Ethics Committee, unethical questions

Politics and patriarchy have always gone together. Though politics is claimed to be the profession to serve people, it has always been practiced to rule them. Since it is men who have historically ruled and societies have been patriarchal, the link between politics and patriarchy has been close. The linkage has often been unreservedly expressed in misogyny, and evidence is found in the representation of women in politics and in the chambers of power, and in their treatment in public forums. Much before the law was enacted to give women 33% reservation in legislature, they have had 100% reservation in the halls of defamy and dishonour. Even legitimate and gender-neutral forums like parliamentary committees are hostile and humiliating spaces for women, as the experience of Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, recounted by her and confirmed by other Opposition MPs in the Ethics Committee of the Lok Sabha, shows. 

Moitra was summoned to appear before the committee to address allegations made by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey and lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai that she had asked questions in the Lok Sabha at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani in exchange for bribes and gifts. It was alleged that Hiranandani had used her login to file questions from different places, mostly Dubai. Mahua has been a strong and articulate critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Adani business group. She has charged the committee with unfair and discriminatory treatment compared to a BJP MP who is being probed for another charge. She also made the serious charge that she was unfairly targeted as a woman and that the panel’s chairperson V K Sonkar, a BJP MP, asked her “undignified questions” pertaining to her personal life, about late-night calls and relations with her friend. She said there was an “orchestrated vastraharan” in the presence of all committee members “designed to humiliate her” and so she walked out of the meeting. Opposition MPs who were also at the hearing walked out and they have confirmed her charges. 

Sonkar has denied them and said Mahua was given the “right to give answers to those questions she wanted and not give those she did not wish.” But asking personal and irrelevant questions is wrong, especially if they seem aimed at defaming someone’s character, and Opposition MPs have said they had said so to Sonkar. Moitra has complained to the Speaker about the “unethical, sordid, and prejudiced questions” which were put to her. The issue involved is not political prejudice but gender prejudice, which colours the treatment of women even in the highest national forums. Mahua Moitra’s complaint shows how pervasive the misogynist and sexist mindset is at all levels of politics and society, and how even privilege and position are no shields against it.