Male Socialist!

Raju Korti
Before I launch into this harangue, let me clear this at the outset. I have never spoken to Samajwadi Party leader and former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav although I came face to face with him several times in my professional calling. Two reasons prominently deterred me from speaking to the man who claims to be the torch-bearer of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia's ideals. One, his utter predictability even while conceding the crooked politician that he is and his anhydrous face that looks carved out of some Cuddpah stone.
To write about the opportunistic and misogynist Samajwadi Party would be stating the obvious given its long history of male chauvinism but what seduces me is the sheer facetious side of Mulayam Singh which unfolds at the most awkward of times. For him that is!
In his sexist wisdom Mulayam feels that boys being boys, are prone to commit rapes more by aberration than design and therefore don't deserve punishment as harsh as death. Public furore and sensitivity mean little to him since statistics, if not anything else, says a lot about these "enthusiastic boys" who find rape such an abiding and compelling pastime. But a patronizing Mulayam will not risk reducing himself to a cipher by rubbing his "secular" vote bank the wrong way.
Since then, of course, he has tempered his overzealous comment with an assurance that "No one respects women more than Samajwadi Party." One does not have to rummage the archives to discover that the Samajwadi Party has steadfastly opposed the Women's Reservation Bill on several specious reasons, one -- no prizes for guessing -- being patently casteist. It is another story that having broken off with the rudderless Congress and flirting with the Bharatiya Janata Party whenever it suits him, he pulled out all stops in the like-minded company of Laloo Prasad Yadav who has over half a dozen daughters himself and a wife he shamelessly anointed as Bihar's chief minister when he was unceremoniously kicked out. The bill was tabled in the Parliament by the BJP.
Mulayam had reasoned out that "if the Women's Reservation Bill is passed, Parliament will be filled with women who will invite catcalls and whistles. Once the bill comes into force, not a single male would be elected to the Lok Sabha after 10 years as elected women would not leave their seats, nor the political parties would be in a position to replace them.". Who knows, if the bill is passed he and his cowland partner would have to bear the onerous burden of spending more time inside the Parliament, showcasing their talent at whistling and catcalls. Pity, the women who stormed his Lucknow house and whistled in chorus as protest all through the day, failed to see the humor behind his depraved logic.
A Facebook friend has appealed to me to label him as "pervert", but sample this concern of his for the womenfolk in the villages. "Rural women will not benefit from the Women's Reservation Bill because they are not as attractive as those from the affluent class. Bade bade gharon ki ladkiya aur mahilayan kewal upar ja sakti hain...yaad rakhna...apko mauka nahi milega..hamare gaon ki mahila me akarshan itna nahin...," (Only girls and women from affluent class can go forward...remember this..you (rural women) will not get a chance...Our rural women did not have that much attraction)," he had said at a rally in Barabanki in 2012.
For all his anti-feminist posturing, the Samajwadi Party has still managed to cobble up a women's wing called Samajwadi Mahila Sabha. I have no clue what this women's wing does, but I am more enthused at the prospect of meeting its rustic members than the poker-faced villain of this piece.