Editor,
“The anger of nari shakti will not be confined to Sandeshkhali” – very rightly has this point been uttered by a highly powerful chair.
Since one must practice what he/she preaches, the person concerned must personally ensure that the justice for nari shakti does not remain confined to Sandeshkhali only.
May criminals who were instrumental in the spine-chilling gangrape, murder, and forced cremation of nari shakti in Uttar Pradesh (Hathras Unnao Budaun), who had tortured gangraped and murdered the little flower of Kathua by confining her within a temple for days and paraded Kuki women naked before gangrape/ and murder in Manipur – be brought to the court and awarded highest possible punishment for their unpardonable crime.
May it be ensured that not a single convicted rapist or murderer be released from prison with felicitation through garlands and sweets as had happened in Gujarat. Let the person accused of sexual atrocities by the women wrestlers be taken to task.
Will such promise be delivered to nari shakti on the solemn occasion of Nari Divas on 8 March? Aren’t the women of Gujarat, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Kathua, Delhi, and the rest of India not part of the parivar?
And it also must be asked if the whole country is one’s parivar; then surely the ‘urban Naxals’ like, say, Stan Swamy, Siddiqui Kappan, Dr Kafil Khan were/are also part of the parivar. Certainly the farmers, wrestlers and those who protest against the NRC and the CAA are also indispensable members of the parivar. The 6.7 million zero-food kids of India to the poorest of the poor who suffered the worst during sudden lockdown negotiating the highways by foot in starved stomachs and dying before reaching home were/are surely part of the parivar. Hope the full-fledged citizens of India who profess Islam or Christianity speak Bangla or live in Kashmir valley are not Pakistanis, ‘Romans’, or ‘Bangladeshi termites’, but part and parcel of the parivar.
Last but not least, as full-fledged citizens of India and so part of the parivar, hope nasty words and terminologies would not be reserved for the ‘Italian’ mother-son duo. Sonia-Rahul Gandhi perhaps deserve a bit of respect and love, along with Mamata Banerjee and Mahua Moitra – regular victims of vulgar misogyny despite being members of the parivar.
At the end of the day, mere lip service towards nari shakti or parivar counts to nothing unless the talk gets walked with love respect empathy and sensitiveness. Else we are left with nothing but damn blatant hypocrisy.
Kajal Chatterjee,
D-2 /403,
Peerless Nagar,
Kolkata