The past conduct and ideological moorings of the BJP, as those of its parent body, the RSS, reflect not just extreme and exclusivist views on women’s participation but are arguably distinctly misogynistic
THE Women’s Reservation Bill, aiming for 33% of Lok Sabha seats for women, was passed in 2023. But it has yet to be implemented. Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crocodile tears when the amendment to the bill did not pass, the fact is that it could have been implemented in the 2024 elections if the necessary steps had been taken.
Now the amendments, which needed a two-thirds majority, fell through as the opposition could see the government’s diabolical game. The government had linked this amendment to delimitation and an increase in the number of seats in the Lok Sabha. All those who voted against the amendment were surely for the 33% reservation for women, but because the move was linked to delimitation, they had no option except to oppose it.
The Delimitation Issue
The issue was the discrepancy in population growth between northern and southern states. Roughly, because the TFR (Total Fertility Rate) is higher in northern states than in the south, the delimitation exercise gives more weightage to the former, where the hold of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is stronger. The southern states are wary of this and so came out in full strength to oppose it.
The BJP is crying hoarse that opposition parties humiliated women by opposing the amendment. This apparent support of the BJP for women’s representation is just a façade.
Congress Record on Women’s Empowerment
Other steps in the empowerment of women have generally been taken up by the Indian National Congress. We see that right from the freedom movement, when it was leading the national movement against colonial powers, the Congress gradually ensured that women were not only part of the process of ‘India as a nation in the making’ but also part of the movements opposing British rule.
It encouraged women to be part of the various phenomena of national life. After the marathon efforts by Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule to give education to women, they started entering the social space and played an important role in the struggle for independence.
Chayanika Shah, an activist and educator involved in various women’s rights movements in India since the late 1970s, points out that Congress has had several women presidents, a woman prime minister, women chief ministers, and a woman president in its trajectory. Taking this process of empowerment to grassroot-level structures, Rajiv Gandhi was keen not only on Panchayati Raj but also on increased representation of women in these institutions.
BJP, RSS and Ideology on Women
Let us contrast all this with the hyperbole of Narendra Modi. There is no record of any affirmative action for women during the BJP, i.e. NDA, rule of the A B Vajpayee years or the Modi era. There seems to be an ideological connection between the BJP’s politics of Hindu nationalism and its agenda on the role of women in politics.
The BJP is the political progeny of the RSS, which is an exclusively male organisation. When Laxmibai Kelkar in 1936 requested the then RSS chief K B Hedgewar to let women be part of the RSS, she was advised to form a subordinate organisation, the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, and was not permitted to join the RSS.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh stands for volunteers, while Rashtra Sevika Samiti stands for servants. This tells us that the swayam (self) of women is in control of men. This is in tune with the mandate of the Manusmriti. This holy Hindu book was upheld by the RSS all through, and even now this RSS combine holds that the Indian Constitution is based on Western values and so should be scrapped, as stated by Rajendra Singh, Rajju Bhaiyya, and be replaced by the Manusmriti, as per Sudarshan, another Sarsanghchalak of the RSS.
Policy Reflections and Gita Press
In the BJP’s policies, this is also reflected in the awarding of the Gandhi Peace Prize to Gita Press, Gorakhpur, a year ago. This was done by a jury headed by Narendra Modi. While giving the award, Modi stated, “They have done commendable work over the last 100 years towards furthering social and cultural transformations among the people.”
Akshaya Mukul, in his masterly study of Gita Press, shows how it played a major role in transforming the teachings of Manusmriti into popular small booklets that are sold in lakhs of copies. These uphold husbands’ beating of wives, glorify playing second fiddle to men, and demand total subordination to men: father, brother, husband, and son in different phases of life.
Statements of BJP Leaders
BJP’s own history is full of such humiliating statements from their office bearers, who uphold abominable practices against women, including sati, the immolation of a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre. In the context of the Roop Kanwar incident, the then BJP vice president Vijayaraje Scindia took out a procession supporting the practice of sati. The slogan of the procession was that committing sati is not only a glorious tradition of Hindu women, but it is also their right.
Another leader, Mridula Sinha of the BJP Mahila Morcha, who was the governor of Goa a few years back, had given an interview to Savvy Magazine in April 1994 wherein she upheld wife-beating and the dowry system.
Crime Data and Recent Cases
The 2021 data of the National Crime Records Bureau reveals that on average, 86 women were raped every day in India, while 49 cases of crimes against women were recorded every single hour. The overall number of crimes against women per one hundred thousand of the population increased from 56.3 in 2014 to 66.4 in 2022.
During the present regime, how abysmally cases of sexual violence and harassment have been handled becomes clear. Several of these cases found their way into the mainstream news, such as the gang rape of a minor girl by a BJP legislator in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, in 2017; the repeated gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, Kashmir, in 2018; and the gang rape of a Dalit girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in 2020. Women wrestlers’ complaints against Braj Bhushan Sharan Singh were ignored in toto. The case of women’s plight in Manipur is beyond words.
While women MPs of the BJP and its allies are making a lot of noise over the fall of this amendment bill, the issue is: why link it with delimitation? Why not move that with the present strength of MPs only? Why should it not be implemented with the 2023 bill? We need to raise our voice to delink delimitation from the women’s reservation bill and to call for its implementation right away, as per the 2023 bill.
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Ram Puniyani is an eminent author, activist and former professor of IIT Mumbai. The views expressed here are author’s personal and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them.
