Indian TV channel mothers the mother's day.

People in many ancient cultures celebrated holidays honoring motherhood, personified as a goddess.

Here are just a few of those:

- Ancient Greeks celebrated a holiday in honor of Rhea, the mother of the gods
- Ancient Romans celebrated a holiday in honor of Cybele, a mother goddess, March 22-25 - the celebrations were notorious enough that followers of Cybele were banished from Rome
- In the British Isles and Celtic Europe, the goddess Brigid, and later her successor St. Brigid, were honored with a spring Mother's Day, connected with the first milk of the ewes

Mother’s Day is observed worldwide on different dates. Different countries practice different traditions on Mother’s Day.

• Mother's Day in Britain -- or Mothering Sunday – is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent.
• The second Sunday in May is Mother's Day not only in the United States, but also in other countries including Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia and Belgium. By the end of Anna Jarvis' life, Mother's Day was celebrated in more than 40 countries.
• In Spain, Mother's Day is December 8, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so that not only mothers in one's family are honored, but also Mary, mother of Jesus.
• In France, Mother's Day is on the last Sunday of May. A special cake resembling a bouquet of flowers is presented to mothers at a family dinner.
• The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament, the League of Women Voters and other organizations still organize protests on Mother's Day: The Million Mom March, protests at nuclear weapons sites, etc.

In India, there was never the practice of celebrating Mother’s Day. I am not saying Indians never honored their mothers. They did and in fact in Hinduism, Mother and Father are considered gods and the tradition of children worshipping their parents is long known. Hence the older generation of Hindus didn’t think they have to set one particular day for their Mothers and one day for their Fathers to honor them.

Not any more. The younger generation of today is completely hit hard by Globalization. They have become Coconuts. Brown from outside and white from inside. They neither follow Hinduism nor follow Western culture but are badly caught in between in a state of confusion and are completely oblivious of both cultures. Globalization, to a great extent has helped to make this Western festival to make its presence felt in India. So Mother’s day is celebrated in India now. This is fine and I am not against it because it gives them an opportunity and a day to remember their mothers.

What startled me is the way one of India’s leading Hindi TV news channel celebrated this day. Instead of educating people about this day’s history or running a program dedicated to motherhood or honoring them, they spent the entire day remembering and honoring bollywood’s mother of mothers Nirupa Roy and her colleagues who donned mother’s roles in bollywood movies. Yes, this is true. From dawn till dusk they showed mom related lines taken out from old Hindi movies repeatedly mothering the viewers. I was one of them as I saw the same thing over and over every time I stopped at this channel while channel swapping. To add to my agony, I get only one Indian news channel and I couldn’t escape.

I do hope someone sane (if any left) in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry very soon will wake up and guide these channels right way and set some guidelines on what to broadcast and what not to show. If they can’t celebrate a festival properly, they shouldn’t observe the same. By doing this, they have not honored mothers but have disrespected the beautiful thing called motherhood.

God bless “Young India” and Happy Mother’s day to all the beautiful mothers in this world.