Patna: Authorities in Bihar have come to the rescue of a woman who preferred leaving her in-laws’ home to giving up her studies.
Help poured in for Bina Kumari, mother of a one-year-old baby, after she was driven out of her in-laws’ home on Monday when she dared to sit for the ongoing Class 10 Board examinations. Authorities praised the examinee for not succumbing to pressure from her family and braving banishment from her in-laws’ home.
Reports said the woman, a resident of Parikiya Tola village in eastern Bihar’s Madhepura district, had been under tremendous pressure from her in-laws to quit her studies. Setting aside those constant pressures, however, she went for the exam at Harihar Sah College, Udakishunganj, last week.
The action irked her in-laws so much that they ordered her to leave home on Monday, when she returned from the exam centre.
Sources said the woman, with her child, took shelter at the nearby railway station that night. She also went hungry that night as she had no money. The next morning, she reached the exam centre again to appear for another paper. When her condition deteriorated because of a lack of sleep — she had stayed up all night — tiredness and hunger, exam authorities rushed in to help her.
When asked, she told the invigilator the whole story and was immediately given food.
“None in my in-laws’ family is literate and hence I wanted to pursue education and get [a] job. Study[ing] was more important for me than just staying with in-laws’ family and hence I decided to take exam ignoring their objections,” Kumari told Gulf News by phone from the exam centre on Wednesday. Her husband is a migrant labourer who works in an industrial town in Punjab.
She added that her in-laws were against her studies, and questioned her desire for an education when their entire family is illiterate. “There is no point allowing you for study while the rest in the family have been grazing cattle in the field,” she quoted her in-laws as having said.
In a fresh twist in the tale, however, the angry in-laws have allowed her stay with them again, after the authorities took up the case and threatened arrest.
“We salute her bravery and passion for education. Never before did I came such a person who revolted against her/his family just to sit in the exam,” said executive magistrate Anil Kumar Srivastava who came to her rescue at the exam centre.