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Assertions that ‘feudals’
get fancy educations only for the sake of ostentation
are really not very accurate; first of all, a good education
is something not every feudal can actually afford these
days. Every person that I know from this background
who has been educated has worked hard to contribute
back to the people of their areas. In Sindh, people
have not always appreciated the value of a good education;
many simply see it as a waste of time since zamindari
or agriculture requires very little in the way of formal
education or training. Many landowners of my father’s
generation broke with this way of thinking and pursued
education in the United States or the Great Britain.
Most returned to Pakistan to run their farms not because
of the tremendous financial opportunities offered —
in fact quite the opposite — but because their
fathers did it before them and theirs before that, and
something that is in your blood, well, you can’t
turn your back on it so easily.
The landowners of my father’s
generation continued to place a strong emphasis on education
by sending their children — the people of my generation
— to universities abroad (the older female members
of my family hardly went to school because of conservative
traditions, so you can imagine what a revolutionary
step this was in my case). Those of us who chose to
return to Pakistan after our studies did so because
we realized how much our parents sacrifised to educate
us, and we felt an obligation to them and to our people
to help others, rather than just ourselves. We had no
notions of coming back to ‘lord it’ over
the poorer members of our society. However misplaced
the ‘feudals’ may seem, a strong tradition
of social responsibility has been bred into them for
generations, and they take
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