The left-liberal cabal starts singing “women empowerment” when it suits its purpose. However, when it doesn’t fit their agenda, the woke liberals don’t mind degrading women with the worst of epithets and calling them all sorts of names. This clearly shows that the woke liberals don’t give two hoots to women’s empowerment, they play the women’s card merely as a political tool.
The Congress pretends to be a champion of women’s rights. One of its poll promises, as stated in its manifesto is giving a 50 percent job quota to women, if it comes to power. But does Congress truly respect women beyond the rhetoric of quota politics and freebies?
Senior Congress leader Randeep Surjewala recently made derogatory comments against noted Bollywood actress and BJP MP from Mathura Hema Malini. In a video posted by the BJP IT Department Head Amit Malviya on X, Surjewala can be heard making vile, sexist remarks against Hema Malini. “Hum MLA/MP kyun banate hain, taaki who hamaree avaaz utha saken, hamaree baat manwa saken, iseeliye banate hain, koi Hema Malini to naheen, jo chaatne ke liye banate hain”, Surjewala can be heard saying in the video.
Randeep Surjewala’s comments against Hema Malini roughly translate as “Why do we elect leaders to the position of MPs and MLAs? So that they can raise their voice for our issues, so that they can lobby on our behalf with the government to solve our problems, MPs/MLAs are not like Hema Malini who is made to lick?” No matter how much Surjewala tries to save himself by saying that the BJP took his comments out of context, the fact is he is using Hema Malini as an example to apparently show what is not the function of MLAs and MPs. By making such a disgusting remark against a woman, he is casually objectifying women, and by further justifying that objectification instead of apologizing, he is trying to lend further credibility to that justification.
The opposition campaign at the moment lacks any rational grounding. Rather than highlighting their own promises and doing constructive campaigning, their sole motive seems to be attacking the BJP and bad-mouthing its leaders. In their quest to defame the BJP, the opposition has found a new toolkit in the invocation of sexist, anti-women stereotypes. BJP Earlier, a derogatory comment against Bollywood actor and BJP candidate from the Mandi Lok Sabha seat Kangana Ranaut, was posted from the official X account of Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate. “Can someone tell me what is the current rate in Mandi (market)?”. The post read. After facing severe backlash, Shrinet claimed that the post was not made by her and that someone who had access to her accounts had created the post. The controversial post was eventually taken down.
With the opposition continuously attacking BJP’s women candidates using unsavory language and pernicious stereotypes, exposing the anti-women rhetoric of the opposition has also become a campaign issue for the BJP. Kangana Ranaut attacked Congress’s anti-women attitude through a recent post on X:
“They were talking about opening a shop of love but Congress has instead opened a shop of hatred. Congress leaders harboring such a disgusting mindset towards women are totally frustrated and dejected because of their imminent defeat. Thus, in their dejection and frustration, these leaders are stooping to new lows every day” (Kangana Ranaut on X).
The contrast between the opposition’s lip service to women’s issues and the ruling BJP’s empowerment of women at the grassroots level is getting more and more evident with each passing day. Even as the woke lobby bats for corrupt women politicians like Mahua Moitra portraying them as some kind of ultimate symbols of women’s liberation, the BJP government gives space and representation to women from the periphery. BJP has given an election ticket to Rekha Patra, one of the victims of the Sandeshkhali horrors. The BJP has fielded Rekha Patra from Basirhat, who is a resident of Sandeshkhali and is a brave survivor of Sandeshkhali violence. She was the first woman to raise her voice against TMC MLA Sheikh Shahjahan, Shibu Hazra, and Uttam Sardar, and inspire other women to do the same and speak against the atrocities.
After getting BJP’s candidature, Rekha also received a call from PM Modi who described her as “Shakti Swaroopa” highlighting her fight against the perpetrators of Sandeshkhali violence. Wife of a migrant worker in Tamil Nadu, Rekha has also promised to work towards creating job opportunities in West Bengal and putting effective brakes on population migration in search of work.
BJP has a history of empowering women workers at the grassroots level and providing them with systems of support for fostering their political growth and development. What can be a bigger example than the inspiring journey of the country’s President Draupadi Murmu who is the first tribal woman to serve as the President of Bharat. She started as a BJP worker in Odisha at the grassroots level. She entered mainstream politics in 1997; Draupadi Murmu joined the BJP and was elected as the Councilor of the Rairangpur Nagar Panchayat. In 2000, she won the Odisha Legislative Assembly election from the Rairangpur assembly constituency. Draupadi Murmu was also the Minister of State with Independent Charge for Commerce and Transportation and Fisheries and Animal Resources Development when Odisha was under the BJP and BJD coalition government.
President Draupadi Murmu remained the Governor of Jharkhand from May 2015 till July 2021. Her political trajectory is indeed a testimony to how BJP empowers women leaders from within local communities and provides them with immense opportunities for political development. From giving tickets to an overwhelming number of women candidates in elections to appointing women in key positions of power within the party structure and government, BJP’s approach to women empowerment has always been characterized by practice rather than preaching. The country’s first-ever Defence Minister was Nirmala Sitharaman under the first tenure of the BJP government. The country’s first-ever Finance Minister is also Nirmala Sitharaman, under the current BJP government. The BJP also gave Bharat its first-ever External Affairs Minister in the form of Sushma Swaraj.
Despite the BJP having such a strong cohort of women leaders and the party having taken numerous initiatives for empowering women across the country, the woke circles portray the BJP as anti-women. That’s because, unlike Congress, the BJP doesn’t subscribe to a woke mode of women empowerment and doesn’t bad mouth Bharatiya cultural ethos while talking about the empowerment of women.
The wokes subscribe to a rather superficial model of women empowerment wherein if a woman follows Bharatiya customs and doesn’t fit into the cliched mold of the “westernized and modern” woman, then she is considered backward. That is why the likes of Mahua Moitra are considered champions of women’s liberations because they are seen as rebelling against the social codes and mores of Bharatiya culture, never mind the fact that they are mired in corruption from head to toe and are not even good leaders for that matter.
The woke leftists of Bharat follow no coherent line of thought when it comes to women’s empowerment. Rather, they are just opportunists celebrating some women who fit their narrative and degrading others who don’t. Nirmala Sitharaman, the country’s Finance Minister who is also a JNU alumni has been attacked by the wokes multiple times and been called regressive and backward only because she is a part of the BJP. Had she belonged to the left-liberal ecosystem, she would have been celebrated as an intellectual and visionary. But just because she is a part of the BJP, the left-liberal cabal leaves no stone unturned in insulting and degrading her. This is the shoddy reality of woke leftists of Bharat who talk hi-fi stuff when it comes to women empowerment but never quite walk the talk.
BJP has initiated and implemented numerous women empowerment schemes ever since it came to power. The way these schemes have been envisaged; they address the concerns of women at the grassroots level of Bharatiya society. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter), Ujjwala Yojana ( free cooking gas cylinders to women from low-income households), Mahila Shakti Kendra ( empowering rural women through community participation ), Working Women Hostel Scheme, Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana ( centrally sponsored conditional cash transfer scheme available to all pregnant women and lactating mothers ), etc. These are just a few examples.
The BJP has started numerous women-centric schemes to empower women financially, socially, and culturally across the country. Under the Swachh Bharat initiative, various campaigns were run to make women realize the importance of using sanitary pads during menstrual cycles. The government empowered communities of local women leaders across the country who educated women on the importance of following menstrual hygiene. The government also encouraged multiple initiatives providing low-cost sanitary products to women from low-income backgrounds.
BJP is further empowering Bharatiya women by empowering ambitious schemes like “Lakhpati Didis’ and “Drone Didis “. Under the Lakhpati Didis, scheme, over one crore women have reportedly become Lakhpati didis. Also, drones have been reportedly handed over to 1,000 “Namo Drone Didis”, women chosen to operate drones for agriculture and related purposes.
The PM Modi government, since it first came to power in 2014, has created a discourse on numerous issues affecting women – the issue of sanitation which majorly affects women, the use of sanitary pads, adverse effects of smoke-causing kitchen fuels like coal and wood, and the need for financial empowerment of women.
The wokes talk about women’s empowerment in rather nebulous and discursive terms, talking about the supposedly progressive attributes of women who are already empowered to a considerable extent. But the reality is women’s empowerment goes much beyond the superficial talk of free sex and free-spirited existence. Ironically enough, many a time, the woke definition of women empowerment ends up enabling the obscene commercial framework that has created a whole industry out of objectification of women in the name of freedom of choice. In such a scenario, the BJP’s definition of women’s empowerment seems more rooted and closer to home.
