When we hear the word mother, we immediately relate it to a person, who is caring and full of love and affection. No doubt a mother punishes the child, when required, but most of often the idea is not to penalise the child, but to get the best out of the child.
Almost all mothers fall in this category, but when there is an exception, it becomes news.
Women and men from different walks of life have attributed their success to their mothers through the upbringing by her and her constant support to the child during ups and downs.
A mother sets an example by her goodness and the way she handles her child, for others to learn. There is a saying, ‘Your mother may be the best cook in the world, but my mother’s cooking is my mother’s cooking.’ That is how we are proud of our mother.
Indians, whichever their language, instinctively says, “Oh Maa” when in pain, that is the place of a mother in one’s life. We speak the mother tongue, even if it is the language of the paternal side! Generally, no person would like her/his mother being insulted by anybody.
Most followers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are now being put to test, when it comes to their love for their mother vis-à-vis their allegiance to Modi, after he said in the Rajya Sabha that India is not only the largest democracy in the world, but it is the mother of democracies.
If Indian democracy is the mother of democracies, it is setting a bad example, because so many norms of a democratic process have been thrown to the winds, under the National Democratic Alliance government, the present and the earlier one.
There are several cases of getting Bills passed in the legislature without allowing a proper discussion in the Rajya Sabha; even the three controversial farm bills were passed in a similar manner; a large number of social activists and journalists have been arrested and charged with sedition; labour laws have been amended, which are effectively pro-employers and anti-labour; any one expressing a view not appreciated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is branded as anti-national or asked to leave the country and go to Pakistan. All this has been done by the ‘mother of democracy’.
The latest in the line of anti-democratic moves is the digging up of roads, creating trenches, using concrete boulders and Concertina wires to prevent farmers protesting against the three farm laws, to enter Delhi. The police were silent spectators when a group of people, allegedly belonging to the BJP, pelted the protesting farmers with stones.
If this what is being done by the mother of democracy, a bad precedent is being set by this mother. Is this is how mother India is to be shown to the world?
The incidents at the Capitol in the US, following Donald Trump’s electoral defeat and the happenings in India makes one realise that the quality of democracy does not depend on its age or size, but on how it treats its opponents.
If Indian democracy is the mother of democracy, she needs to improve her behaviour towards all citizens, whether their views are acceptable to those in power or not and set a good example for other democracies in the world.