The Mumbai Mirror today published a piece by a certain Namrata Zakaria about textiles minister Smriti Irani. The piece is quite disgusting, and claims that the minister is that woman who is in office only because she sucks up to the boss. We will not provide you with a link for that godforsaken piece. But here’s a look at why and how the minister has been the cabal’s favorite punching bag, something which we have had the opportunity to point out on several occasions.
You can love her, you can hate her, but you cannot ignore Smriti Irani.
Some wish for her to play a more important role in the future, while others hope she is cut to size and shunted out. But the reason one never misses her, the reason she remains in the limelight irrespective of career highs and lows, is because she constantly exposes a deep-seated hypocrisy within some people.
Don’t get me wrong. It isn’t as if she is at it the whole day, hogging the limelight by pointing at her detractors’ double standards. No, her being in a position of power is what makes some jittery, and generates a constant flow of hypocrisy. One cannot look at the controversies she is embroiled in in an isolated manner to understand the forces at play. One must understand who she is, what propelled her to be where she is today, and what her rise amounts to.
Smriti Irani made some powerful enemies in 2014. Before the elections, she was an actress-turned politician who had already lost one election. People were used to seeing her defend her party on national television every evening. She was chosen to take on the Gandhi scion from the family’s pocket borough of Amethi. This, and what followed, upset several equations.
Smriti Irani might not have been a political heavyweight back then, but she had much more of a stature than people the Gandhis were used to running against. Previously, those running against the Gandhi family used to be sacrificial lamb. Nobody had heard their names before the elections, and they would quickly be forgotten after. The Gandhis didn’t take them seriously, nor did the BJP for that matter. Some might have thought back in 2014 that Smriti too was headed down that road, that this was simply an exit strategy. But she didn’t think so, nor did Narendra Modi.
Smriti believed she had a chance, and fought hard. She formed her own team consisting of the likes of Shilpi Tewari, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes. She got Mr. Modi to address a mammoth rally in the constituency as well. The truth is that she gave Rahul Gandhi a run for his money. On counting day, there were instances when he was trailing. She made the family and the entire ecosystem around it quite jittery.
She lost, but she was far from forgotten. Instead, she was rewarded with the high-profile education ministry through the Rajya Sabha route. She proclaimed openly that she would return to Amethi in 2019 and take on Rahul Gandhi again. She made regular visits to the constituency, where she undertook developmental works and enthused the party’s fledgling local unit. The Gandhis aren’t used to being treated this way. To think that someone despite losing to one of them would make it big on the national stage, trample on them, haunt them and give them nightmares about forfeiting that one constituency which remains loyal no matter what, was unthinkable. The ecosystem got to work immediately.
The ecosystem, as everybody knows by now, is made up of politicians, news traders and self-proclaimed intellectuals. They share a cosy relationship, wherein they’re all in bed with each other and protect the interests of one another using lies and other forms of deception. The role the ecosystem plays and the narrative it advances is key to understanding why Smriti Irani exposes its hypocrisy. The ecosystem essentially being a political tool advances a pseudo-liberal agenda wherein it attempts to project the Congress and like-minded parties as the beacons of progressive values while the BJP is projected as regressive and communal. Since feminism and women-empowerment are cornerstones of progressiveness, the ecosystem is always found to be at odds with itself when it junks these values to protect and appease the prince a.k.a. attacking Smriti.
Every time they attack her, their narrative about women-empowerment rings hollower. The precedence that conducting a successful hitjob takes over upholding what one stands for, is a sign that one stands for nothing. It’s a sign of slave-mentality, of going low, twisting and distorting the truth for the benefit of one’s political masters. But most importantly, this is of what we must not forget: that anybody capable of sexism or misogyny is a goddam sexist or misogynist. And this is exactly what the Lutyens elite which pretends to hold a monopoly over progressiveness is.
Recently, a BJP leader stated that there were other women who were more beautiful than Priyanka Gandhi. The upholders of progressiveness declared that this was a sexist comment and that nothing better could be expected from the regressive BJP. I can write an article about why they were completely off the mark, but their being off the mark is quite common. I mention this to remind ourselves of the hue and cry we witnessed over this statement. Priyanka Gandhi herself echoed the ecosystem, claiming that the statement exposed BJP’s mindset. Robert Vadra of DLF fame turned into the mainstream media’s poster husband overnight as he demanded an apology.
People living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones at others. When Smriti Irani was asked by an interviewer about the BJP leader’s comment, she produced a tweet from Mr. Vadra’s brother in-law and Congress politician Tehseen Poonawalla. The tweet was from last year when Smriti as education minister had asked every university to erect an Indian flag. The tweet requested her to erect a fifty-six-inch pole with a condom on it in every university. The word erect was in quotes and the fifty-six-inch reference was not lost on anybody. How the tweet went unnoticed and how Smriti Irani didn’t even mention it once until she had to, is as much a sign of the rampant sexism perpetrated against her as it is about her resilience towards it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-L02Qx_yMQ
Tehseen Poonawalla is not a first-time offender.
Last year when Smriti Irani was shifted to the textile ministry, he had tweeted an unintelligent joke wherein the prime minster addressed Smriti Irani as honey. Another Congress minister in Assam referred to Smriti as prime minister Modi’s second wife last year. These incidents went largely unnoticed, and failed to generate the hue and cry that similar actions generate when perpetrated from the other side of the aisle. Smriti has been derided, projected as somebody who isn’t good enough to be where she is, as somebody who doesn’t deserve what she has received, as somebody who gets by for reasons other than her competence.
If this isn’t sexism, what is? If being called Aunty-National by The Telegraph after a blistering speech in parliament isn’t sexism, what is?
According to the hypocrites who hold a monopoly over progressiveness, it is only sexism and misogyny when one of their own is under attack. It is only women-empowerment when one of their own rises the ranks. The very fact that Smriti is where she is today, is a tight slap across their faces. Their reactions to it are proof of their glaring hypocrisy.
And that’s why you can love her, you can hate her, but you cannot ignore Smriti Irani.
