by Dr. Piyush Mathur

Men Welfare Trust (MWT)—a New Delhi-based non-governmental organization—claims to have sent a letter dated April 12 to India's Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Rajiv Kumar.

A screenshot of this almost two-and-a-half-page-long letter was posted by Amit Lakhani, MWT's president, on MWT’s LinkedIn profile on April 16.

Signed off by Lakhani, the letter calls out Indian political parties for their sexism reflected in their electoral sops favouring female voters. (Polling for India’s 7-phased elections started on April 19 and will continue until June 01, barring any untoward incidents.)

While Lakhani skips the word 'sexism', it captures well MWT’s charges against the Indian political parties. The objective of his letter, though, is to argue to the Election Commission of India (ECI) that these sops (or their promises) for women have been corrupting India’s electoral process inasmuch as they use the women as a vote bank while pointedly neglecting Indian men’s specific challenges.

Pleading that 'gender issues...be addressed in a holistic and neutral manner' instead, Lakhani presses the point that sops for women not only discriminate against men but also run counter to the principle of equality before the law—’which is the soul of the constitution of India'. A particularly scathing part of the letter reads as follows:

We believe that while women's issues are always at the centre stage of the elections, issues related to men such as [the] alarming rise of male suicides, absence of protection by law to the male victims of domestic violence & abuse, blatant misuse of gender-biased laws against men resulting in innocent men being destroyed, homelessness of men, low life expectancy of men, men's physical & mental health, absence of any constitutional body such as Men's Commission etc. have completely been brushed off by most political parties...

Citing Article 14 (granting equality before the law) and Article 15 (forbidding discrimination) of India's Constitution, Lakhani urges the ECI 'to take immediate steps to ensure that political parties and candidates refrain from making gender-based promises or policies that seek to exploit gender dynamics for electoral gains.' He also requests the ECI 'to enforce stringent guidelines and regulations to monitor and penalise any instances of gender-based campaigning or policy-making that violate the principles of equality and fairness.'

The letter references 'an annexure' listing freebies to women 'announced by various political parties in this election season'.  This annexure, however, was not included in Lakhani's post (containing the letter’s screenshot) on LinkedIn, and nor could it be located, as of April 25, on MWT's webpage.

The letter is also sloppy in some of its phraseology and claims; for instance, it refers to India’s males ‘as 50% population of the country’ when in reality males constitute around (a projected) 51.56% of India’s population as of 2024 (and females continue to face a disproportionate amount of life-threatening challenges from their very conception owing to continuing prejudices against their sex).

Another letter—or more like a draft for one

On April 25, Lakhani made another post on LinkedIn containing a draft for another letter—dated April 13. This draft letter—which also includes hyperlinks to three media reports about some key sops for women being pushed by India’s main political parties—is meant to be used by Indian male voters individually to petition the ECI to ban the parties from announcing, implementing these sops. In his post containing this draft letter, Lakhani urged India’s male voters to download the draft, put their names on it, sign it, and mail it to the ECI (even if electronically via its official portal).

While as rambling and linguistically challenged as its epistolary predecessor, this draft letter is distinctively more sentimental—and contains peculiar, inconsistent employment of capitalization in its type. In a particularly emphatic statement, this letter poses the following query, in this exact type, to the ECI:

It is a critical time for your kind attention to this matter and be the voice of the voice-less, that is the male voter. What crime have the male voters committed to deserve such biased and one-sided treatment from the Political Parties?

The draft ends with the following statements—exactly in the following type—with the first one directly addressing the CEC:

I am sure that you would have intervened with similar requested action if election promises were being made ONLY FOR MALE VOTERS.

I have firm belief that atleast the Election Commission would not ignore MALE VOTERS for the "crime of being a male".

(Lakhani has also posted a Hindi translation of this original English-language draft letter on MWT’s LinkedIn page.)

Concluding remarks

It is perhaps a bit unfortunate that Lakhani’s draft letter presumes that only males might have objections to these political sops for females. Had he written it in a gender-neutral way—even while raising objections to these sops for women—this draft letter, notwithstanding its linguistic hiccups, could have also been used quite directly by some women agreeing with MWT’s contention. The celebrity activist, documentarian, and lawyer, Deepika Narayan Bharadwaj would perhaps have been the first in line among India’s women to sign off on a version of this draft letter had it been written in a gender-neutral voice.

In point of fact, sops for women have also been occasionally criticized in the media by some Indian feminists over the course of past many years, though not to the same ends that Lakhani, MWT, Bharadwaj or anybody concerned about gender-neutrality might have in mind.

Thoughtfox readers should also note the fact that women are not the only demographic category used by India’s politicians to divide up the electorate along the lines of identity qua vote banks. In fact, the political category of ‘women’ as recipients of sops might be the most realistic when put next to convoluted colonial fabrications of ‘caste’, ‘tribe’, and ‘religion’ that have otherwise dominated India’s legal, political, academic, and media parlances.

As of April 26, there is no update from MWT whether its complaint regarding sexism in electoral sops has received any response from the ECI. As for the draft letter meant to be used by individual male voters to petition the ECI, more than one male has pointed out on MWT’s post on LinkedIn that the ECI’s complaint box fails to function beyond its early interfaces.