Last week resounded with loud drum beats and boastful proclamations of victors, accompanied by routine complaints of EVM tampering et al, and sheepish discussions among anchors and analysts guilty of once again making wrong predictions during exit polls.
At the time of writing this, however, while Durga pooja celebrations are on and the goddess is being feasted and worshipped all over India, the office of the lieutenant governor of Delhi has asked Delhi’s current chief minister to vacate her bungalow in Lutyen’s Delhi.
There may have been several bureaucratic excuses for this sudden act, but fact remains that it makes for bad optics to see a powerful woman chief minister signing files among cartons on a tacky sofa. It makes for bad optics during pooja and smacks of a certain pettiness towards Nari Shakti. But this article is not so much about what is right or wrong about the new chief minister occupying the ex chief minister’s house.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Let us combine this incident with three candidates and their poll results from the Haryana and Kashmir assembly elections. First among them is Sunil Sangwan, a former superintendent of jails in Haryana. During his tenure the head of the Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan (aka Baba Ram Rahim Insan) serving time for two rapes (of his own female disciples) and the murder of a journalist, had walked out of the high security Sunaria jail in Rohtak district no less than six times on bail. After his voluntary retirement, Sangwan was given a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket for the recent Haryana assembly elections and recorded his first electoral victory, garnering 65,568 votes. It is noteworthy that during these elections the Baba was once again let out on bail and was reportedly asking his disciples to vote for his blessed candidates. It is also notable that Sangwan had earlier trumped the claim of a female candidate, internationally renowned wrestler Babita Phogat.
The second candidate also from Haryana, was the founder of Haryana Lokhit Party, Gopal Kanda. He lost the Sirsa seat to the Congress candidate Gokul Setia. Those with long memories would remember how he was charged with harassment and abetting the suicide of Geetika (followed by her mother’s suicide). She was a former employee and air hostess in an airlines company MDLR. The charges that got him arrested were reportedly serious — criminal intimidation, criminal conspiracy and sending false electronic messages. Notably, Kanda is a party hopper. He was earlier a member of Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), and then joined the Congress, from which he resigned from his post as a minister. Later all charges against him were dropped and in 2024 he resurfaced with his own party, the Haryana Lokhit Party and contested once again from Sirsa.
The third candidate, Chaudhary Lal Singh, a former minister for forest, environment and ecology in Jammu and Kashmir contested the election on a Congress ticket from Basholi seat, but lost. Lal Singh had earlier supported the rapists of a young girl Asifa in the infamous case in Kathua. “Why was he given a ticket?” tweeted the well known legal luminary Indira Jaising, “He prevented the police from even filing a chargesheet in that case.”
Just as war lays bare the basic instincts of a civilisation and its leaders, as observed by Ved Vyas, elections in India similarly expose the deeply ingrained virus of contemptuous misogyny.
Also read: The BJP Won the Haryana Assembly Elections but Undermined Its Own Hindutva Agenda
All the major parties in India, who have harboured and fielded candidates tainted with crimes against women, support women’s empowerment and most demand “kadi se kadi saza (strictest punishment)” for rapists in public. A look at just three contestants and their enablers in major parties is enough to confirm that India’s entire political system is beset with a deep disease of contempt for women’s rights and the (repeatedly amended) laws against their violation and abuse. Our leaders carry the virus, the party workers catch it from them and fan out to infect all the deemed pillars of democracy including the media.
We have stories upon stories from Amritkaal, that reveal when a woman is violated physically or verbally, our system it does not care what caste, class or party she belongs to. Former Olympic medal winner Vinesh Phogat who has won in the Haryana assembly polls by a narrow margin of 6,000 votes, has faced the full wrath onslaught of the virus laden system.
A comment recently surfaced on X, “ She lost all respect. We were expecting sportsman spirit from her but she did not show nay..during elections.” It was also reported that former BJP MP Brijbhushan Sharan Singh against whom Vinesh fought long and hard to prove that he had molested many young women in the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), was understandably dismissive, it may be a win for her but her party has lost. If she won using my name it shows I am a great man, he boasted. She will spread destruction wherever she goes ( woh jahan jahan jayegi satyanash hoga), he said. Nothing like a man scorned.
Such deep seated contempt is different from hatred. Hatred is directed at an individual, contempt reduces her and her race to sub humans. When a senior MP from the ruling party spews such venom against the Opposition candidate’s win , he does not look at the object of his cruelty as a human being, not even a full fledged citizen with the same rights as himself “a great man”.
The message sent by those carrying the the virus of contempt towards women is clear: you can be easily violated and silenced while those who dare to report these violations risk being ignored, jailed, or forgotten. Meanwhile, convicted rapists may receive bail with alarming ease and even influence others to vote for certain candidates.
How does the state struck by such a widespread pandemic of contempt appear to women and the marginalised ? In ideation workshops and seminars we have heard that usually all male leaders demonstrate an infuriating but comparatively comic rendering of the virus when they shake their heads about the impact of modernity/tight jeans/mobiles/social media/dysfunctional families and rise of divorce and live-in relationships.
They are widely quoted by infected voices in TV studios where the running text selectively underscores the caste and community status of a victim and the perp or perps. Having lived so long with dormant and genderised caste and communal prejudices, most of us do not recognise contempt embedded in these bulletins. Otherwise why would housing societies suddenly draw a line at not allowing those that eat ‘non veg’ or belong to a certain community? Why would prestigious private schools and parents baulk at the thought of an EWS (economically weaker section) kid sitting on the desk next to their child? Why are students in IITs and medical schools occupying seats in the reserved categories bullied mercilessly? Why are Dalit girls and girls from poor nomadic communities considered easy game by men, young and old alike, in rural communities ? Why in the poshest colonies domestic workers are routinely being screened on caste and community lines and even after being selected not permitted to use the lifts the residents use?
Is there a strong enough desire within India to be unlike this India that is sick with contempt for the poor and the weak to the extent that it ogles at billionaires’ weddings and parties but overlooks a million transgressions of land and environmental laws that have generated such wealth ?
Real herd immunity against such contempt would arrive only when the political parties and the social pools they come from, recognise its existence. But if our major parties and their chosen representatives go on protecting and shielding and bailing out convicted rapists, they are ensuring that the system never rids itself off of this dehumanising contempt for a whole citizenry. When top honchos muse aloud how history will judge them they should stop and mull on this. The politicians who appeal to the majority Hindus to come together or be cut to pieces, must begin to see how majority males’ private freedom is women’s and minorities’ realm of collective and permanent submissiveness. A state beset by this lethal virus can not prevent serial abusers of women and minorities from entering our political system and spreading real “satyanash”.
Mrinal Pande is a writer and veteran journalist.
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
