Sexual allegations, political battles

It's becoming more clear by the day.  Women's rights, sexual ethics and morality concerns can sometimes be just another means through which to fight political battles and settle high-profile scores.

Over the past few days, our newspapers let us know that a politician had been caught up in "sextortion" racket.  Many details emerged; yet the facts didn't quite seem to match.  If it was "sextortion", why where the police (and a section of the press) making so much about it?  If a politician was involved, how did this become a special case?

In a series of nudge-nudge, wink-wink responses, there was a slow-motion unveiling of the action.  It's human nature that when one's curiosity is excited, the next step is to what to know: "Who did it?"

Hats off to the authorities for leaking out details in bits-and-drabs of information, in slow motion as it were.  This only built up the suspense.  Like a good novel, or mystery thriller, everyone was waiting to know more.

For long, politicians have been fighting battles with one another by hiding behind the skirt of a woman.  This is not surprising given that our society can be quite "moralist" -- we are willing to accept grand corruption (which is harder to imagine or see), rather than sexual allegation.

Across India, there have been many cases of these kind.  Google for a few minutes and you'll come across details of how Babu Jagjivan Ram lost his chance, in 1978, to become the first Dalit Prime Minister of India when a 'sex scandal' involving his son Suresh Ram with a Delhi University student.  These were published in the monthly magazine 'Surya'.  Not coincidentally, the mag was edited by Indira's daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi.  Jagjivan Ram had just ditched the Congress too.

Around 2013, the Congress was embarrassing an aide of BJP Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan.  There were other cases involving senior Congress lawyer-spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, former Rajasthan minister Mahipal Maderna, the 85-year-old Congress veteran ND Tiwari, the RSS representative in the BJP Sanjay Joshi, then senior BJP leader and Maharashtra deputy Lokneta CM Gopinath Munde, former Haryana minister Gopal Kanda, ex-UP minister in the Mayawati cabinet Amarmani Tripathi,the Kerala 'ice-cream sex parlour scandal' involving Congress industry minister PK Kunhalikutty, the Jalgaon rape case involved some 500 women that saw two arrested Congressmen being released, and Uttranchal minister Harak Singh Rawat.

In Goa, the cases have also come up with unnerving regularity.

Those around in the late 1980s would recall the "molestation" case against the then Speaker, Dayanand Narvekar.  At that very time, he coincidentally happened to be a key dissident against the Pratapsing Rane government.

Depending on their own positions in power, political leaders like Mickky Pacheco, Monserrate and others have been hit by allegations.

But, one thing stands out strongly.  If they were on the right side of power, nothing much came out of such cases.  Even a mediaperson facing repeated charges could get off the hook, when on the right side of the powers that be.

There has been a clear trail, regardless of which party is in power.  If you're in the ruling benches, you can easily get away with things.  Or, the accused can slink away (and hope that everyone forgets) without too much controversy.

On the other hand, if one is part of the Opposition -- specially an eloquent member there -- then chances are that you will face the fire.

Go back to 2001 and find out about the "worse than the Jalgaon sex scandal" case which hit Goa then, and was said to involve "the sons of some top local politicians".  That was allegedly at Miramar.  There was sexual abuse, gambling, a cyber café and even a "leading loan shark of the State capital".  Then chief minister Manohar Parrikar had said: "No matter who the culprit is, they will not be spared."

The Nadia Torrado case made it to the headlines too, after the young woman consumed rat poison, allegedly because of the top political involvement there in 2010.  Two years earlier, in 2008, another case involving a "German girl" (as the media put it) made it to national headlines, because of its connection to politicians' kin.

The double-standards are too complex and too messy, and would take perhaps a full book to do justice to.

At this time one can't ignore two very high profile cases that struck the nation just around the time of the 2014 elections.  In one case, which came out of Gujarat, eight policemen were accused with having "tailed [a] young architect 24/7 for 62 days".  Two news portals, Cobra Post and Gulail, claimed that surveillance was ordered, because of the interest of two top politicians.

This story was emerging around mid-November 2023.

Suddenly, at that very month itself, the editor of 'Tehelka', Tarun Tejpal, was accused of sexually abusing his young employee.  Like in some high profile developments that shaped Indian politics in recent years (deciding on Modi's fate after the Gujarat riots, the "rancid pickle" comment against aging Advani) this too was centered in tiny Goa.

But in no time, the media glare shifted from Gujarat to the Tehelka.  So, the 'dirty tricks department' of prominent two political lobbies were set against each other, and one of them won. The outcome has shaped the future of India, in a way.

It can thus be said that while everyone gives verbal support for women's rights and gender equality, at the end of the day, these issues have been used to fight political battles.  About that, let us have no doubts.