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Gender Bender by Arfa Khanum Sherwani

As soon as the Rajya Sabha passed the women’s reservation bill, ensuring 33 per cent reservations for women in Parliament and state legislative assemblies, the issue of backward and Muslim women jigged to the centre of the debate. Earlier, whenever Muslim women managed to come into the limelight, it was all grabbed by the Imranas and the Gudias, not to forget the Shahbanos — supposed to be living in the dark ages, oppressed by their own men. But all of a sudden, something changed. Everyone started searching for a leader in them, or making one out of them if possible.

A couple of self-made leaders may have emerged from the grassroots, but who can deny that since Independence there has been largely symbolic politics around Indian women, especially Muslim women? Why else could that community not produce even a single Sushma Swaraj or Mayavati in the last 60 years? Paradoxically, in the debate on Muslim women in and outside Parliament, the women themselves are completely missing. So disempowered are they that they need others to represent them even to the public and the media.

In the last 15 parliamentary elections, a total of 549 women went to the Lower House; only 18 of them were Muslim. At least six Lok Sabhas did not have a single Muslim woman.

The people of India sent three Muslim women to Parliament in the last elections (the highest number in a Lok Sabha so far). Looking at their backgrounds, one finds that the member of parliament from Malda, Mausam Noor, is the niece of the former Union minister, A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury; the Kairana MP, Tabassum Begum, is the widow of the powerful Bahujan Samaj Party MP, Munawar Hasan; and the parliamentarian from Sitapur, Kaiser Jahan, is the wife of Sitapur’s sitting BSP MLA, J. Ansari. It is nearly impossible to assume that these women would have still made it to Parliament without the support of their male family members.


Number game

According to some, if and when this bill becomes an act, it will be the biggest socio-political event since Independence. They say it will not just change the picture of Indian Parliament but the overall approach of Indian society towards its women, as also that of the world towards India.

The Sachar committee in its findings outlined that a shockingly low number of Muslim women go to university to get a graduation degree. Non-Muslim women are much better off. Compared to other societies, Muslim society, due to the hijab and other prevailing practices, largely does not motivate its women to venture out of home. A flashback of the last 15 elections has made us astute enough to apprehend that it is almost impossible for a Muslim candidate to get elected from an area that is not dominated by Muslims. We will be hoodwinking ourselves to think that gender will transcend caste and religion — a non-Muslim majority will elect a Muslim woman just because she is a woman. If gender could change so much, then why was there not a single woman parliamentarian who could go against her party line to speak her mind?

That a number of Muslim-majority areas have been reserved for Dalits is also one of the reasons given by the Sachar committee for the political under-representation of Muslims. In its present form, there is no provision in the women’s reservation bill that forbids reserving more such seats for women candidates only. So the general seats available for Muslim male candidates would be only 45 per cent. Even if we are to believe that Muslim women leaders will emerge from unexpected quarters, and that their numbers will multiply, they are still set to bring down the overall figure of Muslim representatives reaching Delhi.