Nainital: Great women are not necessarily good mothers, said Subhashini Ali, adding that she was very happy that her mother, a freedom fighter, was not a good mother.
Ali, a former Lok Sabha MP and CPI(M) leader, was speaking at the Nainital Literature Festival on Saturday.
She was joined by three women on the stage—transformation coach GeetArsh Kaur, filmmaker and writer Madhureeta Anand, and author Richa S Mukherjee—for an unapologetic session, titled Her Unmapped Realms: Women navigate uncharted realms of strength, ambition, and self-discovery beyond visible boundaries. It drew laughter, applause, and raised some eyebrows.
Coming from diverse fields, there was one common strand in the lives of the panellists—the challenges they had to navigate to reach the stage.
Ali’s mother, Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, was a doctor who treated prisoners of war during World War 2 in Singapore and later served in the Indian National Army alongside Subhas Chandra Bose. Ali said her patients were her mother’s first priority, even her children came later.
“We never took ourselves (Ali and her sibling) seriously because our mother never took us seriously. And that is something that helped me stay on my feet. I feel very happy that my mother was not a good mother, ” said Ali.
When we have such good examples of extraordinary women and an all-women panel at a literature festival, why is there still a need to talk about gender equality?
For Ali, it’s because a handful of successful women is not the true story of the state of women in a country.
As the conversation moved to the ever-present problem of crime against women, Anand broke down what she described as the “mechanics of unsafe spaces”.
It isn’t just the fear of being raped that makes women feel unsafe; just being ogled can plant doubts in their heads. “Maybe she is not in the right place, maybe she is not wearing the right clothes,” said Anand, as some heads nodded in unison.
The filmmaker also highlighted a problematic pattern seen in how crimes against women are reported.
“A woman gets raped’. But who raped her?” said Anand, stressing that headlines don’t hold the perpetrators accountable and instead seem to pin the blame on the victims.
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The right of representation
Speaking of charting her own path, GeetArsh Kaur said she was never ambitious, and the idea of building a career never crossed her mind.
“My biggest regret is that I never went to college,” said Kaur, as she reflected on her journey from being a “12th pass” to a teacher and then an image consultant.
A discussion on women led by women has to touch upon the issue of representation—a word that Richa S Mukherjee said is quite vilified today.
But for Ali, representation is a right that women are entitled to.
Among 4,666 MPs/MLAs across the country, only 464 or 10 per cent are women. This is abysmal when compared to the fact that, as per the 2011 census, 48.5 per cent of India was female.
“I don’t believe that women are better than men. Women have proven themselves to be as awful as men. But whether they are good or bad doesn’t matter; representation is their right,” said Ali as she pointed out the low number of women MPs in India.
Even those women who make it to the power corridors hesitate to speak for the reservation of women, fearing backlash from their own parties, Ali argued.
“Don’t think we live in a dream world and will get what we deserve. This world is based on inequality, and the people who run this world love inequality…We have a huge fight ahead, so get ready for that fight, and please fight for others too,” the former MP said.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)