Question Paper

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.