Powerful women are playing a key role in India's general election, now entering its final phase. In a land not so long ago renowned for purdah (the seclusion of women) and suttee (the self-immolation of widows), female politicians are among the most vocal and most visible contenders in the campaign.
These women are not just camp followers, they are party leaders who command huge influence and direct the aspirations of whole sections of society. They have the sort of fanatical support bases which most Western politicians can only dream of.
India's leading woman is, of course, Sonia Gandhi, president of the Congress party and contender for the office of prime minister. In an election campaign characterised by a lack of issues, the wife of the late Rajiv Gandhi has been the most discussed and the most pilloried of all the country's politicians.
Most criticism centres on her Italian birth which, many believe, should disqualify her from holding the highest elected office in India. The defence minister recently said her only contribution to India had been the two children she had produced.
This election, the third in three years, is likely to prove a watershed for Sonia Gandhi and Congress, the country's oldest political party. Many think it cannot recover from the decline which set in after the assassination in 1991 of her husband who had become prime minister seven years earlier.
Gandhi (52) says she does not set much store by opinion polls and that is probably just as well. A series of surveys has predicted that Congress will be trounced by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies. Leading the grouping is the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose handling of the recent conflict with Pakistan in Kashmir has ensured him high ratings.
It has been variously predicted that Congress will put in its worst performance ever and that Gandhi will fail to win a seat in this, her first election bid. That she is taking advantage of Indian electoral rules by standing in two constituencies, one in the north and one in the south, indicates to some that she lacks confidence.
Congress tends to attract supporters from the middle classes: precisely the sector which this time is staying away from the polls (one well-to-do woman said in a television interview the only voters in her household were the servants).
Gandhi comes from fairly modest origins. Her father was a builder in a small town near Turin. She met her future husband while she was a language student in England; they married in 1968. It was with reluctance that after his death she assumed the dynastic mantle.
A recent newspaper cartoon showed Gandhi (her turned-up nose held imperiously aloft) seated King Canute-like on a seaside throne, ordering back a tidal wave of BJPalliance votes. Where once Congress was virtually synonymous with Indian politics, today's reality is a nationwide spectrum of allegiances fractured along caste, religious and regional lines. The BJP has shown itself adept at the game of pacts but Congress has formed alliances reluctantly, still clinging to the idea of a single party answering the needs of all Indians.
If Congress cannot improve on recent form, this election will be the end of Gandhi's hopes of becoming prime minister. Only a Congress victory can ensure that the contentious issue of her Italian origin is no longer deemed an electoral liability.
While few doubt her organisational skills, many say she is not a natural politician. Shy and retiring, she shrinks from the media spotlight. An obsession with security, prompted by the murders of both her mother-in-law and her husband, only serves to make her seem more aloof. Her speeches are delivered from a script in faltering Hindu.
The Gandhi name both links her to the party's illustrious past and exposes its inherent weakness: an over-reliance on one family. But, for good or ill, the fate of Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty are inextricably linked. Indeed, some supporters say the greatest comfort of recent weeks has been the emergence on the scene of Sonia Gandhi's daughter, Priyanka.
Her London-based son, Rahul, has also been seen at the hustings but it is Priyanka who has made an impression. Overseeing her mother's performances, Priyanka has shown herself to be adept and confident, with much of the charisma of her grandmother, Indira.
One of Gandhi's few alliances has been made with a former actress, Jayalalitha, and her party in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Jayalalitha is everything that the Congress leader is not: brazen, brash and boastful. To her supporters she is known as Amma (Mother), Golden Woman, Supreme Commander, Revolutionary Leader, Walking Goddess. But to her detractors she is India's First Lady of Misrule, a madwoman, an arrogant, conniving harridan who will stop at nothing to achieve her ends.
Jayalalitha's greatest coup this year was to bring down the Indian government (one poster depicts a big woman towering over a smashed parliament building with a mallet in her hand). It was her withdrawal of support from the prime minister's coalition in April which precipitated the current election.
"Forming a coalition government with Jayaram Jayalalitha would be like going to bed with an anaconda", said one Congress party stalwart as Gandhi vainly struggled to form a new administration after the downfall of Vajpayee's regime.
Having pulled the rug from under the prime minister, Jayalalitha is now obsessed with what she calls his "betrayal". Much of her campaigning in the run-up to this weekend's final phase of voting in southern Tamil Nadu state has been devoted to tirades on the subject.
The former screen star has been entertaining rallies with her trademark jingles, little songs of her own composition, about the "perfidy" of the prime minister and one of his ministers. Ostensibly, she parted company with the BJP because it refused to accept her demands that defence minister, George Fernandes, be sacked and that a dismissed naval chief be reinstated. But her real problem with Fernandes was that he renaged on an offer to help her fight multi-million pound corruption charges. He also failed - and this was the final straw, according to some sources - to offer her his condolences when her dog died.
In fact, Jayalalitha (her full name is rarely used) had presented the BJP and its allies with an impossible ultimatum. She wanted Vajpayee to sack the current Tamil Nadu government which is headed by a rival party and committed to putting her behind bars.
There are more than 40 corruption charges against Jayalalitha and her cronies relating to her time as Tamil Nadu chief minister from 1991 to 1996. One set of allegations says she amassed some £10 million during her rule despite her claim that she would only take a one rupee monthly salary.
Other charges allege she made nearly £3 million out of a purchase of 45,300 colour television sets for villages in the state.
Jayalalitha is said to have spent £18 million on a lavish wedding reception for her son. The tab for a recent stay in a luxury Delhi hotel suite came to £3,000 a day. When police raided one of her many mansions, they found 10,500 saris, 350 pairs of shoes and 26 kilos (nearly 57lbs) of gold.
India's answer to ex-Philippines first lady Imelda Marcos she may be, but the masses love her. In addition to her rants about the prime minister, she speaks of matters that concern them: water scarcity, electricity shortages and the poor distribution of subsidised foodstuffs.
The rotund Jayalalitha is specially feted for her pale complexion and rosy cheeks. After a recent rally in Tamil Nadu, wellwishers trooped onto the podium to present her with colourful silk saris for her collection. In villages along her route, people turned out in their thousands to cheer her motorcade.
There are signs that India may be moving away from the chronic instability of recent years. People are talking of the need for a strong, stable government, one whose survival is not dictated by regional parties such as Jayalalitha's AIADMK.
To many, Jayalalitha is all that is wrong with Indian politics. But she still attracts a fanatical following and her party may remain a force to be reckoned with for some time.
PEOPLE might be in awe of Jayalalitha but to Mayawati they show genuine devotion. Mayawati is the voice of the dalits, formerly known as "untouchables", These people are the lowest of the low in India's caste-stratified society. Their emergence on the political scene is a phenomenon which has given the upper and middle castes a rude awakening. It marks one of the most ground-breaking changes to have taken place in India in recent years.
A woman who has risen from the lowly station of her chamar or "cobbler" caste to the ranks of high political office, Mayawati is one of the few real revolutionaries in a deeply conservative country.
Her supporters tend to come from the lower stratas of society. At rallies throughout the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, they have been arriving in their thousands by foot, bicycle or tractor trailer to hear her speak.
"I have come to hear her for the first time," said Babli, a 25-year-old mother of two at one gathering. Typical of the people who support Mayawati, Babli (whose husband earns less than £10 a month) said: "She has done a lot for the villages, making the roads better and providing water pumps. She has really fought for the rights of the lower castes".
That there are so many women among the thousands of supporters is testimony to the power of this politician, a former school teacher. Normally women would not turn out in such strength at an election rally, but Mayawati has the sort of cult status other Indian politicians can only dream of.
Twice in recent years she was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous and in many ways most politically important state. "It is time the dalits realise their power and stand up together to fight the forces opposing them", she has been telling her supporters. "Years and years of oppression should end now".
Dalits are fighting discrimination nationwide but it is in Uttar Pradesh, where they form 22 per cent of the population, that their struggle is centred. Other political leaders are obliged to take notice for this is the Hindu heartland, traditional power-base of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, the state in which both the prime minister and Gandhi are contesting the election.
The failure of a short-lived alliance with Vajpayee's Hindu nationalists in 1997 has convinced Mayawati that this time her Bahujan Samaj Party should form no pacts. More significantly, it is seeking to broaden its base, fielding not just Muslim candidates but also upper caste candidates.
Mayawati has been telling her followers that their party will do so well that, before long, it will wrest control of the Uttar Pradesh state government from the BJP. Such words are an elixir to India's poorest. Though the status of "untouchability" was officially abolished nearly half a century ago, they still live as outcasts in many parts of rural India.
Dalits cannot use the same wells, visit the same temples or frequent the same neigh bourhoods as those of the upper castes. If they touch the cooking utensils of a brahmin, these must be ritually cleansed of pollution.
"Mayawati looks after the poor and their interests", says Savitri, a 40-year-old chamar woman. "She even helped us get some land. The upper castes had all the land in our village but she forced them to give up some of it and it was distributed among us".
The lot of ordinary women in India is not a particularly happy one: female literacy is a mere 35 per cent, as against 63 per cent for men. Female infanticide, child marriage and bride burning are still prevalent.
But India's women activists agree that the prominent presence of women in politics will have a decisive impact on their need for equality, self-esteem and independence.
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