IMRANA Jalal’s interest in pursuing a career in human rights law may have begun in the corridors of St Joseph’s Secondary School.
It happened during her first attempt at mobilizing fellow students to participate in a school strike as a determined 16-year-old.
School mate Jessie Wong Takali said it marked a defining moment in more ways than one.
“I remember the day Imrana talked our class into going on strike because we weren’t allowed to go to the athletics championship,” she said.
“We decided to march down the corridor – to God knows where.
“When we reached the office, Sister Genevieve, the principal, came running out, clapping her hands, eyes ablaze ‘pick up rubbish, come on pick up rubbish! You naughty girls!”
Imrana said the principal’s reaction sparked something deep inside of her.
“We picked up rubbish in the huge school compound, and that was how far we got to go and watch the Marist and Grammar boys sprint that day,” she said.
Her devout Muslim father, Saiyed Abdul Jalal, was not impressed with his daughter’s attempt to challenge authority and gave her a belting that night for instigating the strike.
“He never asked for an explanation.
“I just got the hiding without due process and the right to a fair trial.
“He, of course, did not appreciate that the attempted strike was a career step.
“That is how far my fledgling career in human rights went that day.
“I tried to assert the right to freedom of association and free speech and ended up picking rubbish all afternoon.
“I now think it was a fitting end.
“Sr Genevieve and my father’s combined strictness, was a good training ground for an eventual career in human rights law.”
Getting the principal and her father’s attention for all the wrong reasons, perhaps, further contributed to Imrana’s decision to take up law.
She recalled the events that transpired after taking her father’s new car for a joyride without permission nor a licence to drive, with Theresa Koroi, Annette Sachs Robertson, Laisa Cavu and Joe Koroi in tow.
They had an accident outside Dudley School, and “fled the scene of the crime” thinking no-one would recognize them.
After exams that week, Sr Genevieve called them to the office over the school intercom for everyone to hear, and said that the police were there to “interrogate” them.
“She called me a ‘criminal’ and I thought we three were going to prison.
“That night both Tee and I got hidings, me in Nailuva Rd, she in Princess Rd.
“I got two – one for going on a joy ride when I was supposed to be studying and another for lying.
“This time I did not argue that I had the right to a fair trial.
“Sr Genevieve calling me a criminal must have had the desired effect I suppose.
“I did find a career in the law, but on the other side of the law, at the Bar.”
Apart from the lessons learnt during her teenage years, she admires the efforts he made to ensure she and her sisters successfully completed tertiary studies.
“I remember how my father used to sell goats on the side to pay for my two sisters and my university education in New Zealand.
“He would send me money from time to time and say ‘just sold a goat today – here’s some money’.
“So the thought of failing and making my parents’ sacrifice a waste of time for them was too horrible a prospect to contemplate.
“We enjoy a robust and loving relationship now.”
Abdul and Rosemary Jalal brought Imrana and her siblings up the best way they knew how and gave them every opportunity despite financial limitations at the time.
Although Imrana’s mother came from a privileged background, her father
came from a very poor family, and was raised as a virtual orphan after his mother, Sarwar Jan, died when he was 7-years-old. His father, Saiyed Rahman, had returned to Pakistan when his mother was pregnant with his younger sister.
Mr Jalal was educated up to Class 8 and later became a joiner carpenter at the Public Works Department. Subsequently, he joined Caines Jannif Limited, a company owned by relatives.
“My father is a descendant of Pashtun Muslims way back from what is now Pakistan but was then India.
“He was partly raised on Nairai island.
“The Khan family was the only Indo-Fijian family on the islands.
“Both Shamima Ali (Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre) and I have connections to Nairai.
“My father and her mother are first cousins.”
Imrana’s mother Rosemary Bimla Grant Jalal came from a line of Brahmin Indians who became Catholics in later years. She is a fifth generation Indo-Fijian.
Her mother’s great-great grandfather Gurudin Pathak became Peter Grant – an Anglican and then subsequently a Catholic.
“My mother says he ‘switched’ because brown people were discriminated against in the Suva Anglican Church as they were not allowed to sit with the whites.
“So he became a Catholic because at Sacred Heart Cathedral the blacks and browns could sit anywhere.”
Mrs Jalal was educated abroad and came from a wealthy family who owned property and cinemas and brought films to Fiji.
She was a secretary-stenographer at the then Fiji Broadcasting Commission until the family emigrated after the 1987 coup to Brisbane.
Imrana said that not having an education beyond Class 8 was something that troubled Mr Jalal greatly.
“He would remind us often of how lucky we were to have the opportunities that he was denied.
“He would say, ‘remind yourselves, ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’
“He would deny that his views about the education of women were in any way based on gender equality or human rights.
“He would argue that, as a devout praying Muslim, it was his Islamic responsibility to educate his daughters, as well as his son.
“He would point to the Qur’an, Sunnah and the Hadith, as his source of inspiration about the education of girls.”
Tomorrow: Tough love, the Jalal way.
