Why India likes to lust after a 'sexy' woman in politics

Two days ago, a friend from Kolkata called and asked if I had heard about Partha Dasgupta. Some snooping around on social media and I discovered that Dasgupta, a self-professed "independent filmmaker", is a middle-aged gentleman with a respectable salt and pepper goatee, donning a kurta, the garb of Bong bourgeois. He was in the news for making a sexually derogatory comment about actress Roopa Ganguly, a BJP politician in West Bengal.

"At this age too, her waist and navel downwards are a source of desire (kamna) for men, and jealousy for women. The recruitment cell of the BJP clearly has a good eye," he reportedly said.

Ganguly, famous for her depiction of a feisty Draupadi in the BR Chopra directed magnum opus, Mahabharata, lashed back, saying: "Mr Partha has demonstrated a dirty mindset, most of the men in West Bengal will be ashamed of his comments!"

Bitter truth

Let's be frank, to men belonging to my mama's generation, read 50-plus, semi-balding, pot-bellied, semi-retired men, whose overweight wives spend more time watching shows like Dadagiri and soppy Bong serials post nine, or sweat it out over hilsa while stuffing deem sheddo (boiled egg) down the throats of their adolescent sons, Ganguly is perhaps the last surviving testament of their virility - a woman perceived as serious as well as sexy, in popular culture, as well as regional cinema. Someone who can act as well as turn men on.

She, with her husky voice and open mane, is just the kind of turn-on that middle-aged, male fantasies are made up of. A nation that earlier would gape at her when Ganguly, with a sari draped over her bosom, was made to undergo a rather humiliating and long-drawn vastraharan at the hands of the Kauravas. Reflecting a culture that is secretly aroused only by sex and violence.

Ganguly at best divides the Bong brethren. While one section openly contend that she is a cheap, political ploy by the state BJP unit, to woo voters, especially in villages and districts of Bengal. The other prefers to see her appear in a handful of dailies. In actuality, Ganguly is hot, well-maintained, well-spoken and a welcome change in a state headed by a chief minister who stands for physical austerity - flip-flops and hand-washed Bengal taaths her age-old trademark.

Sensitive kind

So why is sex appeal taboo in politics, if it's what precisely works in cinema, popular Indian fiction, the corporate world, in hospitality and aviation - where a woman's physical attributes score higher than her grey matter.

In a country that serially objectifies women - where matrimonial ads highlight our national obsession with fair skin, thin body, good-looking. Women are easily stereotyped and stigmatised - they are reduced to a cheap commodity to lech at, and lust after. To be checked out and felt up in college canteens, buses and alleys. Big-budget Bollywood films feed into the same latent lust of our population by inserting sexist humour and sleazy item songs. Disco. Dandiya. Download

Why are we so threatened by good-looking female politicians - with the ladies in question undergoing an austere makeover in an attempt to be considered politically serious and be taken seriously-ditching the stilettos for the chappal. The see-through chiffon for khadi. Removing all traces of make-up, donning the desi, bindi-kajal pencil avatar.

Why is their sensual screen image so different from the ones we see when they stand next to a dais, even when they may have been hired for the same, exact purpose?

How is it that just a handful survive the sinister, sexist underbelly of Indian politics, like Jayalalithaa, who appeared in more than 120 Tamil, Telugu and Kannada films, before foraying into politics, hand held by actor-turned-politician himself, MG Ramachandran.

Do C-grade item queens like Rakhi Sawant make it easier to take jibes at women as a serious political class? Sawant, now roped in by Republican Party of India, had earlier launched her own political outfit - Rashtriya Aam Party - symbolised by the modest green chilli. Her manifesto read, "I want to serve the poor and uplift the status of women. I will give my last drop of blood to serve the dukhi janata and provide an alternative to those who are fed up with corruption."

Is it true then?

Is the "masculinisation" of politics a narrow reflection of the sad reality of Roopa Ganguly's present predicament? Caught between an over eager audience that dreams of a Draupadi, but sleeps with a Sita.