A girl named Arooj Aurangzeb performed at the Faiz Festival 2019. At her highest note of voice, she uttered the revolutionary poetry, “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai, dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai,” a verse of a patriotic poem by Bismil Azimabadi.

In a crowd full of men, she outperformed her counterparts. She had a progressive mindset. How is it possible?

And then came the tags: “She was wearing a jacket”. *A leather jacket*

“She is a pseudo liberal”.

“She belongs to bourgeoisie class. She has no idea about labor class”.

Alas! nobody tried to dig into the matter and hurled their opinions.

Unfortunately, people here are not habitual of viewing the world beyond their set lens. They are still busy in superficial and frivolous discussions of dressing and tagging. Nobody has the time to pause and critically think about what she is talking about. Her message was simple "speak up for your rights”. In other words, she asked you people to break the shackles of slavery and exercise your agency, exercise your right. The poor souls do not even understand that she is talking about their rights.

We all face administrative crisis on daily basis. The basic lack of facilities at our education campuses. Our quality of education system speaks volume about the fact. A worker sends his child to get higher education with the hope that he would, at the end of his study, get a respectable job and live an honored life but the scenario is totally different. Graduates even the postgraduates are facing unemployment. The point here is education is our basic right and to have healthy lifestyle is our constitutional right.

It’s always easy to criticize the state and passively accept the situation but it needs courage to actively challenge status quo. It needs bravery to put an extra-effort on daily basis to improve the system. For me, she is doing a courageous thing. Optimistically I would say, you all wish to change the system, you all covertly accept her vision too. All youngsters desperately want to change the system but do not dare to speak about. Every student experiences the abuse of system but stays silent. She found the courage to speak up. Instead of hurling negative opinions on her. Stand by her side, stand for your rights!