Smriti’s opportunistic feminism.

Preamble: Smriti Irani, our honourable Union HRD Minister, wrote a long-ish post on social media about her ‘achievements’ in India’s education landscape and brought feminism into it somehow (because Bihar’s Education Minister wrote a tweet that began with ‘Dear Smriti Irani ji,…’), portraying herself, a highly privileged person who is literally and officially classified a VIP (Very Important Person) in India, as a poor oppressed woman whose only fault is her gender, which is being used to abuse and belittle her.

If people believe she wrote this herself, they deserve her as education minister. It is as simple as that.

And to the copywriter, I say that you should see Ektaa Kapoor. She would have work for you, though honestly, if it was me, I’d never employ your services because you are obviously unable to ‘get into character’ (the reference to Jerry Maguire? FFS, dude. WTF are you smoking?).

As for Ms Irani, stop making everything about your gender. You are far from a model representative of women in this country, and even farther from the model politician or education or HRD minister. Note that your predecessors included such doyens as Maulana Azad, M C Chagla, P V Narsimha Rao, and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Stop pretending that you are even close to their scholarship, or can match their thinking, vision, or work. Or that their genders had anything to do with it.

Importantly, and on a very serious note to the bhakts, you people be careful who you put on a pedestal. Else, she’ll become one of BJP’s ‘veteran’ and ‘senior’ and ‘respected’ leaders very soon. Her thin skin, her 24×7 ‘offence is the best defence’ posture, and cultivating of the ‘strong leader’ image, along with lack of any real education, experience, or political victories, makes her the perfect candidate for the extreme right. And when I say ‘extreme’, I mean the kind that’ll make Advani and Modi seem like Kanhaiya Kumars. Beware her rise. Modi doesn’t know what he’s raising.

One day, she’ll consume Modi. And the only way to fight her (as her party people will realise) would be to be ‘righter’ than her: even more extreme in their views than her. And this race to the bottom will consume them, you, me, all of us, before we realise how quickly the society we consider robust, and the democracy we consider hardy, has descended to chaos, and perhaps another (or many) partition(s).

This is not just about her response or her education, or (as she’d want to put it) her gender. This is not even about the flawless rhetoric in impeccable English in her ghost-written letter or her emotive ‘performance’ in Parliament, or her emotional appeal to feminism.

By the way, don’t even get me started on her claim to feminism. She has been part of the regressive casteist, sexist, fundamentalist right-wing from the beginning of her political career. Hell, given her choice of roles during her actor phase, I’d say she’s been that way even way before that.

मिनिस्टर साहिबा, feminism कोई अचार नहीं है…के कभी-कभी स्वाद के लिए रोटी-सब्ज़ी के साथ परोस लिया…और बाकी समय बोतल में भरके फ्रिज में रख दिया।

tl;dr: (1) raising the bogey of sexism at your convenience, through ghost-written emotive rhetoric while representing what is perhaps the most regressive political party in Indian history does not make you an icon or model for women. It makes you a fraud. (2) I can see how she’s positioning herself to be holier-than-thou, extremer-than-anyone, constantly on-the-offensive, great alternative right political hope for those who will eventually tire of Modi’s inflated 56 inches. I hope others can see it too. As well as where it might lead our nation.