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Ms understanding

Soon after Sancho Panza's Lakshmi-Saraswati-Durga revelation, Rajeev says to me, "V, females in positions of power seem, with all due apologies to your gender, rather crazy. Note Evita Peron, Imelda Marcos, Michele Duvalier. Here are more in that sorry list." Under any other circumstances, I'd have suffocated him with the pillow. But... I kinda agree. Even so, I couldn't not retort! I did, to the effect that, females ride when the male species is prone. And, my list illustrating milquetoasts was longer...

Games aside, it set me thinking. There's no doubt that the Triumvirate has done everybody in. If I could feel sorry for victims, the one I'd feel sorriest for is G K Moopanar. Consider: the TMC, born on the sole plank of opposing a corrupt JJ, must justify its splitting from the DMK to align with a party supported by her. In TN's political formula, Moops now equals zero. In 1997, he'd offered to quit the UF provided the Shroud entered politics. She declined -- and then did just that. In 1998, he'd volunteered to separate from the DMK provided Sonia campaigned for the Congress. She refused -- and then did just that. So abject is he before the Shroud that Cho Ramaswamy has dubbed the party "Tamil Madam Congress." It isn't a case of the Shroud being a manipulator nonpareil -- the poor thing was simply bobbing along. But if men's fetishes include the licking of feet, how's it the signora's fault...?

And look what happened to the BJP. Dilip Padgaonkar, in the ToI, put it best: "...it is clear that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee paid a price for his failure to 'manage' his allies, especially Ms J Jayalalitha who has proved time and again, with superb aplomb, that she cannot be easily placated. The failure lay in mistaking compromise for appeasement. Every time he met a demand, redressed a grievance or bent over backwards to correct a perceived slight, he received a fusillade of more demands, insults and threats. The gentleman in him refused to riposte in kind. But the politician in him should have known better."

Exactly, exactly, precisely! The Sangh Parivar -- which really is just a microcosm of the Indian, and not just Hindu, male society -- simply does not know how to deal with savvy women. They can't accept the idea that woman is person. She is not the deified Stree Shakti they'd like her to be. Nor is she the Bharatiya Naari, replete with virtues and sabhayata they'd like her to possess. Nor is she a kalankini just because she doesn't fit into the preceding moulds. She's as competent or useless, as manipulative or naive, as good or evil, as the next man. So, when faced with female contrariety, the gentlemen among Parivaris (and they are few), bend over backwards -- which they wouldn't for another man. And the louts among them... Dhol, gawaar, shudhra, pashu, naari /Yeh sab taadang ke adhikaari (Drums, illiterates, lower castes, beasts and women, all are worthy of being beaten). It's the story of Hindustan...

I know you think that your adorable gadfly has, as usual, gadded away. But aren't you sick of the current spree of speculations? And this is a relevant issue! The BJP doesn't have a soul to counter the Triumvirate. Mayawati joshing with saadhvis? The Round Mound grasping Sushma Swaraj's kink of rearranging newsreaders' pallus? Murli Manohar Joshi persuading JJ? Even I wouldn't listen! OTOH, the great and the good have hordes of Margarets and Najmas and Brindas and Medhas and Subhashinis actively and effectively pushing their cause -- a veritable powerhouse of female attitudes and solutions. In fact, the Red line is entirely pushed by women on the social front. And these are babes with whom I, a diehard antagonist ideologically, could still have a relationship. Whom does Hindutva have?

Let me give you a few examples of those I'm supposed to feel one with:

1. Ms K N Shashikala of the Mahila Jagran Manch and Ms Pramila Nesargi of the BJP, who, I am not making this up, threatened to go up in smoke as a form of protest against the Miss World pageant. (To be honest, I was all prepared with the marshmallows for the bonfires.)

2. The BJP's gentle Ms Uma Bharati with her "marenge ya maar daalenge; khoon ki nadiyaan bahengi" speech. The flow of all this blood was for -- no, not the UCC -- a beauty contest.

3. Ms Varsha Raut, Ms Madhuri Lonkar and Ms Anuradha Deshpande of the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, who protested against "vulgar advertisements of sanitary napkins" since they found it "very embarrassing to watch these ads" as "even small children are asking what sanitary napkins are all about." If ads for condoms are deemed necessary, what, pray, is "off" about sanitary towels? The stigma attached to menstruation, I put on par with sati. That the Hindu woman is prohibited from praying during the cycle; that she must "sit out" the period; that she's "untouchable" then, points to a studied undermining of her being and insinuates that she is fundamentally unclean. Menstruation is a natural bodily function; I am a woman, therefore I bleed. Or, vice versa. So simple. Women perpetuating denigrating mumbo-jumbo about themselves... Which sane person will touch this caucus?

4. Ms Geeta Gunde of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, protesting against the Miss Universe parade: "We strongly condemn the commercialisation of women's beauty on such a mega scale" (if it's on a smaller scale, like token heroines in films, it's cool). "Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai never went to Bhiwandi or Melghat to help the needy... their charity begins and ends with Mother Teresa" (do only what the holy Geeta does; the rest is harlotry). "There are many organisations which only run on donations. We do not need such totally commercial ventures to collect money for charity" (commerce is evil, but righteous beggary is so divine that we can kick a gift horse in the mouth). "Our people are not used to seeing women in the nude or in semi-nude attires" (skimpy costumes are not the norm in Hindi movies, and the few which have them, go unseen by India). Who *are* these "our people"???

5. Ms Alka Pandey of the Akhil Bharatiya Agnishikha Manch. No, you simply *have* to hear the whole story: One day in 1997, the good Samaritans of Stardust downloaded from the Internet a nude cut-and-paste image of Pooja Bhatt and stuck it on the magazine's cover. After giving the mag a good two weeks to go into a profitable reprint, the Matrons of the Manch sprang into action: They bought more copies for a public bonfire, gherao-ed Pooja's home, abused her, and did all those wonderful things that are a matter of course in our friendly neighbourhood countries.

None of the offended parties (which can't include the actress whose face was superimposed on a naked body without her permission), gave a thought to one aspect: Since when had Pooja developed a long and lithe physique...? The police, too, showed us the stuff they're made of: The DCP or ACP or MCP or whatever hauled Pooja to headquarters and mercilessly grilled her over a cup of coffee...

After the police gave Pooja a clean bill of health, you'd think it was all over. Hehehehe... The next thing the matrons did was to lay siege on: "VSNL MURDABAD!" Huh? I knew about Net connections, but what was the connection here? Then again, I wouldn't have asked if I'd have heard with my own two shell-like ears the other mind-boggling naara: "BAN INTERNET!" Ms Pandey explained: "The VSNL does not censor what appears on the net. That is why so many nude pictures appear on the Internet. They are corrupting our generation." Hmm... did this mean Ms Pandey was, er... of an impressionable generation? And then came a bolt as rational as any from Khomeini's Little Green Book: the org would be charging VSNL under the provisions of the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Act and the Indecent Representation of Women's Prohibition Act for -- get this -- "telecasting" obscene pictures.

Forget about Ms Pandey's grasp of the World Wide Web and television technology and cable networking, my only concern was: Varsha, you're a woman, and so's Alka Pandey. Shit. And on the dot, she quoth, "When we took a morcha against Pooja Bhatt, we did not know that the Internet was the real culprit. But this fact does not absolve the actress from blame either. Why did she keep quiet till we raised the issue?" The onus of educating the attackers on the subtleties of technology and the culpability of the print media rested on Pooja.

Let me tell you about the land that's India; this is the punyabhoomi where a spokesman of the country's monopolistic server was forced to explain: "When we explained our position to the activists, they asked us whom they should protest against next. We tried explaining that there was nobody who could be held responsible for the trend." So, the dejected dames proceeded homewards (and there was no telling what their men were in for). And, one composed a message on behalf of Pooja: "I want to formally apologise to the Manch for being a victim of media malpractice. And, of course, it was completely wrong of me to assume that people who, in all their informed wisdom, burned copies of the magazine while hurling abuse at me in crowded public places, are asinine jerks."

Sigh. The Beej *must* distance itself from the loony tunes; it can't afford to get involved in non-issues. A national party can't confine itself to ashram-minded women, and, the average age of its members can't be 70-plus: It needs to lure young people with healthy attitudes in harmony with today's world. Forget the third -- where's the BJP's second line of leadership? Whom is a collegian going to identify with? Don't they want to attract any young "Macaulites" at all? Don't they realise how much they need the Kumaramangalams? People who can balance a Jairam Ramesh or Mani Shankar? How can they pit K L Sharma against Yechuri on television and expect to create an impression? We're in the Media Age, guys: Personality MATTERS. Not every aged man is a Vajpayee or an Advani.

OK, OK, I wandered off... To get back: Yes, I more or less agree with Raj. There may be a link between unbridled aggressiveness and female politicians. I'm trying hard to recall one inclined to persuasion and dialogue: Elizabeth I? Catherine? Golda? Indira? Maggie? Which isn't to imply that men are milder or that the role of womankind is to smooth ruffled feathers. Nor that men are shrewder (heaven knows, there wasn't a man alive, not even Kissinger, who could beat Mrs G at the game). All it means is that men and women are about the same. "About"? Well, women are, um, more focused. Whence comes the excessive stridency -- once they're on the road of Power long denied. From all the racket they've made, who'd believe that women form only 7% of Parliament? And what with reservations, imagine 181 Mamatas and Mayawatis. Oooh...

You wanna counter that? Then counter this first: What if there were two more of me on Rediff...?

Varsha Bhosle