Why Mayawati is Wrong and What the Latest Episode Tells us About Presstitutes of India

(Courtest: DNA)

Dayashankar Singh's abhorrent comment on Mayawati, a self made woman leader and supremo of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of Uttar Pradesh, is nothing but worth condemnation. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has rightfully suspended the leader for good, and it is good to learn that FIRs have been registered against him.

That there is such sexism present in the politics is something that should be worrying to all of us. However, the way Mayawati tried to rake political mileage out of the issue through her show of strength in Uttar Pradesh and pockets of strength in North India was shameless to say the least. Sample some of the statements that have been stated in response:

1. 'I am like a goddess to them' - golden words of humility spoken by no less than Mayawati herself.
2. 'Dayashankar's family women are what they called Behenji - prostitutes' - an over eager (probably ticket seeking) loyalist Usha Chaudhary
3. 'Whoever gets Dayashankar's tongue will get 50lakh rupees' - Jannat Jahan, a BSP leader from Chandigarh (notable that a few years back some BSP leader announced a 51crore award for a Danish cartoonist head - typical of the Sharia Bolshevism such parties promote)

The problem with this demonstration is that Mayawati, in her attempts to draw mileage out of the issue, has ended up reducing the gravity of such charges. It is not new to her though - she has in fact even made light of as grave a crime as rape when she said the same things to the then chief minister Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav after she visited the Maderasa in Allahabad where some Muslim women’s were raped. Another attempt to politicize the same only weakens her arguments towards playing the victim card. Moreover, her politically charged speech in Parliament where she was inadvertently saying similar things about the women in Dayashankar Singh's family. Had she handled it more gracefully people would have agreed with her stand. However by the repeated attack, and the continuous attachment of this statement to the BJP, she is making clear a couple of political points:

1. These tactics are an acknowledgment of the fact that the fight in Uttar Pradesh this time is between the BJP and the BSP, which is pretty much the ground reality right now; and
2. There is an attempt to polarize non-Dalit SC votes within Uttar Pradesh, which have traditionally never voted for the BSP, an acknowledgment of the slippery ground on which the BSP stands, which has been rocked by desertions of key organizers and leaders.

Political theater notwithstanding, we do see a major duplicity in the way media considers women in politics of certain ideological leaning. Consider the following tweet by respectable journalist Uma Sudhir on a statement made by one of the worst misogynists, Arvind Kejriwal, in the wake of Rohit Vemula's suicide at Hyderabad Central University and the reaction of the protesting Student Federation of India (SFI) students:



Additionally, a look at the shameless attempt at sexual innuendos made by a news channel, Aaj Tak, on the same woman, is worth a watch. It is to her sagacity that she took charge of the situation and prevented a lynch mob from scalping the Aaj Tak journalists for indulging in gutter level language.

This is not the first time when the so-called progressive elements of the media have indulged in such double speak. Padma Rao Sundarji recalled in an article a year and a half ago on how the same so called progressives did not refrain from making fun of Uma Bharti back in the day for her rustic English accent. On the other hand, the kid-glove treatment given to their own ilk by the famed presstitutes of India to a certain Goa lift rapist, a famous PM media advisor aand continued attempts to rehabilitate such people into the mainstream by a large family of theirs, nd even the convenient quiet on the continued innuendos made on female leaders like Smriti Irani or the several private jokes on Mayawati by the chatterati, are nothing short of hypocrisy. The eminent presstitutes have no fig leaf to cover their fake righteousness. Let us not even start on pulling out hatchets my dear presstitutes.