Sharad Yadav’s sexist comments are par for the course for Indian politicians, no matter how many campaigns are run

Once upon a time before cameras were miniaturised and installed on phones and before the era of the almost unlimited and cheap data where videos could spread in seconds, politicians could get away saying almost anything. Sadly, since many of India’s politicians still have a mindset from that era and because a media narrative has been built around their ‘rustic’ humour, they still think they can get away with anything. But they should not. Which is why we believe that Sharad Yadav should be censured and possibly even made to pay a fine for the deeply insensitive and misogynistic comments that he made about Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. Such language has no space in a political forum and should be condemned as much as the communally charged speeches made by other senior politicians.

While Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code are deeply troubling in many respects and should be amended, their arbitrary application, almost always by politicians to shut down dissent but never on themselves, should be re-examined by our courts. No one has any right to body shame somebody else in public, we have moved beyond that. However, politicians only ever reflect the views of their electorate and that electorate forms views based on mass media.  It is sadly true that Indian entertainment television, including the vile sexist and racist banter that passes off as comedy, has a large portion of the blame. While there is a certain freedom of expression that comedians have, being hateful is not part of it and what is strange is that Indian society at large seems to be absolutely fine with such language and that is also possibly a reason why the #MeToo campaign seems to have come to a juddering halt. Politicians set the agenda and for that very reason they are called ‘leaders’, but they appear to be acting as anything but leaders. Whether Raje continues as Chief Minister of Rajasthan or not has already been decided by the electorate but she should pursue Sharad Yadav legally and force him to apologise. And Yadav, who has become a standard bearer of the anti-Narendra Modi camp, might be forgiven by his supporters in the liberal media who bathe in ideological hypocrisy, but he is definitely not worthy of being a leader in a modern India and is a relic whose career and mindset ought to be consigned to the past.