'For Them, A Woman Is A Body. Nothing More'

'Women are coming into public spaces in larger numbers than ever before. They are educated, capable, opinionated, and determined.'
'But the more women push for access to public space, the harder they are pushed back -- through attacks like this, through discrimination, through the glass ceiling, through the deliberate denial of recognition.'

Karur Lok Sabha MP Jothimani S speaks to Prasanna D Zore/Rediff about the obscene video (external link) released by the Bharatiya Janata Party's Karur district president and why she has chosen to fight back in public.

Jothimani S entered politics when she was 21. At that time she did not have any money or connections to help her. She also did not have a family name to support her. What she did have was a single mother and a background in farming. She also had twenty years of work on the ground before she became a member of the Lok Sabha from Karur in Tamil Nadu.

Now after being in the Lok Sabha for seven years Jothimani S is fighting a kind of battle. The president of the BJP in Karur district, Senthil Nathan, created a video in which he used bad language to refer to Jothimani S.

Jothimani S did not try to hide this video. Instead she made it public.

In this interview Jothimani S explains why she thinks the BJP leaders are not speaking out against this. She believes their silence is not an accident. That this attack on her is part of a plan to stop women from being part of public life, from being equal to men.

The BJP's Karur district president Senthil Nathan apparently referred to you, an elected member of Parliament, in deplorable language. Is this an individual lapse?

This is not an individual lapse at all. The RSS and BJP do not respect women as individuals -- as people with knowledge, courage, emotion, and capability. They simply see a woman as a body, as a reproductive organ. Their leadership has openly propagated that women should get married, bear children, and not come outside the home to work. That is their ideology.

The men who already carry this mindset are naturally drawn to that party. And now look at the conspicuous silence from the BJP. Any party with a sane mind would have sacked that district president by now and publicly condemned his act. They have done nothing.

That silence tells you everything.

It tells you this is not an aberration -- it is an orchestrated design. Whenever someone raises difficult questions they cannot answer, whenever a woman speaks truth to power, they respond by assaulting her dignity.

What is the purpose of such vile language?

This is inbuilt in them -- it comes naturally. They have been trained to function this way. (Journalist and author of I am a Troll) Swati Chaturvedi's book exposed in considerable detail how the BJP IT cell uses vile attacks, threats, and abuse of families as a political weapon. No other party in the world does this.

We have seen cruel political ideologies, authoritarian regimes, and despotic leaders throughout history -- but no party has ever used obscenity as a systematic tool against its opponents the way the BJP has.

They have a structure that encourages people to speak and behave exactly like this. Their thinking is simple: If you abuse a woman loudly enough, assault her dignity in public space, attack her personal life, and destroy her character -- she will become submissive. She will go silent. That is the era they want to drag the country back to, centuries behind where we are.

You filed a police complaint. As of now, there is still no arrest. Why do you think the police are slow?

Five sections have been filed -- assaulting the dignity of women, defamation, and criminal threat, among others. The Tamil Nadu police are capable. I expected faster action. They registered the FIR immediately, which I am glad for, but he (Senthil Nathan) is still not arrested.

I want to be clear -- this is not about me being from an alliance party (DMK and Congress are alliance partners in Tamil Nadu). It does not matter whether the victim is a Congress MP, an Opposition leader, or a woman with no political affiliation at all. The law must act. If this drags on, I may have to speak directly to the chief minister (of Tamil Nadu, M K Stalin).

When a case is filed against a ruling party ally, can women trust the police to act independently? Or are women expected to fight power alone?

Generally, yes -- women are expected to fight power alone. Whether you are in a political party, an organisation, a company, or a media house, many times the battle (for women against injustice) is lonely.

People will make statements of support, they will call you privately, but at the end of the day you fight your own battle. That is why women develop a thick skin -- because we get used to it. This is precisely why I put this into the public domain.

I want to shame this man. I want to shame his party. I want to shame the ideology.

I do not care whether he personally feels guilty. What matters is that the people around him know what kind of man he is. Society cannot simply move on from something like this.

There were many women who fought for their rights and dignity long before I was born. That is why I am sitting here as an MP today. Our battles are not over, and our journey is not yet complete.

The BJP's silence -- is it a form of consent, or something more deliberate than that?

Of course it is. This is not surprising to me at all.

Think about the Kathua rape case -- an eight-year-old girl raped by a priest in Jammu. Two BJP ministers were serving in that government (which was in alliance with Mehbooba Mufti's government) at the time. They went to a rally raising the national flag in support of the rapist.

Think about Kuldeep Singh Sengar -- the victim was a young Dalit girl subjected to repeated sexual assault for years. Her family was attacked, people were killed, the survivor was traumatised.

The BJP stood by Sengar until the Supreme Court intervened.

Our women wrestlers came into the streets to protest against their own federation chief (former BJP MP Brijbhushan Shara Singh). What happened? The BJP gave his son (Bhushhan Singh) a Lok Sabha ticket (which he won from Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh).

This is their pattern. This is their history. Other parties may not be perfect, but at least they will openly condemn such acts. At least someone within the party will say something publicly. You see nothing from the BJP. That silence is not accidental. It is orchestrated.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi coined slogans like Nari Shakti and Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.

No woman in this country genuinely believes Narendra Modi stands for Nari Shakti. Everything has happened in full public view -- Kathua, Unnao, the wrestlers' protest. And it is not just me. Look at the social media pages of Priyanka Chaturvedi, Rahul Gandhi, Mahua Moitra -- you will see the volume of organised abuse directed at all of them. This is coordinated by BJP's IT wing. There is no floor, no level below which they will not go.

Last week, the BJP state chief of Tamil Nadu made a wild remark against actress Trisha. He apologised -- not out of decency, but because it was politically combustible (Tamil Nadu is heading for an assembly election by April). That is the only thing that makes them stop. For them, a woman is a body. Nothing more.

You have been in public life since you were 21 with no political backing, no money, no mentor. After all of that, your dignity was still attacked. What hope does an ordinary young Indian woman have?

This is what I want women to understand: Whether you are an MP, a chief minister, or a prime minister -- you are a woman, and in the eyes of these people, you are nothing. Your qualification, your ability, your hard work, your experience -- none of it registers for them. Some women normalise this. They see something outrageous and they think, well, somebody is just saying something.

We cannot normalise it. I came from a humble farming family, brought up by a single mother. No one in my family had ever been in public life. I started as a booth worker. I served ten years as a panchayat union councillor.

I worked ten more years as a national office bearer of the Youth Congress across multiple states, including interior parts of Assam that most people avoided. After twenty years of work, I got the chance to contest from Karur. I have been an MP for seven years. My working day is no less than fifteen hours.

In a year of 365 days, I cannot take even fifty days of rest. After my mother passed away suddenly, I have carried every responsibility alone. But he (Senthil Nathan who used abusive language to describe Jothimani S) doesn't define me. His words don't define me. My values and how I uphold my dignity -- that is what defines me, not this man.

Are obscene attacks now being normalised to scare women out of public and political space? And is that a threat to Indian democracy itself?

Yes, it is. And I want to say this carefully, because it matters. Women are coming into public spaces in larger numbers than ever before. They are educated, capable, opinionated, and determined. But the more women push for access to public space, the harder they are pushed back -- through attacks like this, through discrimination, through the glass ceiling, through the deliberate denial of recognition. That is the design.

I keep thinking of Muthulakshmi Reddy, Tamil Nadu's first woman physician and legislator. When she wanted to study medicine, her family said no, society said no, the law itself said no. She went to court, won, entered the medical college, sat alone behind a screen while her male classmates sat on the other side -- and went on to found the Adyar Cancer Institute.

We have seen Indira Gandhi, Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Sheila Dikshit -- every one of them went through versions of this. Even in European and American societies, women in leadership tell me they face discrimination.

The United States still has not elected a woman to its highest office. But one day it will because women today are not the same as they were a hundred years ago.

We are opinionated. We are strong. We are courageous. We are not afraid of having a view, expressing it, or facing what comes with it. The more society pushes back, the more we will push forward. That is what history tells us, and that is what is happening now.