Gender offender

The George Bush-Michael Dukakis face-off during the 1988 US presidential elections saw the boys in President Bush8217;s dirty tricks department in fine fettle. They went after Dukakis with such venom that the democratic candidate was constrained to comment wryly, 8220;They are throwing the kitchen sink at me.8221; Bush went on to win that campaign, but long after his presidential tenure came to an end, the odium attached to that campaign conducted in his name lingered on, sullying not just his own image but that of his party as well.

In much the same way, the display of verbal abuse that has come to mark the present election campaign diminishes not just those who hope to reap rich electoral harvests by wielding verbal cleavers, but the Indian polity as a whole. What makes this ugly carping doubly offensive is its chauvinistic, anti-women timbre. It demonstrates eloquently how deeply riven is this supposedly democratic political space, not just in terms of class and caste but gender too. After all, it is theseloose-tongued men and women who may soon assume positions of great authority in the country, shaping not just its laws but its future. Have they the intellectual and moral fibre to make the India of the future more gender just, more gender equal? Going by their public statements they do not. Pramod Mahajan is Union minister of information and broadcasting. Yet here is a man who delights in the cheap crack and the lewd comment. The widespread outrage that greeted his recent attacks on his political opponents does not seem to have reformed him in the least as his reported references to Sonia Gandhi in a speech in Gondha on Monday reveals. It8217;s one thing to oppose a political party and its ideology or criticise its president, who happens to be a woman, for her political stances, it8217;s quite another to descend to a crassly personal and sexist level. Mahajan8217;s party swears by the Women8217;s Reservation Bill and the leader of Mahajan8217;s party swears by his commitment to improving the status of women. But with whatconviction can they do this if one of their senior leaders continues to express the most offensive anti-women sentiments in order to get a few laughs from a campaign crowd?

It is precisely such behaviour that discourages women from seeking public office, as any woman sarpanch would testify to. Verbal abuse is sometimes accompanied by physical intimidation as well. Every woman politician has had her stories to tell, whether it is a Jayalalitha on the manner she was treated on the floor of the Tamil Nadu assembly or a Mayawati on how she had to fight Mulayam Singh Yadav8217;s stormtroopers in a Lucknow guest house, or the group of women campaigning in Delhi more recently who reported that they had to face gross misbehaviour from a crowd in the Sadar constituency. It needs courage then for women to stand up in these circumstances and fight to be taken seriously as political entities. They must be given all due respect and support in this endeavour.