Vinay Kumar
DMK neta’s comments were typical of toxic masculinity. TN CM responded wrong but pulled back
Madras HC was correct to ask TN cops to pack off Tamil Nadu LoP Udhayanidhi Stalin with station bail. Likewise, Vijay’s govt was correct to not seek remand of the DMK neta. This unusual official restraint, compared to responses of other govts, doesn’t however make Udhayanidhi’s double entendre any less crude or tasteless. Critics have asked whether he was egging on a partisan crowd at a public meeting. That’s a valid question. Udhayanidhi may argue he said nothing wrong – he did not mention women. But one look at the video of that meeting shows he set a poor example of being a leader of opposition, a constitutional office that demands certain behavioural standards. Surely, we should expect at least a few of our notable male politicians to not display the streak of toxic masculinity that so many Indian men comfortably live with. That meeting, in fact, was an offline version of appalling online trolling that many women are subjected to. Take, for example, what women protesters at Jantar Mantar have had to endure. Since every professional politician knows that it takes very little to turn a group of men at a rally into a misogynist pack, Udhayanidhi should have known better, to say the least.
A broader point: recent years have seen a cross-party proliferation of deeply offensive sexualised commentary on women, whether they are from a rival political party or women who have posed questions to parties in office. The fault lies with party leadership for not penalising offenders swiftly. What’s worse in Udhayanidhi’s case, is that he is the party leader.
As for Vijay govt’s first response, governing parties sending cops to pick up opposition politicians is another alarming trend. No party can resist the temptation of using police as an instrument of private vengeance. Udhayanidhi’s comments were distasteful, and deserved the loudest condemnation – politically, and in TN assembly, not via police detention. For a moment, it looked like Vijay was going to behave like a politician he vowed he’d never become. Good thing that good sense prevailed. And these small comforts are all that politics can offer us these days.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
