A day before Haryana goes to vote, Dera Sacha Sauda chief, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment on two charges of rape, was released on his 11th parole in seven years. It is speculated that his release will influence the way in which large swathes of his followers, including women, will vote in these elections — something which the incumbent Haryana government certainly must have calculated.
On the other end of the spectrum are strong female candidates including Olympian Vinesh Phogat who is waging a battle against the Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhusan Sharan Singh on charges of sexual harassment; Rabia Kidwai, the first woman to stand for elections from the Muslim-dominated Nuh constituency; and Savitri Jindal, chairperson of the O P Jindal Group and one of Asia’s richest women, fighting as an independent candidate from Hisar.
While the presence of candidates and campaigners with a history of violence against women is not unique to this election, it is one which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, especially with candidates like Phogat in the fray.
Across India, participation of women in electoral politics has been on the rise for almost two decades. In a historical first, in the 2019 general elections the percentage of women voters was marginally above the male voters.
So, in an election where almost all political parties have attempted to reach out to a broad umbrella category of the “women voters”, Singh’s parole warrants a discussion on what we understand about women in electoral politics, their demands and the terms of their participation.
In the specific context of the Haryana polls, it would be pertinent to ask: Where do women stand vis-à-vis the de facto slogan of the Haryana elections – kisan, jawan, pehelwan?
First, one needs to develop a gendered understanding of the three categories – kisan, jawan, and pehelwan. The women wrestlers’ protest against sexual harassment squarely placed the female body in a position of power and prominence in an otherwise masculinised public sphere.
Apart from the strong, unyielding demands for the resignation of the perpetrators, it was the corporeal nature of the protest that allowed women to own the traditionally masculine pehelwan identity.
Given the deep presence of a sporting culture and aspirational demands of young women to partake in sports, which ironically exists alongside patriarchal control over women’s bodies and movements, the female wrestlers’ public and political assertion is bound to have some congealing effect on women voters in Haryana.
However, as we know, sexual harassment has not been able to consolidate women across identitarian lines. While women turned up in huge numbers to support the female pehelwans, women devotees have also never abandoned convicted offenders like Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Intersectionality — the idea that women do not just represent their gender identity but that their gender is intersected by other, often competing, identities — complicates how we think of women voters as a category.
The intersection of gender with other identities such as caste, class, religion, sexuality, disability and race has often produced extremely difficult, yet productive moments for politics.
Critical scholarship on caste and race, for instance, has often alerted us to the dangers of essentialising “women” as a homogenous bloc. In Haryana, which largely votes through biradaris, caste is a key marker through which we need to understand the woman voter.
The anti-farm law protests witnessed large participation by women farmers who belied the notion that women are simply dependents on farmland. The “farmer” has often been regarded as a male identity, with women thought of as providing assisting labour.
Scholars have extensively written about how women are not just active farmers but also wage legal and familial battles for share in land ownership. Further, women farmers are disproportionately affected by any pitfalls of agrarian policies. In the run-up to the elections, several women have spoken to media organisations about the challenges of farming, especially as sole earners. The anti-farm laws protests, therefore have found resonance across many sections of women voters.
However, the anti-farm laws protests were dominated by Jat farmers, who also control the majority of the land in Haryana. It therefore needs to be interrogated how Dalit women, who have long been denied land ownership and who continue to labour on other’s fields, would vote on the kisan issue.
Finally, the category jawan is relatively more difficult to engender. Like pehelwan and kisan, the default idea of a soldier is male. However, unlike pehelwan and kisan, this identity has not yet been sufficiently challenged by women’s claims. It would still be amiss to think that the Agniveer scheme does not affect how women vote.
Research shows that both war and peacetime military activity demand labour from women. In the absence of men, women bear a disproportionate burden of farm and care labour. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the precarity of the Agniveer scheme, will further impact women’s financial, social and emotional wellbeing.
Increased electoral participation by women and even a larger number of women candidates have not translated into more seats over the years. A total of 74 women got elected to the Lok Sabha in 2024, as compared to 78 in the previous general elections. Haryana has managed to elect only 87 female MLAs since it became a state in 1966, and women constitute only 10 percent of the present Vidhan Sabha.
This huge gap is not surprising. Recently, Hisar MP, Jai Parkash, commenting on female candidates vying for a ticket, said, “If lipstick and powder can make one a leader, I’ll apply them too. Why should I keep a beard then?”
It is because of this deep-seated misogyny and a fundamental derision of what women represent and aspire for, that a nuanced understanding of the woman voter is required. The Haryana election is an apt opportunity to engender social and political issues such as land, unemployment and gendered violence through an intersectional lens.
The writer is associate professor, O P Jindal Global University
