Last week the BJP government decided to get the 131st Constitution Amendment Bill, reserving 33 per of the seats in the Lok Sabha for women, passed. It needed a two-thirds majority, which it didn’t get. The reserved seats would have largely come from the increased number of seats from 544 to 850 so that men didn’t get deprived.
Women’s reservation is not a new idea. It’s been around for a long time. I recall writing an editorial about it — in the newspaper I was working for then — in 1998 because the Vajpayee government was initiating a debate on it.
The newspaper proposed a two-step way. First, force political parties, by law, to give at least 25 per cent of their tickets to women. Then, because reform has to be gradual, after about 20-25 years, when the male dominated parties had got used to the idea, reserve at least a quarter of the seats in parliament for women.
Charity, they say, begins at home. At present, almost all political parties keep women out of the party’s power structure. Many countries mandate that a certain number of places in the party lists on elections must be for women. Even little Nepal.
But none of the big countries do it. As a result, according to the UN, only 27 per cent of all seats in all legislatures are held by women. So whenever India manages to reserve 33 per cent it will be a great achievement.
Anyway, my argument to our seven-member editorial board was that this method would make the parties directly responsible for ensuring greater representation for women. Also, that it would solve the problem of the Election Commission having to identify the reserved constituencies and thus remove allegations of match-fixing.
As often happens with editorial writing, the board said it’s your idea, you write it while we go to lunch. Sometimes it’s a bad idea to air a good idea.
Nothing came of the Vajpayee initiative, of course. No one expected it to. But the then head of the RSS, K Sudarshan, did say that the BJP, which was in power then, was losing its uniqueness with this women’s reservation thing. Women? Really? Don’t be absurd. Perish the thought.
This was consistent with the RSS’ view which generally takes a very functional and housebound view of women. They are seen as gruhinis, cooks and mothers and so on.
Organisations that derive their core ideologies from religions all tend to take a dim view of women. Indeed, even organisations that don’t have any religion or faith do the same.
RSS and women
A couple of years later, in 2000, I wrote on why the RSS needed more women. It took a lot of research, made harder by the fact that there was no Google or AI.
My primary source was the classic book by Walter Anderson and Sridhar Damle. They were able to devote just two paragraphs to the subject. Dr Hegdewar, the Founder of the RSS, wasn’t at all keen on having women in the organisation but he did help in establishing a parallel organisation that would have no formal connection with the boys club. It was called Rashtra Sevika Samiti.
It’s legitimate to wonder therefore if anything has changed and if the BJP had the blessings of the RSS in its great endeavour that failed. Did the party go solo on this? Did it hold long discussions with the RSS? If so, what was the RSS’ view?
If it agrees with the BJP, that’s a huge change. If it didn’t, well, that, too, should raise eyebrows. And, equally importantly, the BJP: how did it manage to convince the RSS on this and if it didn’t, what’s the state of play between them?
But the Indian political wicket should not be about just the BJP and the RSS. There are other parties, too. They have 63 per cent of the national vote. And on current reckoning they are cutting a very sorry figure tactically, strategically and optically.
Don’t rely on reservation
It is necessary also to ask if such a block reservation of x or y per cent will create a vote bank for the party which legislates it. By definition, it cannot because there would be only women contesting in a reserved constituency and it’s not possible that only one candidate will get all the votes. Men would become crucial.
Talking of unbreakable vote banks, there’s only one way to have one. It’s something I have been advocating for nearly two decades.
There must be a political party only for women, no men allowed. We have caste and community based parties. There’s absolutely no reason why there should not be a gender based one. It’s the only way to beat patriarchy because its beneficiaries won’t do it.
Published on April 22, 2026