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With triple talaq, Modi govt has smartly responded to the upsurge among Muslim women

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The popular perception about the BJP’s idea of gender has been one of limiting women to culturally defined roles. But with an increased emphasis on initiatives like Triple Talaq ban, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Ujjwala, the BJP has managed to address and cultivate a female vote bank.

With Triple Talaq, Ujjwala and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, has the BJP appropriated the gender agenda politically?

This proposition assumes that some people/organisations have monopoly over gender issues and the BJP snatched away their exclusive rights. By this logic, as someone who founded Manushi—A Journal about Women & Society, way back in 1978, I could more legitimately claim that latter day feminists appropriated our agenda and presented it in a distorted form. But I would never make such absurd claims even though many hail Manushi as the Mother of Indian feminism.

By providing gas connection to every poor household through Ujjwala, PM Modi has shown remarkable sensitivity to the back-breaking labor of women in resource-poor families who had to walk miles in search of firewood to cook a modest meal for the family. As someone who began writing decades ago about the adverse impact on women’s health due to drudgery of collecting firewood & cooking on smoky chulhas, I’m grateful that PM Modi worked with urgency to alleviate this misery.


Here are other sharp perspectives on the question BJP’s political appropriation on the agenda of gender  :

Priyanka Chaturvedinational spokesperson for the Indian National Congress

Subhashini Ali: leader of the CPI (M).

Sunalini Kumar: political scientist, Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University

Zakia Soman: activist and founding member of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan


Likewise, adverse sex ratio due to gender discrimination is the most burning issue facing our society. Manushi began highlighting it from 1979 onwards. That PM Modi made Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao a popular campaign backed by supportive measures should make us happy. My only complaint is that this is not being backed by creative & determined efforts to have government schools provide quality education.

Triple Talaq became a hot issue because Muslim women are today refusing to be treated like dumb chattel. BJP astutely responded to that upsurge, instead of crushing it, as Congress party did at the time of Shah Bano.

Only those who have made lucrative careers out of peddling real and imagined miseries of Indian women in international forums, seeking hefty grants for writing pious academic tracts or indulge in rhetorical activism through foreign-funded NGOs are likely to be unhappy at some concrete measures by BJP government to improve women’s life situation.

Madhu Kishwar is an Indian academic and writer

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