Th Strange Choice!

We witnessed a lot of hype over Hillary Clinton’s nomination to run for the post of Presidential candidate from the Democrat Party in the US recently. It is indeed an achievement for any human being whatsoever to rise to the position of being a semi-finalist in the race to be the world’s most powerful person. And for this alone, she should get a lot of respect from the public in general. But to claim that she was a messiah for women kind and that she was a solitary female representative in a male world is ludicrous at the least. Yes she is a woman, but then dare we forget she is the wife of Bill Clinton who was America’s President not so long ago, and in fact still remains among the most popular ones ever.

Now late us take the case of another woman leader in a different part of the world. The name is Mayawati Naina Kumari, presently the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. She was born in the lowest rung of society, and is now the leader of India’s largest and perhaps most influential sate. Here I’m not trying to be an advocate of caste politics or dalit-socialism, but I’m only trying to gauge the mind of the so-called feminists who have put personalities like Hillary Clinton now and others like Indira Gandhi and Isabella Peron in the pasta s feminist icons. Mayawati had an economically impoverished childhood, and is not conventionally pretty looking a quality often required for women to reach the top in patriarchal societies. And yet presently she is the most powerful person in one of the most backward-patriarchal parts of the globe. I’m not suggesting that Mayawati is a morally superior personality, but if seen purely as a female symbol surely none can have better credentials. Perhaps her not being dressed elegantly could be a reason for this lack of appeal to the modern working women who then look for falser idols. Indira Gandhi’s suave English and Hillary Clinton’s Caucasian American look better fit into these stereotypes of so-called ‘breaking the glass barrier’ and all that.
But the truth is that if I had been a feminist, Mayawati would definitely have been my idol. She has consistently managed to kick men around successfully starting without a base point to launch her campaigns. Indeed without seemingly powerful intimate relationships of blood or flesh.