BJP and Gender Question: Crying Over ‘Humiliation of Women’ is Just a Facade

The Women's Reservation Bill aiming at 33% of Lok Sabha seats for women in Lok Sabha was passed in 2023, but was not implemented so far. Despite the crocodile tears of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill 2026 linking women’s reservation with delimitation, fell, the fact is that since it was passed in 2023, it could have been implemented in the 2024 elections as well, with necessary steps in the direction.

The issue was the discrepancy in the rise of population in Northern and Southern states. Roughly, in the Northern states, the TFR (Total Fertility rate) being higher than the one in Southern states, this delimitation exercise would have given more weightage to the Northern states, where the hold of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is higher. The Southern states are wary of this and so came out in full strength to oppose it.

The BJP is crying hoarse that Opposition parties are “humiliating women” by opposing the amendment. This apparent support of BJP to women’s representation is just a façade.

Several steps for empowerment of women have generally been taken up by the Indian National Congress (INC). Right from the freedom movement, when it was leading the national movement against colonial powers, the INC has gradually ensured that women are not only part of the process of ‘India Nation in the Making’ but also part of the movements opposing British rule.

The INC encouraged women being part of the various phenomena of national life. After the marathon efforts of socials activists Jyotiba Phule and Savitribai Phule to give education to women, they did start coming to social space and played an important role in the struggle for independence.

Activist Chayanika Shah points out that INC had several women Presidents, a woman Prime minister, woman Chief Minister, and woman President in its trajectory. Taking this process of empowerment at grass root level structures, late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was keen not only in Panchayati Raj but also for increased representation of women in these institutions.

Let us contrast all this with the hyperbole of Modi. There is no record of any affirmative action of women during the BJP (i.e. National Democratic Alliance) rule of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee years or the Modi years. There seems to be an ideological connection between the BJP’s politics of Hindu Nationalism and their agenda of the role of women in politics. BJP is the political progeny of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS, which is an exclusively male organisation. When Laxmibai Kelkar (1936) requested the then RSS chief K B Hedgewar to let women be part of RSS, she was advised to form a subordinate organisation, Rashtra Sevika Samiti and was not permitted to join RSS.

The RSS stands for volunteers, while Rashtra Sevika Samiti stands for servants. This tells us that the swayam (being) of women is in control of men. This is in tune with the mandate of Manusmriti. This holy book was upheld by RSS all through and even now the RSS combine holds that the Indian Constitution is based on Western values and so should be scrapped (former RSS chief Rajendra Singh or Rajju Bhaiyya’s statement) and be replaced by a Manusmriti (as per K S Sudarshan, another sarsanghchalak of RSS)

This is also reflected in BJP’s policies, such as the awarding of Gandhi Peace Prize to Gita Press, Gorakhpur, a year ago. This was done by a jury headed by Modi. While giving the award, Modi stated that “They have done commendable work over the last 100 years towards furthering social and cultural transformations among the people” .

Author Akshaya Mukul in his masterly study of Gita Press shows how it played a major role in transforming the teachings of Manusmriti into popular small booklets which are sold in lakhs. These uphold husbands beating wives, glorifying women playing second fiddle to men and total subordination to men in their lives – father, husband and son -- in different phases of her life.

The BJP’s history is full of such humiliating statements from their office-bearers, which uphold abominable practices against women, including Sati (widow burning on the pyre of her husband). In the context of the Roop Kawar incident, the then BJP vice-president, Vijaya Raje Scindia, took out a procession supporting the practice of Sati. The slogan of the procession was that “committing Sati is not only a glorious tradition of Hindu women, it is also their right!”

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Another leader Mridula Sinha, (BJP Mahila Morcha) who was Governor of Goa a few years ago, had given an interview to Savvy magazine (April 1994) wherein she upheld wife-beating by husbands and the dowry system.

The 2021 data of the National Crime Records Bureau reveals that on average, 86 women were raped every day in India, while 49 cases of crimes against women were lodged every single hour. The overall number of crimes against women per one hundred thousand of the population increased from 56.3 in 2014 to 66.4 in 2022.

During the present regime, how cases of sexual violence and harassment were handled became clear when several such cases found their way into mainstream news, such as the gang-rape of a minor girl by a BJP legislator in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, in 2017;  the repeated repeated gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Kathua, Kashmir, in 2018; and the gang-rape of a Dalit girl in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. In 2020, women wrestlers’ complaints against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh were ignored in toto. The case of women’s plight in Manipur is beyond words.

While women MPs of BJP and others are making a lot of noise over the fall of this amendment Bill, the issue is why link it with delimitation? Why not move the Women’s Bill with the present strength of MPs and implement it. We need to raise our voice to delink delimitation from the women’s reservation Bill and call for its implementation right away as per the 2023 Bill.  

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.