<B>By Shyama SOONDUR</B>

Enlightened civilizations of the ancient world placed women at the center of life, both spiritual and material. She was shakti, the life giving and enabling energy without which all things material were pretty much impotent and lifeless. Wars were waged and dynasties were wiped off the surface of the earth for the honour of a single lady.

Women were raised to the status of goddesses. They were honoured as the life-giving mother, the guardian of moral values and the spiritual companion without whom every penance was fruitless. Much care was taken to educate and edify them. After all, they held the future of mankind in their hands. On them depended the quality of tomorrow?s society for is not the mother the first teacher a human being ever has?

Women too were comfortable with their womanhood. They had nothing to prove. They were already valued to the utmost and no doors were closed to them in the name of some unholy ideal. They were heads of state, army chieftains, scholars, politicians and sages. Yet they retained their essence. They remained women and took pride in it.

Unfortunately, politics, wars and invasions perverted the course of evolution. To stay safe, women started deserting the public sphere and retreated to the sanctity of the family. The space they vacated was filled with dogmas that turned out to seriously curtail women?s freedom. Worse, women were fast made into second grade citizens.

The awakening came centuries and even millennia later in the form of women?s liberation militancy. Painstakingly, women obtained the enactment of equal rights legislations. However, such laws haven?t given women back their rightful place in the greater scheme of things. They are still second grade citizens, exploited and victimised.

Why? Perhaps because women?s liberation militants have missed the essence of their fight. They neglected to claim their primary and crucial role, that of the shaper of future generations. On the contrary, their quest for fairness and equality is taking them further away from the hearth as they set out to prove that they can earn as much and do as well as any man.

As Dr Oodaye Gangoo, president of the Arya Samaj, rightly points out to our colleague Jean Claude Antoine from Week End this Sunday, some parents do not really want to know what their offspring are up to. They do not really have time to give them. What future can we foretell of generations thus left unguided?

The disequilibrium this generates is clearly visible in the social ills plaguing today?s society. Violence is rife. It has become self-regenerating. Moral codes of conduct have slipped away out of the backdoor. In general, the quality of the citizens of the Earth is on the decline. Drugs and dogmas are sought after as palliatives.

Mauritius is not exempt from this backlash. The headlines daily shout the evidence from the broadsheets and the radios. Women and children are being raped, robbed or killed everyday. World records are being hit in terms of drug consumption. Intolerance is becoming the rule. Generosity the exception.

Pointlessly, we cry out for tougher laws, for larger prisons. Needlessly we ask for the head of hapless Premiers. A society that honours its women, is one where the gods reside. One that does not, opens the doors of hell. The Rig Veda says so. Will man ever get the subtlety of this injunction? Will women? No doubt these are points to ponder upon in these troubled times.