The government doesn't fear terrorists.
Terrorists make excellent headlines.
It doesn't fear wars.
Wars arrive with flags, anthems,
and enough cameras
to make destruction look like history.
It doesn't even fear hunger.
Hungry people are too busy
counting their last meals
to count who took the first one.
No.
The government fears classrooms.
Because classrooms have a dangerous habit
of creating people who read before they obey.
A child with a question paper
is more dangerous than an adult with a slogan.
Because slogans tell you what to think.
Questions ask you why.
And why
has buried more empires
than weapons ever did.
In a country
where generations escaped
famine, debt, discrimination, and surnames
that arrived before they did,
education was never just education.
It was a ladder built by people
who were never allowed inside the building.
Every examination was a small rebellion.
Every piece of paper earned in a classroom
was proof
that destiny could be negotiated.
Which is why
nothing terrifies power
more than a child who believes
their future belongs to them.
Because a child
who believes they own tomorrow
eventually asks who sold yesterday.
Every dictatorship begins the same way.
Not by burning books.
That comes later.
First,
it convinces people
that questions are disrespect.
Raise your hand?
Suspicious.
Raise your voice?
Seditious.
Raise an eyebrow?
Anti-national.
Raise your child
to think?
Now that's dangerous.
We tell children there are no stupid questions.
Then they grow up.
Turns out there are.
Mostly the ones asked loudly.
Outside Parliament.
Inside classrooms.
Anywhere a microphone
can accidentally hear the truth.
The funny thing about a baton
is that it has only one answer.
It keeps repeating it
until the question forgets why it was asked.
History teachers must be exhausted.
Every few decades, they have to explain
how every empire made the same mistake.
They mistook their own echo for applause.
They mistook silence for agreement.
They mistook fear for loyalty.
Funny.
We celebrate the people who questioned an empire.
Then punish the people who question a government.
As though
a government and a country
were the same thing.
They are not.
A country
is the child who studies beneath a broken tube light
because darkness is cheaper than failure.
The farmer praying to clouds
that arrive everywhere except his field.
The student carrying an answer sheet
like a lottery ticket written by someone else.
A government is merely the hand borrowing the pen.
And history has always been cruel
to people who mistake
holding the pen for owning the paper.
Because eventually, the question changes.
Not:
"Will you obey?"
But:
"Why did you think
you were allowed
to ask?"
You can arrest the student.
Confiscate the notebook.
Break the pencil.
Rewrite the syllabus.
Erase the names.
Polish the statues.
But the question?
The question has already graduated.
It lives in every person who watched.
Every person who remembered.
Every person who quietly wondered
if the answer sheet was ever meant for them.
Because that's the problem with question papers.
They were never for the students.
They were always for the examiner.
And governments, no matter how powerful,
eventually discover the most terrifying truth about examinations:
The person holding the pen
is not always
the person giving the marks.
History has been invigilating governments for centuries.
Every empire entered the examination hall
believing it had written history.
Centuries later,
history arrived with a red pen,
and failed every answer
they spent centuries,
forcing generations to memorize,
until the lie no longer needed to be defended,
for,
it had learned to answer in everyone's handwriting.
