Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Saturday said that instead of mitigating the problems faced by women, the past nine years had seen a sustained effort by the Modi government to turn women purely into symbols, to be counted and appreciated only in their restricted traditional roles in a patriarchal framework.
Addressing the Women’s Right Conference organised here by DMK MP Kanimozhi to commemorate the birth centenary of former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, Ms. Gandhi said that just as in every other frontier of rights, freedoms, equity, and equality, even among women, all the remarkable gains of the past 70 years had disappeared.
While Tamil Nadu had achieved the most impressive maternal and infant mortality rate through initiatives such as the mid-day meal programme, the promotion of women’s empowerment, and the encouragement of female education, these efforts and programmes had not been reflected at the national level. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin also took part in the event.
“I am confident that we, the like-minded parties of the INDIA alliance, can and will take the urgent steps needed to make women’s equality a reality,” Ms. Gandhi said.
She also made a strong case for advancing from the tendency to see “women as mothers, sisters and daughters and the relationships as the foundation of family life and society” to enable women to reach a status where they are seen as individuals who are equal in all respects in life, in work, and in status. “That is our goal and that is what we must fight for,” Ms. Gandhi said.
AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, who addressed a public gathering in Tamil Nadu for the first time, demanded immediate implementation of women’s reservation in Parliament and Assemblies. “We, the women of India, have no more time to waste. It is our right to be counted in the political process. I demand that our worth is valued and respected as a political instrument for our own empowerment,” she said.
Ms. Priyanka also urged women to put an end to the glorification of their tolerance for injustices committed against them day after day and reject any system, societal, religious or political, which thrived on oppression and forced them to collude with it.
Former CPI(M) MP Subhashini Ali said that in the past nine years, the BJP government had tried to destroy the Constitution and replace it with laws of the Manusmriti. “Punishment depends on the castes and religions of the criminals and their victims,” she alleged.
Leshi Singh, Food and Consumer Protection Minister of Bihar; Samajwadi Party MP Dimple Yadav, Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule; and National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) general secretary Annie Raja were among those who spoke at the event.
Emotional Priyanka
Ms. Priyanka turned emotional and recalled the day, 30 years ago, when she visited Tamil Nadu to receive the body of her father, Rajiv Gandhi, who had been assassinated by the LTTE.
“On the darkest night of my life, I first set foot on this land of Tamil Nadu to collect my father’s shattered body. I was 19 years old, and my mother was just a few years younger than I am today. As the door of the plane opened, the night grabbed us and drew us in, but I was not afraid of it because the worst thing I could have imagined had already happened. A few hours earlier, my father had been killed,” she recalled.
She said she had walked towards her mother that night knowing that the words she was to speak would break her heart. “Yet I spoke, and I watched as the light of happiness was extinguished from her eyes forever,” she said.
Ms. Priyanka also gratefully acknowledged how the women dressed in blue saris at the Meenambakkam airport held her mother’s arms and cried inconsolably with her as if they were all her mothers.
“In those shared tears, a bond formed between my heart and the women of Tamil Nadu, that I can neither explain, nor ever erase. You are my mothers, you are my sisters, and I am honoured to be here today, to have the opportunity to speak to you about us: the women of India,” she said.
