The Fading Song of the Peahen

The Fading Song of the Peahen

As Sandhya Joshi prepared for her final speech in the Lok Sabha, a flood of memories and emotions washed over her. For nearly four decades, she had been at the vanguard of the struggle for greater political representation for women in India. Her life's work was now coming to an unfulfilled end.

Sandhya's mind travelled back to her childhood days in a middle-class household in Pune. Even as a young girl, she had been imbued with a fiery spirit of activism and gender equality by her grandmother, Vimala Tai. Vimala was a former foot soldier in India's freedom struggle against British colonial rule. 

"Remember, beta," Vimala would say, "we women carried the weight of this movement on our shoulders just as much as any man. And we won our country's independence through the same blood, sweat, and sacrifice."

Sandhya had grown up on a steady diet of stories about fearless women like Rani Laxmibai, Bhicaji Cama, Aruna Asaf Ali and so many other she-warriors who fought for India's liberty across generations. By the time she came of age, resolutely defying societal expectations and taboos around a woman's role had become second nature to her.  

After multiple rejections and roadblocks, Sandhya managed to get her first break in politics through a member of the Rajya Sabha belonging to her party. Her organizational skills and grasp of policy issues soon made her a rising star within party ranks.  

As Sandhya sat down to draft her farewell speech, scenes from her struggle played like a film reel across her mind's eye. She remembered her first fiery address on the floor of the Parliament, demanding the long-stalled Women's Reservation Bill be made the law of the land. Hers was a lone voice of courage in a sea of patriarchal apathy and Opposition stonewalling at that time.

"If we as a nation can justify 33% of all seats across the socio-political landscape being reserved for the most marginalized sections of our society, why can we not guarantee the same for the other half of our population?" she had thundered from the hallowed podium, even as raucous male taunts threatened to drown out her words.

It was to be the first of many parliamentary missiles that Sandhya launched over the years, relentlessly, successfully pushing the Overton window towards greater gender empowerment. From ensuring financial equality for women under the Hindu Succession Act to tightening sexual harassment laws to enabling greater access to education, she left an indelible mark in practically every sphere.

Through every vicious and misogynistic attack from her male colleagues, Sandhya found solace in the sage counsel of her mentor Surabhi Iyer, one of the few women MPs when she had entered the fray.

"The nail that sticks out will always be hammered, not because it's truly a problem, but because it makes the others look inadequate," the elder stateswoman had told her. "So keep shining bright, keep defying the mold. In time, the others will be forced to embrace that change."

And so she persisted, undaunted, through threats, insults, vicious gender slander, and every attempt to scuttle her rise through the ranks over the decades. Sandhya had an almost preternatural ability to forge unlikely alliances across ideological divides, skillfully employ political negotiation tactics, and shame even the most recalcitrant naysayers into grudging acceptance.

Her signature move was to leverage gender-neutral laws and policies as the thin end of the wedge to pry open larger spaces for a comprehensive feminist agenda to take root. Perhaps her biggest achievement was the formulation of the Domestic Partnership Act, a revolutionary law recognizing same-sex unions and overhauling inheritance norms in an ostensibly traditional society. Having expended every debating skill in her arsenal to get the Bill passed, she would often joke about it being "the crows' nest on the peacock's plume."  

While her career was a blazing trail of successes, it had not been without its deeply personal costs and setbacks. To this day, the knives of betrayal and loneliness from a failed marriage still cut deep. As a young woman MP, giving up the chance to become a mother in service of the larger cause had been the most agonizing sacrifice of all.  

However, Sandhya had continued soldiering on in her march, finding sustenance in the passion of her calling and the fire of younger generations of women following in her footsteps. In them, she saw reflections of the very same dauntless spirit she had imbibed from her grandmother Vimala, and the countless unsung freedom fighters whose shoulders they had all stood upon.

It was especially heartening to see these modern-day warriors breaching new frontiers that Sandhya could have scarcely imagined in her time - from the corner forts of boardrooms to the closed echelons of the judiciary and elite academics. Their fearless voices were tangible rebukes to those who clung to regressive ideas of what a woman's space and potential should be.

Yet, as she looked around at the paucity of women's faces in the Parliament today, Sandhya could not shake her disappointment at how much more still needed to be done. India had barely managed to inch past the low teen percentages in women's political representation over the past few decades. At this glacial pace, achieving the critical mass of 33% looked further away than ever.

The ordeals that women across generations had endured for this puny progress played in an endless loop of injustice across Sandhya's mind. She remembered the horrific gang-rape incidents in Delhi, Kathua and Hathras that had shaken the nation's soul and sparked massive protests demanding safety and dignity for women. Yet even those watershed moments failed to jolt political parties and patriarchal societies out of their regressive attitudes.

As she placed the final flourishes on her speech, Sandhya knew this last clarion call was her final chance to reignite the embers of the struggle. She thought of all the courageous women, known and unknown, who had preceded her in this age-old battle over the centuries. Warrior queens like Rani Padmavati and Chand Bibi had taken up arms to fight valiantly for their people. Veeranganas like Jhalkari Bai and Uda Devi who had spearheaded the anti-British resistance from the frontlines. Social reformers like Pandita Ramabai, Rukhmabai, and Tarabai Shinde challenged regressive practices like child marriage, widow shaming, and lack of education rights for women.   

Sandhya hoped her words would become the spark that lit a thousand new torches across the land, to be carried by those coming after her. Maybe then, the peacock's call would no longer be muted, but rise in a deafening chorus from every corner of India, to finally break through the last remaining glass ceilings.

Tomorrow was her swan song. But the flock had to keep soaring.

-Bhumika Pandey