Give me a good mother and I will give you the world. This quote may be attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte but it should stand true for everyone. It may be easy to sing paeans to mothers across the world, but it has increasingly become important to question why place mothers on the pedestal when crimes against women continue unabated. Even as the world celebrated Mother’s Day on May 14, it is more than right that everyone, especially the men, look inward and study whether they have been really true in respecting womenhood, for in paying obeisance to mothers over the world, it is equally important that respect is given to the fairer gender. Multi-tasking. This is what mothers across the world are known for, from the day the child is born, to the first day the child goes to school, the first job interview, the home cooked food that everyone is acquainted with, name it and mothers the world over continue to play the central role. It is in recognition of this that a special day has been kept aside for mothers as Mother’s Day and it is only right to admit that the real purpose of keeping aside such a day will fall flat on its face if women continue to be discriminated against and continue to be at the receiving end of society’s double standard. And this exactly seems to be happening, a reality which everyone should be ashamed of. It is on occasion like this that everyone should address the question of why crimes against women continue at such an alarming rate.
It was only a few days back that the Nation as a whole stood up and applauded the judgement of the Supreme Court in awarding the death penalty to the rapists and killers of Nirbhaya, who died after she was gang raped and subjected to the most inhuman torture in 2012. That not all have learnt any lesson from the Nirbhaya case was underlined in all its brutality when another girl was gang raped and murdered in Haryana just yesterday, as underlined by the report and published in this paper under the heading, “A rerun of Nirbhaya case : Girl gang raped, murdered in Rohtak.” The gory details of how the girl was done to death after she was raped were spelt out in the report and to think that this happened when the world was about to observe Mother’s Day made the crime all that more abhorrent. These cases have been cited here just to remind the readers that while mothers may be placed on the pedestal in the public domain, women continue to be a clobbered and subjugated lot. Need to underline the point that if Mother’s Day is to have its real meaning then crimes against women should stop. And perhaps the best institution to start this should be the family, where everyone is taught to respect women and girls. The Sangai Express joins in hailing mothers the world over and not only on Mother’s Day but on each and every day.
Source: The Sangai Express
