Modi’s Surpanakha jibe is no laughing matter for a worried BJP-RSS

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Renuka Chowdhury episode, what the BJP leadership fears the most is being labeled as a male-dominated party with a gender bias against the fairer sex. The last thing the Modi government needs in election season is to be called “anti-women”.

The misogynist tag is indeed the Sangh Parivar’s biggest weak point. The Congress is well aware of this. Just a week ago in Shillong, party president Rahul Gandhi focused on just this while addressing students of one of Meghalaya’s premier institutions, Saint Edmund’s College: “The RSS does not believe in women's rights. Does anyone know how many leadership positions are with women in RSS? Zero. They give all power to men because they believe in a male-dominated society where women can be dominated without fear”.

It was not just a passing remark—Rahul dwelt at length on the theme. He said: “The entire RSS mindset is aimed at disempowering women and excluding them from positions of power. Just see any photograph of Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief. Have you ever seen any woman in the picture? No. He is always either alone or surrounded by men”.

He added: "In Indian society, women have always had a very special place, they had a very large space. Since ancient times, women have played a crucial role in decision-making and have been extolled in history and literature. However, the Sangh Parivar does not believe in women's rights. Our Prime Minister has been deeply groomed in that mindset. His own life is an example of that. All his slogans like ‘Beti Padhao’ are only political catchphrases which he neither believes in nor practices in his own life”.

The BJP and RSS analysts have been studying such speeches with increasing anxiety. Earlier this week, at a Sangh brainstorming session, when an assessment was made about likely Congress strategies under Rahul, one of the observations arrived at was that, along with describing the Modi government as anti-farmer and anti-Dalit, the Congress would harp on BJP’s gender bias.

Incidentally, the brainstorming session also noted with concern certain “unfair and unnecessary” comments in the latest Economic Survey document regarding the plight of female labour in the country. Although the cover pages of the Survey were coloured pink, as a symbol of support for women’s empowerment, the Chief Economic Advisor had (in the opinion of the RSS thinkers) needlessly harped on issues like “lower participation of women in economic activities adversely affecting the growth potential of the economy”.

There was irritation that Arvind Subramanian had even gone to the extent of revealing that “women workers are the most disadvantaged in the labour market, as they constitute a very high proportion among the low-skilled informal worker category, and are engaged in low-productivity and low-paying work”.

It was noted that many newspapers in the country had highlighted this portion of the Survey with headlines emphasising that women are most disadvantaged under the Modi government.

Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh’s plans worrying for BJP-RSS

What was worse, in the eyes of the Sangh analysts, was that one of the RSS’s own front organisations, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), has become over-enthusiastic in trying to champion the cause of female labourers.

Particularly infuriating for the parent organisation was the fact that the BMS had even issued a public statement criticising the Finance Minister for this year’s Budget speech, in which he announced a cut in women employees’ contribution to EPF from 12% to 8% for startup enterprises.

BMS president Saji Narayanan was frowned upon for his logic that “a cut in EPF deduction will lead to increase in take-home salary of women; and this will result in a drastic reduction of 16% in their future EPF savings when they leave their establishment” Hence, according to the BMS head, “this is not a welcome step”.

Both BJP and RSS are in any case annoyed with BMS for frequently adopting an anti-Modi posture and creating hurdles in the way of labour reforms. The BMS has indeed already given a call for a nationwide agitation on February 20 to protest against the "anti-labour policies" of the Modi government. Not only that, the RSS-affiliated trade union is also threatening to boycott the Indian Labour Conference which is to be held in the last week of February and will be addressed by the Prime Minister himself.

The 46th Labour Conference is being held after a gap of three years and is being seen by the government as a launching pad to push through long-delayed labour reforms, including hire-and-fire policies, without which foreign investors are unwilling to set up manufacturing facilities in India.

Instead of helping the government, the BMS is launching a massive “resistance movement”, dubbing the central government as “anti-labour and anti-women”. The irony is that thousands of RSS swayamsewaks have been roped in to stage “Black Day” dharnas outside the venue of the Labour Conference in New Delhi on February 26, and, before that, to hold countrywide factory-gate demonstrations from February 20 onwards.

Apart from other demands like seeking relief for workers in both formal and informal economy who have been badly hit by demonetisation and GST, raising allocations to the Unorganised Social Security fund and reviving sick PSUs instead of privatisation, the BMS is strongly demanding increasing honorarium to woman workers in Aanganwadis and bringing them under social security coverag. BMS also wants immediate implementation of the Supreme Court verdict on “Equal Pay for Equal Work” for women.

Against this background, the last thing the Modi government wants at this juncture—with just a year to go before the next Lok Sabha elections—is for the Prime Minister himself to be labeled as having made insensitive remarks against a woman MP.

The Congress party, on the other hand, appears to have sensed an opportunity to expose the BJP-RSS leadership for its misogynist mindset. For the BJP, and for Narendra Modi personally, his Surpnakha jibe against Renuka Chawdhary is no laughing matter. It is clearly snowballing into a controversy that is focusing attention on his equations with the women in his life.