Women's Reservation and the Political Rhetoric of Gendered Violence |
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On April 17, the Delimitation Bills, which were aimed to increase the number of seats in Lok Sabha and conduct delimitation for the stated purpose of “advancing women’s reservation”, were defeated in the Lok Sabha. A day later, on April 18, in an address to the nation, prime minister Narendra Modi referred to this defeat as “bhrun hatya” or foeticide. Around the same time Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath equated the defeat of the Bills to Draupadi’s “Cheerharan” or disrobing. Use of metaphors in political speech to evoke emotions is not new, but resorting to figurative imagery of violence against women to make political points requires a pushback.
Calculated use of metaphors
Foeticide and rape are heinous offences which gravely violate the personhood, rights and dignity of the person against whom these offences are committed. By comparing these to the defeat of a Bill, which is nothing more than a political defeat, is to trivialise these offences and mock the victims and survivors.
But these utterances were far from inadvertent or merely a momentary lapse in judgment. The language was deliberate and politically calculated – to cast the defeat not simply as legislative disagreement, but as an assault on women themselves. The timing was crucial as well. Just days before elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the prime minister used this rhetoric to politically isolate opposition parties – portraying them as forces intent on crushing women’s aspirations and dignity, while positioning himself as the sole defender and custodian of women’s rights.
However, even as he was aggressively building a narrative of ‘anti-women’ opposition and “milking” the defeat of the Bills to its advantage, his party was also careful in ensuring that it didn’t alienate its core voter base – entitled men. See for instance, how Tejasvi Surya, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP referred to women’s reservation as........