The case of the missing handbag

Margaret Thatcher and Hina Rabbani Khar may have made them famous; but Indian women politicians are not fans

You’ve got to hand it to Meryl Streep. After bringing the glacial fashion editor based on Anna Wintour to life in The Devil Wears Prada, she’s now appearing on our screens as the redoubtable Mrs Thatcher, the Iron Lady who is as far removed from Wintour’s Ice Queen as anyone could possibly be. And yet, such is Streep’s ability to morph herself into any life form that rave reviews have already starting pouring in for her portrayal of the former British Prime Minister.

What’s truly uncanny, though, is how much Meryl actually looks like Margaret in the film. There are the tweedy twin-sets, the blouses with a prim bow at the neck, the sturdy shoes, the impossibly bouffant hair. And then, of course, there’s the handbag.

Aha, the handbag. The accessory that was such a part of Thatcher’s look that it became the stuff of legend. Some speculated that the Prime Minister always carried a handbag in an effort to evoke a subliminal association with the Queen. Elizabeth II is never seen in public without a handbag dangling off her arm even though she famously carries no money (she has been known to refresh her lipstick at the dinner table though, so maybe the bag is for an emergency stash of make-up). And there seemed to be something to this theory as Thatcher started becoming more and more Queen-like as her reign wore on, even using the royal ‘we’ to refer to herself (as in “We have just become a grandmother”).

But, more pertinently, the handbag perennially hanging off her arm – ready to be wielded as an offensive weapon if the need ever arose – became something of a metaphor for Thatcher’s bullying style of politics. And those ministers and partymen who became victims of her iron-fist-in-an-iron-glove were described as having being ‘handbagged’, as in clouted about the head by her well-structured Asprey bag.

Such was the power of that image that even now, many decades after the event, we find it hard to picture Margaret Thatcher without her trademark handbag, swinging ominously by her side. It’s as much a part of her image as the poshed-up vowels, the helmet-like hair, and the slash of red lipstick. It signaled a certain purposefulness; it showed everyone that she meant business.

Yes, a handbag can say a lot simply by hanging off someone’s arm – and sometimes it says just as much by being conspicuously absent.

Look around you in our own political sphere. What do you see? I’ll tell you what you don’t: expensive handbags on the arms of our women politicians (with the exception of Mayawati, but more on her later).

Sonia Gandhi, the most powerful women politician in India by a long way, is never seen in public carrying a handbag. Sometimes when she attends AICC meetings or Congress plenary sessions, she carries a mannish briefcase bulging with papers and folders. But otherwise, her arms stay empty, swinging silently by her side, no matter where she is: speaking at an election rally, taking part in a political function, making an appearance at a wedding, or even attending Parliament.

Or take Jayalalitha, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. She is always impeccably turned out like the nicely brought up, convent school girl that she is. Perfectly groomed hair, flawless complexion, beautifully draped saris (sometimes with capes to match) – but no handbag. In Delhi, chief minister Sheila Dixit shows a similar disdain for arm candy of any sort. And then, there’s the fiery Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of Paschim Bongo, who also refuses to carry a handbag (which is just as well, because she is the most likely to use it to clobber some hapless soul senseless when in one of her famous fits of temper).

All these ladies have very differing styles of politicking. But the one thing that unites them is that the handbag is always missing. It’s almost as if they see it as an emblem of frivolity which would work against their being taken seriously in the public sphere.

Given this background, it’s perhaps easy to understand why we reacted with such outrage when the Pakistan foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, came to visit us with an enormous Birkin bringing up the rear. The bag took on a life of its own, occupying pride of place in every photo-op and effortlessly eclipsing poor old S.M. Krishna. And before you could say Hermes, a Birkin backlash was in full force. Khar’s judgement -- carrying an uber-expensive handbag on a state visit when she was representing a less-than-prosperous Pakistan – was called into question. And she herself came perilously close to being dismissed as a piece of fluff as a consequence, with her handbag doubling up as a badge of shame.

But strangely enough, the only Indian woman politician who makes a fetish of carrying a handbag has escaped that fate. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is seldom seen without a designer bag hanging off her arm. In fact, one of her many statues had to be redone because the artist had omitted to graft a handbag on to her arm. But unlike Khar who had to deal with such derision because of her fondness for expensive leather goods, Mayawati has managed to sell her designer bags as a symbol of Dalit empowerment, a sign that she’s come a long way, baby.

Yes, as far as political messaging goes, it’s all in the bag – both when it’s hanging off someone’s arm or missing in action.

The madness is the method

You don’t have to be ‘crazy’ to succeed in Indian politics; but if you are a woman, it sure helps

By now you must have had your fill of all those jokes doing the rounds after India elected two new women chief ministers. ‘The three most important states in India are now ruled by mad women’. ‘It is no coincidence that Behenji, Amma and Didi add up to BAD’. And so on and on and on.

But while the sexist undercurrents of these remarks are only too evident, there is no denying that there is a nugget of truth in all these witticisms floating around. Sadly, with the exception of Sheila Dixit, chief minister of Delhi thrice over now, our women CMs haven’t exactly been ringing endorsements for girl power.

Take Mayawati, for instance, chief minister of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh. She rules by statue rather than statute, spending obscene amounts of money erecting vast edifices to herself all over the state without the slightest trace of embarrassment. And her net worth has increased a thousand-fold in that period, by way of what she coyly describes as ‘contributions’ from her loyal party base.

Even if you put allegations of graft and corruption aside, Behenji’s imperial style of functioning is truly shaming. Farmers agitating for their land rights are subjected to abuse and torture. Bureaucrats live in mortal fear of being shunted out if they displease Mayawati in any way. And sycophants rule the roost, as the CM’s megalomania gets increasingly out of control.

We tend to forget this now – given our pre-occupation with the astonishing level of corruption in the DMK – but Jayalalithaa wasn’t much better during her own stint as Tamil Nadu chief minister. Despite her ladylike demeanour and impeccable manners, she was hardly a shining beacon of rectitude in public life.

Nor is there any missing the hint of hysteria beneath the cultured, convent-school voice, which threatens to bubble forth to the surface at the slightest hint of reversal. And, as the BJP learnt the hard way, Jayalalithaa is also the princess of unpredictability, capable of blowing hot and then turning cold with surprising speed and startling regularity.

That same mercurial temperament was also evident in that other stormy petrel of Indian politics, Uma Bharti, once the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. Bharti was never afraid of speaking her mind, whatever the consequences. She took on the tallest leaders of her party without worrying about how it would affect her political prospects. She raged, she laughed, she cried, she shouted; and she never gave a damn about just how crazy she was coming off.

Uma Bharti was going to be true to herself; no matter how damaged that self may become in the process. And you have to admit that there was something terribly brave about that terrifying lack of self-censorship.

And now we have the same devil-may-care attitude in another state chief minister: Mamata Banerjee. And sure enough, she is also dismissed by the commentariat as a hysterical harridan, who has no control over her emotions, who lives by her heart rather than her head. After all, how else do you account for the insanity of her position on Singur, her sheer bloody-mindedness when it came to Nandigram?

But you know what? It is just this stroke of madness, that touch of insanity, which allows these women to succeed in Indian politics. It is their special brand of ‘crazy’ that allows them to deal with the slings and arrows of a world that is ranged against them.

Jayalalithaa wouldn’t have made it in Tamil Nadu politics after the death of her mentor, MGR, without a healthy dose of insanity to shore up her spirits. After all, which sane woman could endure all the calumnies directed at her, not to mention the physical attacks on her as she stood beside MGR’s dead body at his funeral, laying claim to his political legacy.

As she said in an interview afterwards to Sunday magazine, where I then worked, “I am a lady so I cannot show you all the places where I have been pinched and hurt.” And yet, she stood her ground. It was a kind of madness. But a remarkable madness for all that.

Think of a young Mayawati, growing up as a Dalit girl in the feudal, upper-class dominated world of Uttar Pradesh. It took a crazy leap of the imagination to even think that she could become the leader of her people and chief minister one day. And it is that ‘mad’ self-belief that helped her get there in the end.

The same is true of Mamata. Consider all that she has had to endure at the hands of Left Front regime in West Bengal. Her workers have been attacked physically, shot at, and at times, even killed. She herself has been lathi-charged so brutally that she ended up in hospital with a brain injury.

Which woman in her right mind would have continued to battle on after all that? Yes, it took a special sort of ‘madness’ to go on with the fight, and to believe that in the end she would triumph – as, indeed, she did.

So, yes, maybe all those jokesters are right when they say that India’s most important states are now ruled by ‘mad’ women. But let’s also admit that there is method in that madness – and that there is much to admire in that.