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Take action against Tikait: Brinda Karat

Staff Reporter

“It is extremely offending if an opponent to a woman leader makes casteist and sexist remarks against her”

Brinda Karat

COIMBATORE: “I have nothing in common with Mayawati. But, it is extremely offending if an opponent to a woman leader makes casteist and sexist remarks against her,” Brinda Karat, Polit Bureau member, Communist Party of India (Marxist), said here on Wednesday.

Addressing students at PPG College of Education, she condemned the ‘unconstitutional’ remarks made by Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Mahendra Singh Tikait against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati. Ms. Karat said the U.P. government should take immediate action against him. “Such politics should be condemned. It is not politics; it is street-fighting. Some principles have to be restored to politics,” she said.

The traditional thinking in India was dominated by patriarchal values. The system was discriminatory against women and children. Women were often made to think they were less than the others. They were made to believe that they should be good housewives, mothers of sons and good cooks, Ms. Karat said.

This culture, according to the experience of generations of women, was that of imprisoning women. The idea of what a woman should or should not do and that she should live within the boundaries of a ‘lakshman rekha’ was nothing but incarceration, she said.

Even when a woman was violated, it was always the victim who was blamed for her predicament and not the violator. Sita of the Ramayana symbolised the very culture in which the woman was victimised. “Why should young girls’ wings be clipped,” she asked.

Life was equally stressful for young men and women in modern society, where they were expected to conform to certain stereotypes. “These stereotypes we are asked to accept as part of being modern should be rejected.” They are as banal and as demeaning as the Sati Savitri, who had to walk seven steps behind her husband, Ms. Karat said.

She exhorted the students to make use of their years in college and understand their potential. “Be conscious of the world around. Study politics and make your own judgments,” she said.

Special Correspondent writes from New Delhi

The All India Democratic Women’s Association has strongly condemned the “abusive, casteist, anti-dalit and anti-women tirade” of Mr. Tikait against Ms. Mayawati.

This is the most reprehensible form of caste mobilisation that AIDWA has always fought against, said a statement issued by AIDWA president Subhashini Ali and general secretary Sudha Sundaraman.

The AIDWA has called upon all women’s organisations and other democratic forces to denounce such debased politics. The AIDWA demands strict action under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against the guilty.

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