Indian Express
Aug 26, 2026, 02:58 AM
Rahul Gandhi Urges Women Empowerment, Criticizes Political Opponent
Speaking to an audience of young women from a Pune stage, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi said women should not be defined by their relationships with men because they belong to themselves. He spoke of routinised violence, including the āviolence of denied opportunitiesā, and the āvarious forms of controlā women are subjected to daily. The formulations were not new ā what was new and found resonance in the auditorium was that they were being articulated from a mainstream political stage, and Gandhi made room, on that stage, for women to tell their own stories. Of course, the Congress leader was not just tweaking the woman-unfriendly script in a male-dominated politics. He also used the post-Jantar Mantar occasion to make a jab at a political opponent pushed on the defensive. His mention of the Manusmriti, and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanathās almost immediate counter-strike , showed that the mark had not been missed. But overall, the Pune performance opened up a space that, ironically, had once been made visible by Narendra Modi. In his very first I-day address as Prime Minister in 2014, he asked why parents who impose restrictions on their daughters use a different yardstick for their sons: Have they ever asked their sons what they are doing, where they are going? But if Rahul Gandhi struck a different note in Pune , his party, in its CWC resolution, harked back to an older format of politics. The party will not sing all six stanzas of āVande Mataramā, the resolution said, only two verses, as it had decided to do in 1937. The old-ness of Congressās new position comes not just from its attempt to turn back the clock. It comes, also, from the fact that it follows a stale Congress pattern āof scoring a secular point without really working for it. After all, what stopped the party from opposing the amendment that gives āVande Mataramā the same statutory protections as the national anthem, in Parliament? In the Lok Sabha, the law was cleared by voice vote in only about 15 minutes, after only two members spoke on it, and DMK was the only party that registered its criticism. Now, why does Congress not challenge the law in court, instead of sullenly refusing to sing? And whatās the playbook for its three CMs for official functions? Congressās new and old politics comes at a time when the success of the studentsā agitation is still rippling across parties. The crowds at Jantar Mantar have left behind a sense of new possibilities ā and a dare for mainstream parties. The young have asserted their presence, they want to be heard, all parties must find new ways of seeing, new ways of listening, new ways of speaking.
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