Denigrating women in public life not new to TN, past has proof

CHENNAI: The video of an anonymous DMK platform speaker and state BJP vice president VP Duraisamy denigrating women in public life should not surprise witnesses of Tamil Nadu’s political history in the last couple of decades at least.

The state has had a dubious distinction of blurting out unquotable remarks about women politicians.

While the DMK and BJP sympathisers and IT teams are engaged in a social media fracas over the deputy general secretary of the former party, Kanimozhi Karunanidhi tendering her apology to Khushbu Sundar on behalf of the party and feminists in the saffron party remaining indifferently silent on their vice president’s sexist slur, a quick recap of the recent history suggests that the politicians, mostly men have uttered the unquotable and got away with it in almost all instances.

Barring the pending case against former AIADMK MLA turned BJP functionary SVe Shekher for making unquotable remarks about women journalists, hardly any politicians have been pulled up by their party leadership, let alone tried in the court for besmirching women in public life. When it comes to making sexist comments in public, none could outdo senior BJP leader H Raja, a habitual offender who would be remembered in this regard for his blatantly derogatory remarks against Kanimozhi a few years ago.

The state unit of the Congress party had proved that it’s no exception to the verbal diarrhoea some time in 2015 when former TNCC chief EVKS Elangovan made an alleged distasteful remark about the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Ironically, Jayalalithaa had secured a space in the hall of shame when she slandered Kanimozhi during a political campaign.

Needless to say, the list of defamers would be incomplete without a mention of habitual offenders like Radha Ravi and Dindigul I Leoni.

A senior DMK leader said that their deputy general secretary was right in condemning the slur of nondescript party speaker.