For all the occasionally toxic and personal attacks that mark political exchanges in this country, there is a great unifier in Indian politics that cuts across party lines, draws snickers from all sides and has remained constant over time. It is the male gaze.
In 2005, when Lalu Prasad Yadav, then a minister in the UPA government had claimed that he had made the roads of Bihar, a state he was once the chief minister of, like “Hema Malini’s cheeks”, outrage was largely an “elite” reaction. But his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, across the country, took to the analogy like fish take to water.
BJP’s Kalkaji candidate Ramesh Bidhuri’s comment about Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi takes forward that vile legacy, ironically at a time when one of the pillars of his party’s campaign in the last year’s Parliamentary elections and several Assembly elections preceding and following it, has been women’s empowerment, a pitch quickly adopted by their rivals too.
Neither the veteran actor-MP nor the debutant Parliamentarian are alone. The pervasive misogyny in Indian politics has spared very few, targeting them individually and as a group with only feeble voices of protest here and there.
From Sharad Yadav’s parkati auratein (literally women with wings clipped but derogatorily used for women with short hair) reference during a debate in Parliament on the Women’s Reservation Bill to former Lok Sabha MP Abhijit Mukherjee’s “dented and painted” jibe at protestors out on the streets following Delhi’s 2012 gangrape, Indian politicians have always found it facile, entertaining and even acceptable to insult women, particularly if they are educated and empowered, able to demand their Constitutional rights.
Sometimes the male gaze will intrude into a conversation which is not even exclusively about women. Covering a 2018 debate in the Rajya Sabha on FDI in insurance, I was jolted out of the jumble of economic jargon when I heard JD(U)’s Sharad Yadav extolling the bodies of dark South Indian women. The House of elders remained stoically silent as DMK MP Kanimozhi became the lone woman voicing the disgust we in the press gallery felt!
In the runup to the 2021 Assembly elections in West Bengal, prime minister Narendra Modi made “didi o didi” his signature address for chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Eerily reminiscent of the catcalls I heard growing up in Kolkata and women continue to hear every day on the streets of perhaps any Indian city, it garnered immediate criticism.
Nevertheless, Modi continued to own and use it throughout the campaign. It figured prominently in the post facto analysis of results of the election that BJP lost comprehensively.
Contrast with the empowerment plank
Bidhuri’s latest shot at controversy – he is no novice in that department – is a study in contrast to how the BJP has chosen to position itself in the last few elections, projecting Modi as the messiah of Indian women and has fought state elections with a very clear agenda of addressing women as a separate and important voter block.
From Madhya Pradesh’s Ladli Behna scheme that gives women Rs 1,250 every month and earned then chief minister Shivraj Chouhan his mamaji moniker, to Maharashtra’s recently announced Ladki Bahin scheme which takes the stipend to Rs 1,500 per month, governments have made it the bulwark of their women’s empowerment talk.
They have also been emulated by rivals such as the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi which has announced the “Mukhya Mantri Mahila Samman Yojana” that will give a monthly stipend of Rs 1,000 to adult women, and has now been followed up by a similar announcement by Congress of Rs 2,500 per month for the women of Delhi under what it calls “Pyari didi” scheme.
The idea of a monthly sum as women’s “honour” while partymen (and women, remember Supriya Shrinate’s “rate card” taunt for actor MP Kangana Ranaut?) spew slurs that degrade women individually and collectively is disturbing, even more so because the sporadic outrage is never enough to influence the outcome of elections.
Indian society in general revels in any insults to women – the commonest cuss words reference the women in the family with impunity. Politicians unfortunately but obviously are held to the same standards, which is why they know they can get away with the profanities that they utter. Women, with a very few exceptions, find nothing wrong about them either, probably because Indians from childhood are conditioned to outrage over things that women do rather than what men do to them.
In private spaces, behind closed doors, outrage over a shorter skirt comes more organically than the outrage over a rape. That the mindset occasionally spills over into the legislative space is inevitable. The crowds erupted in West Bengal every time Modi called out to Mamata. Laloo’s original line on Hema Malini has become a part of political folklore, reverently used by many others.
Women in India live with misogyny every day. Normalising it in political and Parliamentary discourse is a grave disservice to one half of the country. The onus is as much on us Indians as on political parties who are yet to set a single example of exemplary action against a member for making derogatory comments about women. It is a chicken and egg situation.
Twenty years have passed between 2005 to 2025, which is a long time in politics. If we are still talking about women’s cheeks in an infrastructure conversation, stomachs need to churn and fates need to turn.
Abantika Ghosh is a journalist and public policy professional. She tweets @abantika77. Views are personal.