Opinion Aam Aurat’s manifesto

Let the current debate be about the politics of reservation and not the reservation of politics for a privileged few.

Even the most devout Congressmen would admit that Indira Gandhi’s lineage was the passport to her entry in politics. Benazir Bhutto,Khaleda Zia,Sheikh Hasina,Sirimavo Bandaranaike,and Corazon Aquino were members of the Club of Wives,Widows and Daughters of famous men.

Owing their political legacy to the family they were born into or married into,one wonders what their political journeys would have been like minus the last names. Curiously,the social development indices are appallingly adverse for women in most of their countries.

Moving on to the tough talking,guns blazing chief ministers from prominent national and regional parties such as the BSP and AIADMK,both Jayalalithaa and Mayawati owe their political currency to personal proximity to their male mentors,and Vasundhara Raje Scindia to her royal silver spoon. One is not disputing the political mettle of these power women but talking about a level playing field for all. Success is so often a function of power inheritance.

Supriya Sule,Priya Dutt,Praniti Shinde,Agatha Sangma are fortunate in not having to wait for any reservation for women. They have the right daddy. It does not matter which caste they belong to. They have the right political class and that’s all that matters in ensuring a ticket where a far more talented woman leader/ activist/ professional may never make the cut.

Has power trickled down to women through reservation in panchayati raj institutions? It has churned out a few independent women sarpanch leaders,but by and large it is the husbands of the officially elected women sarpanches who have actually been voted to power. Ask the villagers who voted.

The sheer vision of “even more upper caste women” in the Lok Sabha might spoil Lalu and Mulayam’s socialist dreams but when it comes to giving opportunities to backward sections they don’t look beyond their backyards.

The idea of affirmative action is to create equity,to skim the creamy layer,not to thicken it. Let’s make it easy for a woman who fears the raucous and rowdy hooliganism of local politics but still desires a decision-making role in governance without having to make personal compromises.

Many women party workers would admit to exploitation rampant in circles of power. The real empowerment of women will not come with more women MPs with patriarchal values or with a Pratibha Patil constantly tugging at her pallu as she presides over the House. Instead of just changing the “gender” and the face of power should we not question the dynamics and the very nature of “power”?

Modern India has seen two major seismological shifts in the tectonic plates of gender politics. The sati of Roop Kanwar and the Shah Bano judgment.

No one could have foreseen in 1978 the momentous consequences of a sixty-something Muslim woman’s appeal to the courts for maintenance from her husband. Shah Bano,a mother of five,was divorced by her husband in 1978 after several decades of marriage. By now in her sixties,and with little means to support herself and her children,she appealed to the courts seeking maintenance from her husband. Seven years later,when the Supreme Court ruled that Shah Bano be given maintenance money,opinion was practically polarised.

While an intrepid Union minister,Arif Mohd Khan,defended the Supreme Court’s decision in a historic speech,quoting the spirit and essence of Islam,the then prime minister,Rajiv Gandhi,chose to succumb to the “mullahdom”. It was a move carved out of political expediency but is remembered as the ultimate compromise in the politics of religion and gender in the country.

On September 4,1987,an 18-year-old,Roop Kanwar,was burnt alive in a village in Rajasthan,by her in-laws,on the funeral pyre of her husband. Reports suggested that she cried for help,to little avail. The Bharatiya Janata Party defended this Rajput tradition. The late Vijayaraje Scindia of the BJP defended it,saying,“Sati to hamara dharam hai” (Sati is our religion/ tradition).

In February 2004,16 years later,when a special court acquitted,on lack of evidence,11 persons,including BJP legislator and state party vice-president Rajendra Singh Rathore the then chief minister,Vasundhara Raje Scindia,could not spare the time to meet the delegation which was protesting the acquittal,let alone file an appeal.

While the BJP took a deplorably regressive stand it must be specially noted how a woman chief minister responded to this most horrific murder steeped in “local tradition”.

The repository of power can be male or female but the lust to stay in power subverts the cause of empowerment itself. Instead of firing salvos at the men,we need to instead throw down the gauntlet and challenge patriarchy — read male-centric mindsets and male dominated social structures,of which many women are a big part of.

So we start with asking why the Aam Aurat feels,if she can feel at all,numb and bereft of emotion as she has become over the years of continual poverty,that the proposed new crop of women MPs will not grow fatter at her expense. The time is now! Sonia Gandhi rules!

The writer is a freelance journalist and film-maker

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