top of page

By:

Correspondent

21 August 2024 at 3:50:16 pm

Patriarchy Politics

Rahul Gandhi’s latest clarion call to “smash patriarchy” is less a revolutionary manifesto than yet another of the Congress scion’s revealing exercises in political condescension. It presumes that Indian women need to be told what their liberation should look like and that the prescribed route leads straight to Rahul Gandhi’s politics. India has spent decades moving from treating women as dependants to recognising them as citizens and political actors in their own right. Yet Gandhi’s...

Patriarchy Politics

Rahul Gandhi’s latest clarion call to “smash patriarchy” is less a revolutionary manifesto than yet another of the Congress scion’s revealing exercises in political condescension. It presumes that Indian women need to be told what their liberation should look like and that the prescribed route leads straight to Rahul Gandhi’s politics. India has spent decades moving from treating women as dependants to recognising them as citizens and political actors in their own right. Yet Gandhi’s formulation typically thrusts some 70 crore Indian women into a tired ideological straitjacket which essentially says that patriarchy is the cage whose doctrine is supplied by the Manusmriti while its politics is supplied by the RSS-BJP supplies the politics. The real question is why Rahul Gandhi’s crusade against patriarchy so often seems to begin with Hindu civilisation and end before it reaches the uncomfortable terrain of minority religious orthodoxy. If patriarchy is a universal evil, why is its vocabulary deployed so relentlessly against Hindu customs, texts and institutions, while political sensitivities are invoked whenever criticism might offend a minority constituency? Furthermore, an Indian woman can reject patriarchy and remain deeply religious. She can be fiercely independent and politically conservative. She can reject the Manusmriti, admire it, ignore it or regard it as irrelevant to her life. She can disagree with Rahul Gandhi without being backward, oppressed or insufficiently liberated. The whole point of agency is that Indian women are entitled to reach their own conclusions. Rahul Gandhi’s feminism becomes remarkably selective when it encounters politically inconvenient constituencies. The Congress opposed the government’s legislation against instant triple talaq instead of making Muslim women’s autonomy the overriding principle. The Shah Bano episode remains an indelible reminder of what happens when the politics of appeasement overwhelms the politics of women’s rights. If patriarchy is truly the enemy, it cannot be condemned only when it can be conveniently attached to Hindu texts, Hindu traditions or political opponents. What about coercion justified in the name of religion? What about practices that deny women autonomy? A feminism that refuses to confront those questions is political selectivity dressed up as emancipation. Gandhi lectures India about dismantling entrenched hierarchies while remaining the product and beneficiary of perhaps India’s most enduring political dynasty. Her sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, despite possessing an independent political identity, had spent years politically subordinate to her brother. After repeated electoral failures, perhaps the Congress heir should pause before instructing Indian women about agency. They do not need a dynastic politician to explain freedom to them. They have been exercising it for decades in their homes, professions, communities, politics and ballot boxes. The greatest insult to women is the assumption that they are incapable of thinking beyond somebody else’s ideological script. Indian women neither need Rahul Gandhi to define their liberation nor tell them whom liberation requires them to vote for.

Pakistan eyes India’s sugar shortage

Kolhapur: Twenty-seven years after the controversial “Sugar Gate” episode during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, Pakistan is once again eyeing India’s sugar market, this time seeking permission to export up to 1.2 million tonnes of sugar to India amid a tightening domestic supply situation and a sharp rise in prices.


The Pakistan Sugar Mills Association has approached the Pakistan government seeking approval to export up to 1.2 million tonnes of surplus sugar to India. The proposal comes days after India permitted duty-free imports of one million tonnes of sugar to cool domestic prices, raising the possibility of Pakistani sugar entering the Indian market.


The proposed exports are significant against the backdrop of the controversy that erupted in Parliament in August 1999, when India imported sugar to address a domestic shortage.


The Congress had then alleged that a substantial portion of the imports came from Pakistan and accused the Vajpayee-led BJP government of favouring sugar mills linked to the family of then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The government rejected the allegations, but the episode became a major political controversy.


The latest development has acquired added significance because India is again facing a delicate demand-supply situation in sugar. Prices have surged sharply, with retail sugar prices nearing the Rs 70-a-kg mark in several markets. The Centre’s decision to allow one million tonnes of duty-free imports is aimed at improving domestic availability and containing prices ahead of the festival season.


Pakistan’s sugar industry sees an opportunity in the situation.


According to the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association, Pakistan had around 2.8 million tonnes of sugar stocks as of August 15, while monthly domestic consumption is estimated at about 550,000 tonnes.


Pakistan’s sugar industry has also highlighted the country’s foreign-exchange constraints.


The timing of the proposal is therefore significant. India’s decision to open a window for duty-free sugar imports has created an opportunity for Pakistan’s sugar industry to dispose of its surplus stocks while earning valuable foreign exchange.


For India, however, any proposal to source sugar from Pakistan is likely to carry political as well as economic implications. The memory of the 1999 “Sugar Gate” controversy remains relevant, particularly because the proposed Pakistani exports come at a time when sugar prices and domestic availability have once again become politically sensitive issues.


Whether Pakistan is eventually permitted to enter the Indian sugar market remains to be seen. But the request has already revived memories of a controversy that once shook Parliament and has placed Pakistan’s surplus sugar stocks squarely in the spotlight of India’s current sugar crisis.

Comments

bottom of page