Free show: BJP and politics of misogyny

Does India’s ruling party enjoy projecting contempt for women in spite of its ‘save girls, teach girls’ rhetoric?

Babul Supriyo.: File picture

The Editorial Board   |   TT  |   04.03.21 : Emotions should be recollected in tranquillity, or they run away in unintended directions. The minister of state for environment, forest and climate change, Babul Supriyo, may have expected laudatory responses to the meme on his handle — he neither created it nor did it carry his statement, he said — that had a ready reply to the Trinamul Congress election slogan with the chief minister’s picture, saying that Bengal wants its own daughter. Under a similar version of this in Hindi was a picture of the Union home minister with an imagined comeback: a daughter is someone else’s wealth — or belonging — and this time she will be sent off. The mischief is multi-layered. The meme is in Hindi, as though addressed to a special ‘peer group’ which will appreciate the mockery; thus it is, implicitly, divisive. Amit Shah’s image suggests the Bharatiya Janata Party’s endorsement of the meme’s attitude towards women. Mr Shah’s determination to remove the TMC from power is no secret; in the meme, this politics is merged with a blatant expression of misogyny.

An outburst of criticism compelled Mr Supriyo to take down the meme and acknowledge that it should not have appeared on his handle. The minister of state is a proud gentleman, however, and declared that he would not be given lessons on misogyny by other parties. That is understandable: his own party has the most up-to-date lessons on it. But gender bias is part of a value system. It can manifest itself in politics as much as in society and at home. Being a father of daughters does not automatically cleanse a man of misogyny — then India would have had no female foeticides, female infanticides, minor marriages, girls’ malnutrition and poor education, dowry murders, domestic violence, sex crimes and torture. Mr Supriyo’s logic floundered a bit in his eagerness to wash his hands of the meme; besides, his accompanying comment emphasizing that ‘they’ will definitely send Bengal’s daughter off this time made him complicit, not innocent. Will Bharatiya Janata Party leaders — since one is featured in the meme — rebuke their minister for endorsing a communication that projects women as objects or possessions to be passed from one family to another? Or does India’s ruling party enjoy projecting misogyny in spite of its ‘save girls, teach girls’ rhetoric?