Rethink women’s safety in Indian politics

Primitive clan instinct is what keeps turning women’s complaints into political weapons rather than legal issues.

Indian politics often behaves less like a modern constitutional system and more like a network of fiercely loyal clans. When a serious allegation of sexual violence or exploitation surfaces, the instinct of many is not to ask, ‘What happened to the woman?’ but to ask, ‘Which side is she on, and what does this do to us?’ That clan instinct is what keeps turning women’s complaints into political weapons rather than legal issues.

The recent allegations against opposition MLA Rahul Mamkootathil illustrate this clearly. A young woman first took her complaint not to a police station, but to the chief minister and CPI(M) leadership, seeking action on her allegations of rape, forced pregnancy and coerced abortion.

Only after this political route was exhausted was an FIR registered, and the criminal process formally set in motion. Another woman complained against K T Kunhumuhammad, a two-time CPI(M) MLA, to the chief minister, but an FIR was registered 12 days later, after the media broke the news.

Within the Congress, several women leaders and party functionaries have raised concerns about Mamkootathil’s conduct well before and alongside the current FIRs. Youth Congress leader Sajana B Sajan wrote to the party high command and Priyanka Gandhi, demanding his expulsion and seeking a committee of women leaders to record the survivor’s statement.

She later filed a cybercrime complaint after being targeted online for her stand. According to Congress cultural-wing leader M A Shahanas, two years ago, she had cautioned Congress leader Shafi Parambil about Mamkootathil’s conduct and that his appointment as state Youth Congress president would endanger the safety of young women in the party. Subsequent reports describe senior women leaders facing co-ordinated cyber-attacks after questioning why earlier warnings were not acted upon.

From that point, two parallel tracks opened. On paper, the criminal law process began. In parallel, the clan-like process took over: social media and television launched their own ‘trial’ — not only of the accused, but of the complainant. Her motives, politics, and character were pulled apart, and assigned to ‘camps’ within the party. Partisan handles circulated insinuations and memes.

Kerala, with its very high literacy and intense political engagement, should by now have grown out of this reflex. Yet in moments like this, the behaviour is distinctly primordial: the overriding question is whether the allegation threatens ‘our’ camp or ‘their’ camp, not whether a woman’s rights under law have been violated.

Kerala crime files

This pattern is not new. In 1964, state home minister P T Chacko resigned after a scandal centred on his reported association with a woman Congress leader. That episode, driven as much by factional rivalry as by moral outrage, contributed to the formation of the Kerala Congress. The controversy was driven less by law and more by notions of honour, shame, and intra-party score-settling — classic clan concerns.

Since the late 1990s, several major cases have placed sexual misconduct and harassment at the centre of Kerala’s political discourse. Former minister A Neelalohithadasan Nadar resigned after the then transport secretary complained that he sexually harassed her in 1999; he later faced a separate criminal case based on a forest officer’s complaint of molestation. A magistrate’s court convicted him in 2004, but in 2025 the Kerala High Court acquitted him. His case shows how one individual can oscillate for decades between vilification and vindication, while both he and the complainants are drawn into a long political and legal struggle.

In 2006, public works minister P J Joseph resigned after being accused of molesting a woman co-passenger on a Chennai-Kochi flight. He was acquitted in 2009. Again, politics treated the incident as an occasion for moral theatre — outrage, resignation, eventual quiet rehabilitation — rather than an opportunity to design better safeguards for women interacting with ministers.

Alongside these were a series of cases where women’s sexuality and vulnerability were entangled with power and patronage: the Suryanelli case, the Kozhikode ‘ice-cream parlour’ case, the Kiliroor sex scandal, among others.

The 2013 ‘solar scam’ added another layer. Saritha S Nair, an accused in the fraudulent solar business, in a letter named many politicians and bureaucrats — including former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy — to have taken bribes or engaged in sexually exploitative conduct towards her. Years later, the CBI, acting on a reference from the LDF government, recommended closure of cases, effectively giving them a legal clean chit. The Saritha Nair episode demonstrates how a woman can be rewritten repeatedly as ‘victim’, ‘conspirator’, ‘honey-trapper’ or ‘political weapon’ depending on who is speaking.

The same pattern appears in the 2020 Kerala gold-smuggling case, in which Swapna Suresh alleged misuse of diplomatic channels and in 2022, accused three prominent CPI(M) leaders of sexual advances. The party has preferred not to press defamation charges that might require detailed testimony and cross-examination, reportedly to avoid prolonging the controversy.

Washing machine politics

Across parties and states, there is also a broader pattern: leaders facing serious investigations sometimes change political allegiance in ways that appear timed to coincide with shifts in legal pressure. Investigations show that a significant majority of opposition party politicians probed by agencies who crossed over to the ruling side later appeared to get relief or closure in their cases.

The Opposition describes this as ‘washing machine’ politics, but it is important to recognise that Concerns about the selective use of investigative agencies have existed under different governments and coalitions for decades. The core issue is that political alignment is often seen as a shield against legal consequences, which further erodes public faith that women’s complaints will be treated on their merits rather than based on who the accused has joined hands with.

What the law says

Against this backdrop, women’s rights in law look very different from women’s experiences in politics. Constitutionally, women are guaranteed equality before the law and equal protection (Article 14), protection against discrimination (Article 15), and the right to life and personal liberty, including bodily integrity and dignity (Article 21). India has also ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

The Supreme Court held that sexual harassment at the workplace violates women’s fundamental rights, and laid down the Vishakha Guidelines. In Apparel Export Promotion Council v A K Chopra (1999), it emphasised that even an attempt to molest constitutes serious misconduct and that workplace safety must be interpreted broadly. Post-Nirbhaya, Parliament amended the IPC and CrPC to strengthen offences relating to sexual violence (Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013).

The POSH Act, 2013 converted the Vishakha Guidelines into statute. It requires every workplace with 10 or more employees to set up an internal committee, defines ‘aggrieved woman’ broadly to include women who are not employees but are present in a workplace in connection with work, and interprets ‘workplace’ expansively to include offices, branches, field locations and even dwelling places used during employment.

Yet, recently, the Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court held that political parties, as voluntary associations without a straightforward employer–employee relationship, do not fall within the current statutory definition of ‘workplace’ under POSH. The apex court made it clear that if parties are to be brought under POSH, it must be done by Parliament through amendment, not by judicial expansion of definitions.

‘Workplace’ politics

The Vishakha Guidelines came from violence in a public, politically controlled environment, yet the statute that followed now stops at the party gate. That amendment should apply equally to all registered parties, regardless of ideology or level of power. Parties above a basic threshold of staff or office-bearers could be treated as ‘employers’ for POSH purposes, required by law to constitute genuinely independent internal committees, adopt written policies, conduct sensitisation, and file annual compliance reports with a designated authority.

For women, the crucial point is that the ‘workplace’ of politics is the public space where they meet politicians: the constituency office, the MLA’s official residence, the car, the camp office, the party office, the campaign house, the district committee room, etc. When a woman goes there seeking help with domestic violence, employment, land disputes, or police harassment, she is engaging in a public, quasi-work relationship, not visiting a purely private club. If POSH can cover a small shop or a school, there is no principled reason to exclude the spaces where MLAs, MPs, and senior party leaders exercise daily power over ordinary citizens.

Literacy paradox

None of this will, by itself, end the clan-style behaviour, the whataboutery, or the use of investigating agencies as levers in wider power games. Those are political habits that will take time — and sustained citizen pressure — to change. But extending a clear legal framework into political organisations would at least ensure that a woman who complains is met first with a defined procedure rather than a shouting match about which camp she belongs to.

Kerala’s paradox is that high literacy, dense communication networks, and decades of political experience co-exist with intensely clannish reactions to allegations involving women. Literacy that only sharpens the tongue and accelerates rumour is an incomplete achievement. Education that does not produce a culture of dignity in public discourse is unfinished work. Media that treats each allegation as content, and each survivor as a storyline to be stretched until the next scandal arrives, is not fulfilling its constitutional role as a watchdog over power.

The law cannot by itself create decency. But it can draw some non-negotiable lines. No organisation that claims to represent the public should be exempt from the minimum protections that apply to a 10-person firm. Until our political class agrees to live under the same workplace norms that Parliament has prescribed for everyone else, each new allegation will continue to be processed mainly through the code of the clan, not the code of the Constitution. And that is what a modern Republic can no longer afford.

Prasanth Nair is a civil servant and author. X: @PrasanthIAS.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.