heart, still only in her teens, decided to take on a powerful and ruthless group of religious fundamentalists. Although, by the time her writings, mainly through her blog, became public, the power of the religious group had waned to an extent; they still managed to get at the school-going youngster by attempting to kill her in full daylight. Today, the world knows her by her real name - Malala Yousafzai - mostly due to her miraculous survival of the assassination attempt, even though in the process she suffered grievous injuries. The girl who had taken on one of the most fanatical religious outfits had survived to become a beacon of light illuminating one of the darkest periods of socio-economic and political turmoil in her native land. Why did this particular religious group in the name of a supposedly ‘holy war’ decide to target a young girl? What had excited their fury or rather fervour so as to regard a
