Why is the Finance Minister Telling Indian Women to Stop Complaining?

What she said is not new. Which woman in India has never been accused of “Western elite feminism” when they have spoken about inequality or injustice based on their gender?

(Photo: Kamran Akhter/The Quint)

A student at Jain University in Bengaluru asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to comment on the systemic inequality women have to overcome in a patriarchal world. In reply, the Minister derided her concerns, exclaiming “What’s patriarchy ya?”

She then scolded and shamed her for expressing those concerns.

What she said is not new. Which woman in India has never been accused of “Western elite feminism” when they have spoken about inequality or injustice based on their gender?

But in this case, this message is not coming from your exasperating but harmless neighbourhood uncle or auntie. It comes from a Minister in the Central government, someone in a position of unusual power, authority, and influence. So, we can’t afford to just roll our eyes and laugh it off.

So, let’s look at what Ms Sitharaman is saying.

She said that women talk of inequality only to make excuses for their own “inefficiency.” Indira Gandhi became PM, and women worked in ISRO and reached Mars: this, she said, proves that patriarchy is “impossible” in India. 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.

Patriarchy, she said, was one of the “fantastic jargons” and “leftist jargons”, that persist because Indians do not “stand up” and reject them. Why did the Minister bristle with so much indignation at the mere mention of patriarchy by a student?

She flew into a temper tantrum precisely because the student was an Indian woman who did not believe it was unpatriotic to talk of patriarchy. If indeed patriarchy was a fantastic, foreign leftist invention, then the Minister would not have to work so hard to discredit it.

She is known for being defensive, resentful and even vindictive at the slightest criticism of some aspect of the economy or society. In September, at an interaction of the Finance Minister with representatives of small businesses in Coimbatore, a hotel owner raised the problems hoteliers faced in billing because of wildly varying GST rates for similar items. Later, a video was circulated showing him grovelling before the Minister, apologising for his remarks.    

Her conduct is a symptom of the shrinking democratic culture in Indian politics. The Modi Government wants to emulate the China model of governance, where the only role of the citizen is to applaud the actions of the state. How can society, the economy, or even the weather, be anything but perfect when the Great Leader is in power?

The Minister also told the student that women like her should stop criticising the family. In Western countries, she implied, women regret having complained about patriarchy because they now have no family to fall back upon.

There is nothing fantastic or foreign about women seeking freedom. Tissa, one of the earliest Buddhist nuns, composed a poem nearly 3000 years ago, saying

Break your chains. 

Tear down the walls.

Then walk the world a free woman. 

Other nuns composed songs celebrating freedom “from kitchen drudgery,” and from an “unscrupulous” or “twisted” husband.

A government that wants to silence women to maintain the fiction that its nation is perfect, is dangerous.

Ms Sitharaman’s outburst is a sign that this danger is already upon us. It was an act of intimidation, intended to have a chilling effect on social critique and government authority.

Will we Indians “stand up” and refuse to be silenced?

(Kavita Krishnan is a women's rights activist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)