POLITICS-INDIA: Caste, Religion Divide Women Over Legislative Quota

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Dec 26 2000 (IPS) - India’s male-dominated ruling class has again stalled a long-delayed legislation to earmark a third of seats in parliament and state legislatures for women.

The country’s patriarchal politicians have been able to ‘avoid’ the legislation because it is “too ambitious” for a country with other unresolved social problems, say political commentators.

No one was surprised when the bill to enact the proposed law, which was introduced in parliament by a former government four years ago, was shelved on the closing day of the winter session of the lower house of parliament last week.

As on previous occasions, a discussion on the bill was thwarted by filibustering opposition lawmakers who seemed to enjoy tacit backing from male colleagues, cutting across party lines.

Political observers say the legislation has now all but been buried, with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declaring his government would try to build a consensus on some “other way” of increasing the presence of women in parliament.

When the Women’s Reservation Bill was first tabled in Parliament in 1996 by the then left-wing United Front government, among its most vocal critics was one of the country’s most prominent women politicians — Uma Bharati of Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then an opposition lawmaker.

Now sports minister in the BJP-led government, Bharati describes the Bill as the brainchild of “upper caste socialite women.”

Bharati is herself a member of the so-called other backward castes, better known by the acronym OBCs, who constitute nearly 40 percent of the one billion Indians. The farming and peasant castes form the intermediate rung between the upper and lowest castes in hierarchical Hindu society.

Another staunch opponent of the bill is Civil Aviation Minister Sharad Yadav, who once derisively described pro-women’s quota activists as “those women with bobbed hair.” He was referring to the hairstyle popular among Indian women with upper class backgrounds. Indian tradition expects women to keep their hair long.

Bharati typifies the cross-conflict between gender and caste that has been on display at every session of Indian Parliament in the past four years.

Along with other OBC lawmakers, who form a third of the Lok Sabha (lower house), Bharati wants a separate quota for women from their social background, within the 33 percent of seats proposed to be set aside for women.

However, the staunchest opponent of the legislation is Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former defence minister, who also belongs to the OBC group.

Yadav, whose party holds sway over large parts of India’s most populous and politically important state of northern Uttar Pradesh, too wants a separate quota for OBC women. He also wants another quota for women from India’s largest minority Muslim community.

“If backwardness and marginalisation are the basis on which reservation is being sought, then these groups (Muslims and OBC women) are easily the most deserving,” argues Yadav.

A parliamentary panel, the ‘Committee for Empowerment of Muslim Women’, too has suggested that one-eighth of the proposed one-third quota for women, be earmarked for Muslim women.

“There is only one Muslim woman in the Lok Sabha and this under-representation must be corrected,” says well-known Muslim parliamentarian Syed Shabuddin.

But women’s groups, led by articulate, well-connected women, see all this as an attempt to divert from the basic gender issue.

“This is an attempt to divide women along caste lines and ensure that (male) monopolies will continue,” says Brinda Karat, who leads the All-India Women’s Democratic Association (AIDWA), affiliated to the Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M).

“Don’t divide women, we are one,” adds Ranjana Kumari, founder-director of the prestigious, internationally-funded, Centre for Social Research (CSR).

But neither Karat nor Kumari have the kind of popular following that BJP leader Bharati commands. And neither have been have been able to convince OBC leaders and members of these castes of their case.

“Our feminist lobby is unwilling to gracefully make space for the most marginalised amongst Indian women in the same way that they want men to make space for them,” says Madhu Kishwar, one of India’s best known women’s’ activist and journalists.

Kishwar thinks the women’s quota legislation has run into problems because women’s groups spearheading the demand have not allowed any space for dissent or suggestion to improve this and make it more acceptable.

“A Bill of such far-reaching consequences has been conceived and drafted so shoddily and irresponsibly that even those of us who have for years campaigned to bring about an enhancement in women’s political participation, feel compelled to oppose it in its present form,” says Kishwar.

According to Kishwar, the most serious flaw is the provision to reserve electoral constituencies by lottery.

This will cause constant and unpredictable rotation at every election so that at least one-third of male legislators will be uprooted from constituencies, which they may have nurtured for years.

With the Bill all but scuttled, political parties are now considering a proposal by Chief Election Commissioner M.S. Gill that parties set aside for women, a percentage of seats contested at election time.

Gill too has noted “serious flaws” in the women’s quota legislation, starting with the fact that it seeks to amend the constitution. “It is not good to amend the Constitution frequently — in the past 50 years we have witnessed nearly 90 amendments,” says Gill.

“Even if only 20 percent of the women compulsorily fielded by the parties make it, there would be about 120 women members making up about 30 percent of Parliament. Today only eight percent of members are women,” Gill points out.