CHENNAI: WHat’s patriarchy ya?” You might expect that question, complete with the sucked-on-a-lemon-slice expression upon hearing the word and the dismissive tone used when responding to it (both evident on video footage of the relevant incident) from your average dudebro, WhatsApp group uncle, YouTube commentator, or a very sheltered woman with an internalised misogyny issue.
Coming from one of the most powerful women in this country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, such disdain lands in a very disappointing way.
Speaking to students at Bengaluru’s Jain University recently, Ms. Sitharaman was replying to a question on whether she had also faced the systemic inequality and lack of familial support that many if not most Indian women experience in their lives and work.
The question was based on the well-substantiated premise that the paradigm we exist in is patriarchal, and was fair in its inquiry about how a woman of such importance rose despite it.
The FM admitted that women are not “facilitated adequately”, but claimed that patriarchy is “a concept invented by the Left” and that examples like Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu and the women scientists of ISRO indicate that those who claim inequality are just making excuses for themselves.
Activist Kavita Krishnan, excerpting on Instagram from her article in The Quint, put it perfectly: “Ms. Sitharaman is using one woman’s achievements to discredit and silence other women.
Praise for one woman’s ‘efficiency’ and capability is a stick to berate other women.
A government that wants to silence women to maintain the fiction that its nation is perfect, is dangerous.”
This is a succinct yet incisive position that clearly delineates how problematic the denial of patriarchal oppression is on what may be regarded as an interpersonal level (reflecting the mindset that many individuals ascribe to), as well as how such statements merge seamlessly into any formidable national-level agenda that thrives on muzzling and control.
The FM stated in the event that patriarchy is “impossible” in India. She also said: “Let there be an equal argument between matriarchy and patriarchy”. It is unclear what was meant by the latter comment, but the former does more than downplay the truth — it erases it. She is hardly unique in this line of thought, of course.
Many assert similar ideas: that feminism is an overreaction to a natural and healthy order, that skewed influences or foreign objectives are the only motivations to challenge that order, and that individual effort is sufficient to overcome any hurdles, essentially accusing people who are unable to galvanise change in their own lives of projecting onto the world at large.
To refute the impact of patriarchy in India, not just in the past but certainly in contemporary Indian subcultures and societies, usually comes out of — in ascending order of contentious intention — ignorance, privilege, prejudice or deliberate gaslighting.
Who benefits when systemic reality is denied, and when the onus is placed on individuals rather than systems? These are the real questions, ya. We should be pondering exactly this wherever we encounter such opinions. Power is relative. One doesn’t need to be a politician in order to exert influence. Anyone who experiences patriarchy knows that.