The book is as much a tribute to the resilience and dedication of these women leaders as it is a political commentary on contemporary Indian politics, writes Rajesh Singh
Pandora’s Daughters
Author: Kalyani Shankar
Publisher: Bloomsbury, Rs 499
The Women’s Reservation Bill may still be far from becoming law, but the absence of this empowering legislation has not stopped women leaders from assuming important positions in the politics of the country over the decades. Such leaders have carved their place cutting across party lines and ideologies and in the face of a system which has traditionally been less than generous to them. Pandora’s Daughters is as much a tribute by Kalyani Shankar to the resilience and dedication of these women leaders as it is a political commentary on contemporary Indian politics.
The author has chosen to profile a clutch of living women leaders. If she had cast the net a bit wider, those like Indira Gandhi and Sucheta Kriplani would have made the list. While there is a glut of material on the former, readers would have immensely benefitted from an insight into Kriplani, who was the country’s first Chief Minister (she became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in the early 1960s). And, among the living, she would have done well to omit Pratibha Patil. Given that Patil rose to become the President of India solely due to her loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family; that she had done nothing remarkable in her political career before; that her performance as Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is forgettable; and, that she clocked up a miserable performance as President, one wonders what quality Shankar saw in her to include her in her list.
After all, the author admits that Congress president Sonia Gandhi pulled Patil out of retirement and made her the Governor of Rajasthan, “recognising her loyalty”. Moreover, she became President by accident and not because she deserved to be. The Congress’s initial choice was former Union Minister for Home Affairs Shivraj Patil, but the left, which was then supporting the UPA Government, scuttled his name (just as they did with Karan Singh). Patil, thus, got the presidentship on a platter.
But the author’s other inclusions are well-deserved, though one may have reservations over the kind of politics that some of these women leaders have indulged in. These leaders — Sonia Gandhi, Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, J Jayalalithaa, Sheila Dikshit, Sushma Swaraj and Mehbooba Mufti — represent a wide range of political style, substance and ideological commitment. Yet, the common thread that runs through them is that all barring one (Mamata Banerjee) have made it to the top through sheer work and some helpful push from their political patrons. The West Bengal Chief Minister is the lone ranger who has pushed her way to glory without patronage from any established leader. As she is not beholden to a leader, she can afford to rebellious. Perhaps that explains her fiery independence.
While the stories of all these leaders make for interesting reading, the one that stands on sheer drama and dazzle is that of Jayalalithaa’s. It offers insights that help explain the persona of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister — her famed arrogance and deep distrust of people, even of those who are supposed to be close to her. The author takes us down memory lane to the monumental developments that metamorphosed her into a politician from a successful film star, her roller-coaster relationship with her mentor MG Ramachandran (known popularly as MGR), her battles with entrenched interests within the party and in MGR’s close circle, and eventually her stupendous success in claiming his mentor’s legacy and the ADMK’s leadership, which continues to provide momentum to her politics to this day.
But, as Shankar points out, Jayalalithaa’s tryst with destiny began even before she stepped into politics. She had wanted to study beyond school and college and hoped to become “a star on the legal firmament like Nani Palkhivala, Ram Jethmalani and Fali Nariman”. But her family’s financial situation was grim. Not only did she have no money for higher education, but she also had to find means to keep the house going. That’s when she entered films, beginning off with a box office hit with her very first outing. However, it was her paring with leading Tamil star MGR that became a game-changer in ways more than one. With success came the jealousies of contemporaries who worked overnight to sow seeds of discord between MGR and her.
That attempt continued after she entered politics as his protégé. like a good script writer, the author details the dramatic scenes that took place after MGR took ill, her vain visits to the hospital to see him, and finally, the most dramatic of all, when she was roughly pushed out by MGR’s family members during the funeral procession of the charismatic leader. Any lesser leader would have slunk into oblivion after the humiliation. But Jayalalithaa was made of sterner stuff. The insult steeled her further, and she turned the tide in her favour. In the process, she neither forgot nor forgave.
By comparison, the rise of women leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, Mehbooba Mufti and Sheila Dikshit was easier, though they had to contend with challenges in their different ways. All the three come from deeply established political families and had a head-start that others were not privileged with. But that advantage could have been soon lost had they been less than adroit. The lust for power does not respect families or institutions.
Somewhere in between the ‘power on-a-platter’ and fiercely fighting a ‘no-holds-barred-battle-on-her-way-to-the-top’ scenarios is the one that came senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Sushma Swaraj’s way. Jayaprakash Narayan first noticed her and recommended her name for electoral politics. later, veteran party leader lK Advani mentored her (he still does) and assisted her rise to be counted among the senior-most and widely respected leaders of the BJP. However, it would be unfair to her to conclude that mere patronage has taken her to where she stands today. Her commitment, administrative ability, oratorical skills and articulation of complex issues in a manner that the common man grasps, are well-acknowledged. Shankar quotes Advani as saying that Swaraj “creates the same complex in me as Vajpayee did”. For the BJP’s most prominent woman leader, no compliment could be greater.
However, no narrative on the rise of women leaders in India can be complete without acknowledging Mayawati’s success graph. Unlike Jayalalithaa, the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo did not face serious internal squabbles once the founder of modern-day Dalit politics, Kanshi Ram, anointed her as his successor. While he guided and groomed her, the protégé was left pretty much on her own thereafter. After Kanshi Ram’s death, Mayawati not only built on the foundation which he had laid, but also rewrote socio-political combinations by crafting the unimaginable Dalit-Brahmin axis in Uttar Pradesh. She is down now in the State. but certainly not out. In tenacity, political ruthlessness and the ability to bounce back, Mayawati has few parallels.
There is one omission in the author’s list that many readers with a national perspective will not have noticed. It is that of Shashikala Kakodkar — daughter of Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party founder and liberated Goa’s first Chief Minister Dayanand Bandodkar’s daughter. Kakodkar became the Chief Minister after her father’s demise and provided the then Union Territory a stable and largely efficient Government between 1973 and 1979. Although she is not the force today that she once was, Kakodkar remains one of the country’s earliest prominent women leaders.