You’re Addition of One, Mr Fernandes

Namita Bandare, The Times of India

Three Cheers to George Fernandes, our honorable minister of defence, for saying so fearlessly what the rest of the BJP locker room boys only dare whisper. To question Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s credentials and see her as ‘only’ a mother who added two to the population of India is not a particularly original way of looking at working mothers. But it is a brave politician who voices these views and with such candour – and at election time too.

The bottom line is this. As a society we just do not recognize motherhood as an important social function. We dismiss it as a biological fact. Hence, women ‘produce’ children as cats produce a litter, factories produce cars, poultry farms produce eggs, fast food chains produce hamburgers.

Every working mother has held fears and experienced an enormous amount of guilt right from the time she gets pregnant. Fears that begin from, "Will they fire me?" to how she will put in those long hours that seem mandatory to professional success. Any woman who has career must feel the sting of Mr Fernandes’ wholly unnecessary, ill-advised and - significantly – unrepentant statement regarding the Congress president’s role as mother. Mr. Fernandes now tells - and to this end he uses a woman emissary, Ms Jaya Jaitley of his party – that he was merely repeating facts. Why then didn’t he also repeat the ‘facts’ of Mrs Gandhi’s experience as president of the Congress party and head of the various trusts she is involved with? Perhaps because all her career achievements get overwhelmed by the fact of her motherhood.

Fringe Figure

It seems strange that this view of women should come from an ally of the Sangh Parivar. After all, what’s a privar without a mother? But in the world of the BJP and its buddies, Jai Siya Ram becomes Jai Shri Ram. Siya is really of no consequence. In the chauvinistic world of BJP and the RSS, bachelorhood is the preferred way of life.

So Sita is a fringe figure and perhaps Mr Fernandes, her only contribution was also to produce two children? In the world of the BJP and its allies, Sita does not matter, until a Deepa Mehta comes along and gives her lesbian protagonist the same name. Then all hell breaks loose and another ally of the BJP, the Shiv Sena run amok protesting against the insult to Indian womanhood. This is something Ms Deepa Mehta who is based in Toronto presumably know nothing about. And since Mrs Gandhi is also not Indian born, perhaps the standards of Indian womanhood don’t apply to her either. Yet what is the BJP’s own track record? Where do women figure in a party where the head of its mahila morcha once famously defended wife beating by saying that often it’s the woman who asks for it and where another leading light the now ailing Vijayraje Scindia, has defended sati as a part of Indian tradition?

Sexist Remarks

The flavor of the season is behen hamari Sushma Swaraj. She is the BJP’s idea of a traditional-modern woman, paraded as spokeswoman every time the government needs to present its gender justice credentials. Yet when it came to the crunch the powerful ministry of information and broadcasting was taken away from her and given to a man who is personally close to the Prime Minister. Now, Swaraj has been pulled out of the mothballs, sindur and all to fight woman-to-woman against the vedeshi bahu.

Both Mr George Fernandes and Mr Promod Mahahan have made extremely sexist remarks in the past few days. While Mr Fernandes believes there is nothing wrong in what he has said, Mr Mahajan has blustered his way through.

There are several reasons for voting against Mrs Sonia Gandhi. Being a woman and a mother – even a foreign-born one – is not one of them. If anything it is a qualification. On the other hand, there is one very good reason for not voting for the National Democratic Alliance. It has reminded us once again of its strong anti-woman bias. At a time when we are posed for progressive legislation that will protect and enhance the status of working women (sexual harassment is now an offence), Mr Fernandes’s view could take us back several years.