4 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
18 Muslim women made it to Lok Sabha since independence; 13 of them dynasts: Book
NEW DELHI: That women were always under-represented in the Lok Sabha is a known fact, but Muslim women members have been a greater rarity with only 18 making it to the Lower House since independence, according to a new book.
And while dynastic politics may not be conducive for democracy to deepen its roots, it has played a positive part in giving chances to Muslim women, with 13 out of the 18 being from political families.
From royalty to a tea vendor-turned-politician's wife and from a first lady to a Bengali actress, the 18 Muslim women who treaded the hallowed corridors of power in the Lok Sabha are an eclectic mix, with each of them having an interesting backstory, but one common thread -- their path to power was always strewn with struggle and hurdles.
The story of these 18 Muslim women has been chronicled in an upcoming book-- 'Missing from the House -- Muslim women in the Lok Sabha' by Rasheed Kidwai and Ambar Kumar Ghosh.
Kidwai says he wanted to document the profile of 20 Muslim women who made it to the Lower House, but two of them -- Subhasini Ali and Afrin Ali -- had openly proclaimed that they did not follow Islam.
"Only eighteen Muslim women have made it to the Lok Sabha since the first parliamentary polls in 1951-52. It is a shockingly abysmal figure, considering Muslim women are about 7.1 per cent of India's 146 crore population. Out of the 18 Lok Sabhas constituted till 2025, five times the Lok Sabha did not have a single Muslim woman member," Kidwai and Ghosh write in their book, published by Juggernaut and will be released next month.
Equally shocking is the fact that the number of Muslim women elected to Parliament in one tenure never crossed the mark of four in the 543-seat lower house of Parliament, the book points out.
The book also notes that none of the five southern states -- Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana -- otherwise known for better political representation than the North and with better literary levels and other socio-economic indicators, have not yet sent a single Muslim woman MP to the Lok Sabha.
