Attack on Mamata: Violence against women politicians barrier to their participation in politics, say analysts

Last week, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee suffered severe bone injuries in her left ankle and foot and right shoulder, forearm, and neck after she was allegedly pushed by some unidentified people while she was campaigning in Nandigram where she is contesting from. Deflecting the blame, the Election Commission claimed that it was an accident as she was not travelling in the bullet-proof car she was supposed to be in.

This is not the first time her political opponents have attacked her. And neither will this be the last time strong women politicians are likely to be attacked in the country for standing their ground.

In 1990, Banerjee, who was then with the Youth Congress, was brutally beaten on the head by a CPI(M) leader Lalu Alam and she was in the hospital for more than a month. The battering had fractured her skull.

In 1993, she was severely physically assaulted by the state police on at least two occasions. In January, she held a dharna at the Writers' Building, the former Secretariat, along with a speech-impaired pregnant young woman who was allegedly raped by a CPI(M) worker. When the police could not persuade her to leave, they dragged her by her hair to a police van and took her to Lalbazar central police lock-up.

In July, she was beaten up by policemen for leading a rally to the former Secretariat Writers' Buildings demanding voter identity cards. Police opened fire in the clash killing 13 Youth Congress activists. She had to be admitted to the hospital for many weeks in the aftermath of that protest.

In September 2006, she was protesting at the Singrur Block Office against state-sponsored atrocities in Hooghly district where the CPI(M) government had forcibly taken away fertile land and given it to Tatas. To remove her, the Kolkata police dragged, pushed, and heckled Banerjee.

Researchers Gabrielle Bardell, Elin Bjarnegard, and Jennifer M Piscopo underscored that men in power have always used violence to preserve hegemonic men’s control of politics. Labelled violence against women in politics, or VAWIP, analysis by gender and politics scholars have revealed that there is resistance and backlash to women’s political participation because they are women.

Across the globe and even in India, men hold most political offices and perpetrators use violence to resist devolving political power to those outside the hegemonic male group, argued the trio. Women in active politics defy traditional gender roles and norms.

However, this must be seen in the larger context of violence against women in the public sphere. Indu Agnihotri, the former director of the Centre for Women's Development Studies, pointed out that the violence seen against women in politics was an extreme manifestation of violence women are subjected to when they enter a public space. Gender is an added dimension of vulnerability. From the male perspective, it is an assertion and from the woman’s perspective, it is vulnerability.

In January 2021, Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Aishe Ghosh was badly injured in a brutal attack on students and teachers on the campus by right-wing goons.

In India, whenever men felt threatened about losing power to a woman, they have resorted to the brutal assault. In 1995, when Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh heard that their alliance partner Bahujan Samaj Party led by Mayawati would withdraw support, angry SP workers attacked Mayawati when she was at a Lucknow guest house on June 2 attending a meeting. They went on a rampage where Mayawati was allegedly attacked and abused forcing her to lock herself up in a room.

In 1989, J Jayalalithaa, the Leader of the Opposition in Tamil Nadu and the first woman to occupy that post, was assaulted in the Legislative Assembly. After her aide Sasikala’s husband was named in a cheating case, an unidentified messenger submitted Jayalalithaa's letter of resignation to the Speaker who accepted it against the rules. A week later, AIADMK members protested Jayalalitha’s treatment in the Assembly. As she was leaving, DMK Minister Durai Murugan rushed towards her to hit her. At the end of the scuffle, Jayalalitha’s sari was torn, and she suffered injuries on her head.

In 1967, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was struck in the face by stones during a turbulent election meeting in Orissa’s Bhubaneshwar. Several young men kept throwing stones at her and she injured her nose and upper lip.

In 2014, an UN-backed study highlighted that women politicians in India, Nepal, and Pakistan face hostility and aggression as they fight to be heard in the political arena. The attacks come not only from Opposition parties but are also perpetrated by colleagues in their own party. The study was conducted by the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research.

Rebecca Reichmann Tavares, then head of UN Women in India, had said, "What's more - physical violence, verbal abuse and threats of violence were higher for women in politics in India than in Pakistan or Nepal.”

Recently, in 2020, Amnesty International India revealed that women politicians in India face a shocking scale of abuse on Twitter, for various identities, such as gender, religion, caste, and marital status. The Amnesty research found that 13.8% of the tweets in the study were either “problematic” or “abusive”. This means each woman politician received 113 problematic or abusive tweets every day.

Political Scientists Mona Lena Krook and Juliana Restrepo Sanin underscored that violence against women in politics is increasingly recognised as a significant barrier to women’s political participation.

“There is a specific gender aspect and women in politics are more vulnerable to these attacks. For women to enter politics, to survive, rise, and stay in politics to provide leadership, there are multiple challenges. Violence is just one of the instruments by which women are sought to keep out. We will fail to see the complexity of the challenge, if we look only through the gender lens,” highlighted Agnihotri.

“There is a larger issue of the nexus between crime and politics. For women to enter the political domain, it is difficult because of this nexus. The 33% reservation for women acts as a little bit of a shield. Money, muscle power, and criminalisation work together to keep women and marginalised groups out of politics,” added Agnihotri.