A photoshopped Twitter photo of Gul Panag with an AAP cap before she was named candidate from Chandigarh is just an example of blatant misogyny reserved for women politicians.
New Delhi: If it hadn’t been so predictable, it might have been dismissed as a sick joke. But there it was, in full colour. Scantily dressed with the photoshopped addition of a strategically placed Aam Aadmi cap was politics’ newest debutant, social activist, feminist and actor Gul Panag. The picture, put out on Twitter on 12 March, arrived even before Panag had been officially declared the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) candidate from Chandigarh. But clearly the bugle had been sounded.
The handle went by the name BJP2014 but the party quickly dissociated itself from it. Not the “official handle of the party”, tweeted Arvind Gupta, the national head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) IT cell. It was simply “not authorized/affiliated to any of the party’s activities”.
Panag saw it differently. “These things are motivated and there are certain agencies at play,” she said. “This was a handle that was followed by Narendra Modi and as a Maths major I can only say, ‘QED.’”
The Twitter storm blew over fast enough. Panag’s response to the offensive tweet was a gracious “thanks” with a smiley. “I really don’t care,” she said. “This was condemned and ridiculed by people across party lines. So, yes, there still is a shard of decency on social media.”
The smear campaign faced by women who enter public life is hardly new and goes back to the seventies—way before social media made us such easy voyeurs—when an ad for DCMtowels featuring the former Miss LSR, Maneka Anand, was used to embarrass her powerful mother-in-law, Indira Gandhi.
Power is no immunity from slander. Contesting an election that eventually saw her return as Rajasthan chief minister last year, Vasundhara Raje had to contend with leaked photographs of her exchanging a social kiss with Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw at a public function. The smear campaign crossed over to Facebook and resulted in the publication of a pamphlet so vicious, so defamatory that it does not bear repeating. Raje chose not to respond. And more circumspect editors used the better part of discretion to ignore it.
And yet, there hasn’t been a loud enough uproar from political leaders—mostly men—against the sort of blatant misogyny reserved for women politicians.
Nobody from the Samajwadi Party (SP) protested when morphed posters and a CD mysteriously flooded its candidate Jayaprada’s Rampur constituency during the 2009 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. Jayaprada pointed an accusatory finger at party leader Azam Khan. “He is sullying my image by indulging in cheap campaigning against me,” said the former actress, who along with Amar Singh recently quit the SP to join Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal.
Sometimes the attacks are physical and Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa had her sari ripped and torn by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MLAs inside the Tamil Nadu assembly in 1989 when she was leader of the opposition. In 1995, Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP’s) Mayawati had to lock herself in a room inside a government guesthouse to protect herself from a rampaging mob allegedly led by the SP and police personnel.
The misogyny isn’t always limited to political rivals or jealous party men. Somebody at Maxim magazine thought it would be fun to carry a morphed picture of the actress-turned-politician Khushboo in a transparent bikini with the caption: “Of course I am a virgin if you don’t count from behind.” Khushboo rejected Maxim’s belated apology and responded by filing criminal charges.
“It’s absolutely true that there are high levels of sexism in public life,” says CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat. This can take the form of salacious gossip and comments made both in public and private.
Sometimes the comments are not intended to be malicious—the reference to an independent woman politician as somebody’s wife, the digging out of outdated photographs that have no relevance to a woman candidate’s new role or the constant harping on what she wore—and yet they serve to undermine her independent achievements.
The women under attack are often reluctant to speak up. BJP vice-president Smriti Irani filed a defamation case against Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam for derogatory remarks made by him against her during a live television debate in December 2012. “You used to charge money to dance on television. And now you’re an election analyst?” Nirupam told Irani during a discussion on the Gujarat state elections. When contacted to comment on the vilification of women, she declined, saying the matter was “sub judice”.
One reason for the silence perhaps is that women politicians want to be judged on their own merits—as pro-development or pro-governance—rather than as victims of sexism. Yet, does the constant scrutiny under which they are placed, including a microscopic examination of their lives past and present, act as a deterrent to more women entering politics?
Definitely yes, says Ranjana Kumari, president of Women Power Connect, a national-level organization of women’s groups that works towards creating gender-friendly legislation. “Character assassination has always been used as a weapon to deter women from entering politics. This is how our male-dominated political parties create conditions that will keep women out,” she says.
It’s not just India. A recent US study found that between 2001 and 2011, the percentage of women who said they were interested in running for office fell.
In India, the entry of women is already somewhat limited by the fact that despite the talk of gender equality, parties prefer to give seats to “winnable” candidates, sometimes individuals with dodgy records who can muster the cash and muscle often required to win.
Women’s participation in politics all over the Indian sub-continent is frowned upon, found a 2012 research paper published by the Social Science Research Council. “Violence against ‘political’ women speaking up in public is very common,” it states. This “strongly dissuades women from participating in public life let alone seeking political office”.
No wonder then that many of India’s women politicians find it safer to enter under the protection of dynasty: Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti or the late Pramod Mahajan’s daughter Poonam Mahajan, for instance. Because they have the backing and patronage of powerful fathers, they become somewhat immune to character attacks.
“We live in a patriarchal, misogynist society,” says Panag. “The fight for gender justice is far from over.” Panag believes there are too many deterrents for women not just in politics but in practically every field in India.
In a country with one of the lowest representations of women in Parliament at under 11% in the 15th Lok Sabha, outrageous personal attacks by male politicians is “particularly difficult for younger women who find it tough to stomach such nonsense”, says Karat. But, she adds, it is an obstacle that must be fought. She wants Parliament to come up with a code of conduct under which elections are fought. “Everyone is not sexist. But Parliament must come up with a regulatory mechanism to fight hurtful, personal attacks,” she says.
As she prepares for her Chandigarh campaign, Panag points out: “Women are fighters. We are out there, taking up challenges.” Clearly, it will take more than a photograph to stop her.