Congress President Rahul Gandhi today let the world know that behind the ‘feminist’, women empowerment enthusiast, hides a sexist, misogynist man who is just very good at hiding his toxic masculinity. While addressing a farmers’ rally in Rajasthan, Rahul Gandhi brought up his rhetorics on Rafale deal again, except this time instead of just lying he very subtly let out his prejudices known.
Rahul Gandhi in Jaipur: chappan inch kii chhati vaaley Pradhan Mantri janata ki adalat yaanay Parliament mey ek baar bhi nahi aayey. Raksha Mantri kay bhashaan ki humnay dhajjiyaan udaa dii. Chappan inch ki chaati vaaley Pradhan Mantri nay ek mahila say kaha meri raksha kiijiye pic.twitter.com/xzWkxumvxE
— Smita Prakash (@smitaprakash) January 9, 2019
Rahul Gandhi said that the prime minister who boasted of a 56-inch chest did not attend the court of the public, that is the Parliament. “We demolished the Defence Minister’s speech. The prime minister, who has 56-inch-chest, asked a woman to defend him,” he said.
This in a way goes out to show that Rahul Gandhi is hurt more than the person who gave a fitting reply to his lies was a woman, irrespective of the fact that the woman was India’s first full-time woman Defence Minister. No, Indira Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother, was not the first Defence Minister. Handling the portfolio which you allocate to yourself when you are the Prime Minister of a country isn’t the same as being a full-time minister.
Perhaps that is why Rahul Gandhi and his band of clowns got personal with Sitharaman and made personal remarks on her. Gandhi is not the first Congress leader to make sexist remarks against women.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh had caught the spotlight a few years back when while praising a fellow party secretary, Meenakshi Natrajan at a rally in Madhya Pradesh he referred to her as ‘a 100 percent tunch maal’. (Translated from Bhojpuri, the remark roughly means ‘100 percent sexy woman’.)
Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam had also raised strife by bad-mouthing BJP MP Smriti Irani in December 2012, when assembly election results of Gujarat was announced saying, “It’s only four days of your entry into politics and you have become a political analyst. Aap toh TV pe thumke lagati thi, Aaj chunavi vishleshak ban gayi.” (You used to dance on TV screen, now you are a political analyst?)
Rahul Gandhi’s ‘asking a woman to defend him’ reeks of toxic masculinity which derides a woman and reduces the post of the Defence Minister to a woman. Just as Rahul Gandhi had wondered back in 2017 that Sangh women don’t wear shorts. Addressing a rally in the then poll-bound Gujarat, Rahul Gandhi had said that BJP thinks as long as women stay quiet, they don’t say anything, they are good.
Inka (BJP) main sangathan RSS hai. Kitni mahila hain usme, kabhi shaakha mein mahilaon ko dekha hai shorts mein? Maine to nahi dekha: RG pic.twitter.com/cAxxmDqdw8
— ANI (@ANI) October 10, 2017
He had then asked whether anyone had seen women associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) wear shorts.
A politician who aspires to be the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy likes to judge women by their clothes. He gets rattled when women speak. When they shut him up with facts. When they expose his lies. And perhaps, to quote the Congress President himself, “jab tak mahila chup rahe, kuch bole na tab tak mahila theek hai jaise hi mahila ne muh khola usko chup karvao.“
