BJP gives Nagaland first woman Rajya Sabha MP: What's the relevance of push for Matri Shakti?

New Delhi, March 22: The term 'Matri Shakti' can be easily translated into women empowerment. But in the context of Nagaland, where patriarchy and male chauvinism rule politics, it is almost a revolution. With no other candidate filing nomination for the March 31 elections to the lone Rajya Sabha seat from the state, BJP's S. Phangnon Konyak is now all set to become the first woman Rajya Sabha member from Nagaland.

Of course, doubts persist as to how much this episode will change the course of Nagaland politics, but it was path breaking, and certainly not an easy one. Narendra Modi's image of a strong, decisive and gutsy Prime Minister also played a key role. Perhaps even his worst rival knows that Modi has an inclination to go for a milestone which others would say is unconventional. This is one such.

The Nagaland Assembly holds the dubious distinction of opposing the women's quota bill, which had sought to reserve 33 per cent of state legislature and parliamentary seats for women in 1997. An official resolution was moved by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Zhove Lohe during the tenure of the S.C. Jamir government in Nagaland and was passed unanimously.

The influential Naga Students' Federation (NSF) too had written to parliamentary select committee chairperson Geeta Mukherjee, saying the bill went against Naga tradition. Even the women's reservation in urban local bodies has been opposed vehemently.

So the BJP's move is not an ordinary one, though fielding its state women's wing chief for the Rajya Sabha polls may not seem as much of a surprise in the rest of India. It actually challenges male chauvinism of a society where a common refrain among the menfolk is - 'My wife is married to me, and I am not married to her. Rather it is I who have married her'.

Mind you, Nagaland has a high literacy rate, and English is the official language. But it is also true that Nagaland has never elected a woman to its state Assembly since December 1963 when statehood was granted. Naga women do contest elections occasionally but are not considered winnable candidates.

The only instance of Nagaland sending a woman to the Parliament was in the 1970s, when Rano Shaiza was elected as the Lok Sabha MP as the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate.

This was truly an exception. But pushing 'Matri Shakti' has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi's favourite political mission in the northeast. In the run up to the just-concluded Manipur polls, the BJP had appointed its first woman president for the state unit in Sharda Devi.

The saffron party is also projecting Tripura lawmaker Pratima Bhaumik, now Union Minister of State for Social Justice. Last year, she became the first Tripura resident and second woman from northeast to become a Union minister. Bhaumik was also involved in Manipur polls and it is likely that she would be given a bigger role in her state Tripura as well. Like Nagaland, Tripura also goes to the polls in Feb-March 2023.

In yet another Matri Shakti push, an eminent woman tribal leader, Patal Kanya Jamatia, president of Tripura People's Front, joined BJP at a rally in Agartala. She was welcomed into the saffron party fold among others by Chief Minister Biplab Deb, Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Dev Varma, Union minister Pratima Bhowmik and state party president Manik Saha.

The saffron party is following a pattern. The BJP is in power in Tripura and shares power as an important stakeholder in Nagaland. Besides these two states, elections are due in Meghalaya also by early next year. But the saffron outfit is a weak party in that state. It is still to unravel the strategy for the state where it first got MLAs in 1990s.

In Meghalaya, the BJP first opened account in state polls in 1998 when three of its candidates made it to the sixth legislative assembly. Meghalaya is a Christian-dominated state and home to Khasis, Jaintias and Garos, and all these tribes follow a 'matrilineal' system in inheritance law and marriages. Men use the surname of mother and wife.

Yet, the politics is male dominated and women remain unsafe. The state has a notorious record of high number of cases of rape and atrocities against women. Even the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for the year 2020 showed that the state has the highest such cases among the peer states in the northeastern region.

From Meghalaya, 568 cases of crimes against women were reported in 2020, which is much higher than the states with similar population and size such as Manipur, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh. In 2018, of the 372 candidates who contested the Assembly polls, only 32 were women. Seven had fought on a Congress ticket, and two as BJP nominees.

Mazel Ampareen Lyngdoh was elected on Congress ticket in 2018 and now backs Conrad Sangma's government. She told this writer recently: "Alcoholism and the growing number of men taking drugs and other substances are responsible for rising crime against women." All these may strengthen an argument that there is a relevance for the push for women empowerment in northeast. Let that 'push' come from the BJP. This is one issue where being a pro-Hindu outfit should not deprive BJP the credit of experimenting with something new and unprecedented.