Surfing news channels for my daily dose of current affairs while sipping late morning tea, a lady answering audience questions on ABP news caught my attentuon. This was Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP suprimo Sharad Pawar, in a program titled 'Ghoshnapatra'. Political biases aside, I must say I was impressed with the grace with which she answered some serious and tough questions, may it be about Farmers' suicides in Maharshtra or Dynasty politics.
What caunght my attention was her answers to two differnt random questions, that strangely connected on one subject.
A gentleman in flowery words questioned her about Dynasty politics. Obviously, this was directed towards her own 'Pawar-house' (*hint, pun). To which she gave example of R.R.Patil (Home Minister Maharashtra) who has no political background. Also, she mentioned about Nationalist Congress Party's efforts in incresing women's participation in politics right from grass-root level and how they have reached out to Women in rural Maharashtra.
After few other questions, another gentleman pointed out that often her name is mentioned as a candidate for the post of Maharashtra's CM...will the people see her as Maharashtra's first female CM?
The answer to this question is always a shy denial, but the way she denied was what impressed me the most. "I am against any kind of tokenism. A female CM does not guarantee safety and security for women. Uttar Pradesh had a female CM (Miss Mayavati) for four terms and we all know about the situation there." - She denied and NOT!
She cleverly denied any sexist ethusiasms and left the question on CM's post unanswered. We all know what an unanswered question means.
Every now and then we see people demanding more posts be headed by females, since that would ensure soltion to women's issues. Is this not sexism...against women? Are we saying a person should be given a certain post and celebrated only becuse the pronoun associated is 'SHE'? In doing so are we not undermining that person's talents and capabilities? And most importantly, drawing from Supria Sule's words, aren't we trading Feminism for Tokenism, thereby opening new ways for women to be exploited? (Remember how Lalu Prasad Yadav used Rabri Devi as a remote control? Oh, those who'd call it misogynitic Male dominated Society's treatement of women, remember Manmohan Singh's case?)
There is a thin line between all these 'isms'... let us not forget this in our enthusiasms for whatever sex we favour.
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