Playing The Woman Card Should Have No Place in Politics

It's been five days since the Bharatiya Janata Party's vice-president in Uttar Pradesh, Dayashankar Singh, compared Mayawati to a prostitute.

It's a story that has evolved rapidly. Dayashankar was rightly sacked by his party. There was widespread fury at the gross insult to a woman, a Dalit and former chief minister of India's most populous state.

What changed more subtly was the hierarchy of indignation: On Day 1, Mayawati's response was all about the usage of a term derogatory to women, and replacing it with a feminine one that evoked devotion and some fear.

"To the backward classes, I am like a Devi. They are angry," she said.

But the reference to the backward classes ensured that an insult to a senior woman politician was on its way to becoming, primarily, an insult to a Dalit politician.

Ironically, there are a number of prominent women in the fray in the UP assembly, some of them potential game changers.

Just as Mayawati announced the beginning of state-wide protests against Dayashankar Singh's comments, it emerged that the offending politician's wife might contest the UP polls.

Mayawati may be a four-time former CM but don't dismiss Congress's CM face Sheila Dikshit. And of course, Congressmen are anything but dismissive of Priyanka Gandhi, potentially a star campaigner.

Expect her mother Sonia Gandhi to make a few appearances as well. Dimple Yadav, wife of sitting CM Akhilesh Yadav, is the Samajwadi Party's best-known woman face.

In an environment where any misstep by an opponent is a godsend, you would expect women politicians to leap at the opportunity to pillory the BJP for Dayashankar's antics. But no, the woman card is the last thing that an Indian woman politician will play, especially in the heat and dust of UP, a cradle of caste politics.

Dalits account for 20 percent of the state's population. It doesn't matter that half of them are women: In India, as the age-old adage goes, when you cast your vote, you vote your caste. 'Vote your gender' doesn't quite have that ring to it.

So if you expected women to outnumber men at the protests in Lucknow against the slur on Mayawati, you would have been disappointed: It was an out-and-out Dalit protest.

Congress is no different, with Sheila Dikshit being presented as a Brahmin face. Cast your mind back to when Sonia finally decided to join politics.

Her first visit was to Amethi as a 'bahu' and she asked for 'moon dikhai', the gift given to a new bride.

She was, of course, asking for votes. But over the years Sonia has realised that being a woman doesn't pay in UP politics. This time Congress has fallen back to getting caste combinations right to bounce back.

Yet, politicians would do well to remember that one reason that the last Mayawati government lost momentum was a spate of rapes.

Playing the woman card -- or any card -- should have no place in politics. But the BJP and other parties need to come down heavily on misogynists like Dayashankar in their ranks. Being a woman is a privilege, and no politician should overlook that.

Not even a woman politician.