- Proma Ray Chaudhury
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| Vaishali Dalmiya, daughter of Jagmohan Dalmiya who contested the 2016 West Bengal Legislative Assembly polls on TMC ticket paints a graffiti on a wall in Bally of Howrah (Photo: YashNews) |
In the trajectory of
post-independent India’s electoral democracy, networks of family and dynasty have
conditioned women’s access to elite spaces of political decision-making. Several
prominent women political leaders in India have represented familial legacies,
giving credence to the prevalence of political dynasticism in South Asia.
About 30% and 22% of the
members of the Lok Sabha - the Lower House of the Indian Parliament belonged to
political dynasties in the 2009 and 2014 elections respectively (Chandra, 2016,
14). Originating in the democratic electoral politics of independent India, political
dynasties are characterised by the active presence of several members of a
family in different layers of state and national politics (Chandra, 2016).
Leadership in political parties dominated by dynastic leaders are often
‘inherited’ by their children or other close family members. Familial and
dynastic networks permeate the institutional cultures of political parties which
have traditionally functioned as ‘gatekeepers’ (Norris, Pippa and
Lovenduski, 1995) in terms of the recruitment and selection of
candidates for elections. The significance of family ties in the realm of party
politics corresponds to the organisational weakness of political parties (Chandra, 2016;
DeSouza, Peter Ronald and Sridharan, 2006) in India and the profitability or higher returns
associated with holding state office (Chandra, 2016).
While the existing scholarship on dynastic
politics in South Asia (Chandra, 2016;
Chhibber, 2011; Malhotra, 2004; Mufti, 2008; Rai & Spary, 2019) underscores that the primary beneficiaries of
dynastic ties in Indian politics continue to be Hindu upper-caste males, it
also highlights the positive role played by dynasticism in terms of
facilitating the democratic inclusion of historically underrepresented social
groups such as Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), women and
religious minorities. The high proportions of women MPs (Members of Parliament)
with dynastic ties in the 2009 (69%) and 2014 (43%) Lok Sabha elections (Chandra, 2016, 52) attests to the significance of family networks in the
recruitment of women in Indian electoral politics. The criticality of dynastic
networks in women’s access to higher spaces of political legislation in India
such as the Parliament is augmented particularly in the face of the absence of reservation
for women in such spaces[i] (Chandra, 2016). Family/dynastic connections, therefore, often serve
the role of gender quotas in parliamentary politics.
While family networks
constitute a factor of decisive importance in women’s access to political
parties in India, their influence extends beyond formal institutional processes
such as political recruitment and candidate selection. As Shirin Rai points out
in her study of women parliamentarians in India (Rai, 2012; Rai &
Spary, 2019), the support derived from family networks encompass a broad range of
informal institutional requirements for women politicians. Such support may
range from providing useful political connections and resources to assistance
in domestic responsibilities traditionally associated with women- such as
childcare and housework, and offering moral support (Rai, 2012; Rai &
Spary, 2019). Within the institutional context of political parties in India,
therefore, familial resources and support become critical in the face of the
scarce availability of political capital for women party-members and the lack
of institutionally mandated measures- such as day-care facilities and
accommodative party-meeting hours- aimed at creating women-friendly workplace
cultures.
In the course of my research
on women’s substantive representation in three political parties- All India
Trinamool Congress (AITC), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), and
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the state of West Bengal, India, women
from across the three political parties affirmed that continuing support from
their families were essential for them to conduct their political
responsibilities. Such support ranged from active political participation by
their relatives to assistance with childcare, cooking and other domestic
responsibilities. Active or tacit consent from older male family members was
also regarded as essential for most women to be able to access politics in the
first place.
Alongside serving as a
resource-pool and a support system for women party workers and aspirants, the family
is also frequently deployed as a metaphor in the official party discourse as
well as by party members in their articulation of belonging within the
institutional spaces of the parties. Characterising the political party as a
‘large joint family’, Sanjana Bhowmik[ii]- a municipal councillor
affiliated to the AITC, identifies her colleagues and herself as the ‘children’
of the family. Such characterisation contributes to her interpretation of
differences of opinion and dissent within the party as everyday quarrels among
cousins in a joint family.
While the representation of
the party as a joint family can imply the existence of horizontal networks
among party members, a different picture emerges when one examines the family
metaphor through a contextualised lens. The image of the party as a family- a
recurrent theme in the narratives of several party members in the AITC as well
as in the CPI(M) and the BJP, takes as its source a specific historical
construction of the South Asian joint family- characterised by the joint
ownership of property among fathers, sons and male cousins, patrilineal descent
conditioned by the caste system and the overarching authority of elderly male
members over others in the family (Thapar, 1980, 2010). The prevalence of hierarchy and male authority
within the joint family is reflected in the interpretations of vertical
hierarchy within the parties. Nandana Mukherjee- a ground-level worker of the
AITC, articulates the familial naturalisation of male authority in the party
hierarchy while stressing that most of her women party colleagues including
herself function ‘under the umbrella and direction’[iii] of
the local male party leader- characterised as a ‘Dada’[iv]
(elder brother), who ‘graciously listens’ to the opinions and demands of
ground-workers but makes decisions ‘as he thinks best’.
While interviewees from the
CPI(M) did not overtly express familial sentiments of deference towards male
party leaders, interviewees such as Konika Mitra[v]- a state-committee member
of the CPI(M) argued that the present party leadership (overwhelmingly male) (Financial Express
Staff, 2009; Imam & Salim, 2017) were occupying their positions solely by their ‘sound
logic’ and superior commitment towards revolutionary ideals. In the BJP,
identifying the party as a ‘President-based party’, Promita Sinha[vi]-
a district-level General Secretary of the BJP, underlined the sweeping and
final authority of the President- who has thus far, been always male, in terms
of decision-making. BJP workers under the women’s wing such as Radha Samanta[vii]
expressed open deference to the male Mandal Sabhapati (Local Area
President) in matters of decision-making even while asserting her autonomy as a
women’s wing local area leader.
The imagination of the
political party as a civic-social reincarnation of the South Asian joint family
adds to the naturalised logic of vertical party command the element of male
authority. The fantasy of the party as a family also plays a critical role in
undercutting and containing challenges to the hierarchical authority of the
party leadership through the fostering of emotional investment in the
prevailing gender regime of the parties. In the face of the lack of formal
measures such as gender quotas in the Parliament and the state legislative
bodies, the dearth of other channels of accruing political capital and the lack
of institutional support-mechanisms for women political workers, familial and
dynastic connections continue to decisively influence the descriptive, the
symbolic as well as the substantive representation of women and other
historically disadvantaged social groups in Indian party politics.
References:
Chandra, K. (Ed.). (2016). Democratic Dynasties: State,
Party and Family in Contemporary Indian Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Chhibber, P. (2011). Dynastic Parties: Organization, Finance
and Impact. Party Politics, 19(277–295).
DeSouza, Peter Ronald and Sridharan, E. eds. (2006). India’s
Political Parties. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Financial Express Staff. (2009). CPI(M) fields only two women
in Lok Sabha polls from Bengal. Retrieved September 22, 2020, from Financial
Express website:
https://www.financialexpress.com/archive/cpim-fields-only-two-women-in-lok-sabha-polls-from-bengal/444752/
Imam, S., & Salim, S. (2017). Left-wing groups speak of
women’s empowerment, but their politics are still dominated by men. Retrieved
September 22, 2020, from Firstpost website:
https://www.firstpost.com/india/left-wing-groups-speak-of-womens-empowerment-but-their-politics-are-still-dominated-by-men-3383722.html
IPU. (2020). Percentage of women in national parliaments.
Retrieved June 5, 2020, from Inter-Parliamentary Union website:
https://data.ipu.org/women-ranking?month=9&year=2019
Malhotra, I. (2004). Dynasties of India and Beyond:
Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. New Delhi: Harper Collins India.
Mufti, M. (2008). Dynastic Politics in South Asia. South
Asian Journal, 20, 9–20.
Norris, Pippa and Lovenduski, J. (1995). Political
Recruitment: Gender, race and class in the British Parliament. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Rai, S. M. (2012). The Politics of Access: Narratives of
Women MPs in the Indian Parliament. Political Studies, 60(1),
195–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00915.x
Rai, S. M., & Spary, C. (2019). Performing
Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Thapar, R. (1980). A History of India v.1. Delhi:
Penguin India.
Thapar, R. (2010). Ancient Indian Social History (2nd
ed.). New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
[i] The present Parliament
has only 78 women members out of a total of 542; constituting 14.39% of
parliamentarians (IPU, 2020).
[ii] Interviewed on
16/01/2019. The names of all the interviewees have been changed for the protection
of their confidentiality.
[iii] Interviewed on
14/01/2019.
[iv] In South
Asian cultural vocabulary, it is common to apply familial kinship terms such as
Didi (elder sister), Dada (elder/older brother) or Kaka/Chacha
(uncle) to non-familial relationships.
[v] Interviewed on
13/11/2018.
[vi] Interviewed on
22/11/2018.
[vii] Interviewed on
30/12/2018.
Proma Ray Chaudhury is a PhD Candidate at the School of Law and Government in Dublin City University under the EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie ETN Global India Fellowship. Her thesis is titled: Gender and Political Parties in India: Pathways to Women’s Political Participation. It analyses the political parties of the state of West Bengal in India in terms of their institutional party cultures and explores the obstacles and opportunities that these shifting cultures present for women’s active political participation. This project is funded by a Horizon 2020-funded European Training Network, Global India (grant number 722446).
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