Nivedita Menon writes: Behind the sudden support for women’s reservation, an ethical crisis of the political class

There are other issues such as the impropriety of claiming to be chosen by God in a space sanctified by the Constitution of a democracy that came out of an anti-imperialist struggle; the patronising title of the legislation that sets up women as idols receiving worship from men rather than as active citizens; and the patriarchal invocation in the Prime Minister’s speech of women as “mothers, daughters and sisters” of presumably male citizens. Then the question of why the Nari Shakti of the wrestlers battling sexual harassment by a BJP MP was not worthy of vandana, and why the devotion to women expressed by this regime is matched by the impunity of widespread increase of violence against women all over the country during its tenure. Not to mention that delimitation is a politically charged strategy to increase the BJP’s seats in the Hindi heartland into which it has now been corralled.

But let us focus on what one-third reservation for women in Parliament would actually achieve. This legislation was first introduced in 1996 by the Deve Gowda United Front government and its last incarnation lapsed in 2014 with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha. What is the purpose of the Women’s Reservation Bill (WRB) and why has it been held up for so long?

Reservation for women had come up in the Constituent Assembly but been rejected by women representatives as it was seen to underestimate the strength of women to compete as equals. In 1974, the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) considered the same question. Arguments in favour were mainly that generally patriarchal political parties fielded very few women candidates, and that reservation for women would enable them to act as a strong lobby. Arguments against were mainly that this violated the principle of equality in the Constitution; and that women cannot be equated to socially backward communities, not being a socially homogeneous group. Finally the CSWI by a majority decided to uphold the position taken in the Constituent Assembly and rejected reservation for women in Parliament and state assemblies.

In 1996, however, there appeared to be a general consensus across the political spectrum, including the women’s movement, that the time for women’s reservation had come. Two developments explain this shift.

One, the democratic upsurges of the 1980s and 1990s which transformed Parliament from a largely upper-class and upper-caste body to one with a large OBC presence. Caste and social justice came to the forefront of Indian political discourse.

The other development was that women had emerged as a significant force in politics since the struggle against the Emergency, and from the 1980s feminist issues were firmly on the public agenda — dowry, equal wages, violence against women. At the same time it was clear that there were very few women in representative bodies. By 1996 then, the women’s movement acknowledged that abstract citizenship was only a cover for male privilege.

Thus, the emergence of women as a significant grouping in Indian politics and the transformation of the caste composition of Parliament through the growing presence of backward castes through successive elections, produced two different, mutually opposed sets of concerns — feminist and dominant caste — that tied in at this particular conjuncture to produce the sudden general acceptability of women’s reservation.

The opposition to the legislation, which held it up for so long, was not simply patriarchal. It expressed the legitimate apprehension that a blanket reservation of 33 per cent for women would replace non-dominant caste men with dominant caste women. An immediate reservation of one-third of the existing seats for women, is likely to benefit largely those women who already have the cultural and political capital to contest elections, and these are bound to be elite women. How else to understand the BJP’s determined opposition to the Mandal Commission reservations for OBCs and its equally fervent support for women’s reservations?

The experience of reservation for women in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) since 1992 has been positive for many women, but another consequence is the strengthening of the entrenched power of dominant caste groups of the area. That is, men of less dominant castes in PRI have been replaced by women of dominant castes. Hence the opposition to the WRB had insisted on “quotas within quotas”, demanding a further reservation within the 33 per cent, for OBC and Muslim women. (The SC/ST reservation is a constitutional requirement that comes into operation automatically.)

But quotas within quotas have been firmly resisted by all non-OBC parties across the political spectrum, which raises the suspicion that the objective of reservations for women is indeed to replace non-dominant caste men with dominant caste women. After all, the parties that have unanimously passed this legislation have fielded only 6.11 percent to 9 percent women from 1999 to 2019.

It seems that the sudden passing of this legislation after 27 years (its implementation indefinitely deferred, and with quotas within quotas off the table) reflects at some level the ethical crisis of the political elite as a whole.

The writer is Professor, Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Theory, School of International Studies, JNU