Bypoll eve's cheapest trick: trading in the 'honour' of women

On the eve of polling in Madurantakam and Dharapuram, Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister issued a warning that had nothing to do with EVMs or turnout. Campaigning in Dharapuram on October 5, TVK president Vijay declared he would "not remain silent" if women in his family or political circle were subjected to personal attacks — a sharp, public accusation that the DMK had made women its target in the bypoll battle. Hours earlier, the Madras High Court had given the DMK its own weapon: leave to sue two ministers for ₹1 crore in a defamation case over remarks about Dravidar Kazhagam president K. Veeramani. The message from both camps is identical, only the uniforms differ — we are the protectors of women's honour; they are its violators. Let us be blunt. Women's dignity has just become the cheapest currency of this bypoll. It costs nothing to invoke, photographs beautifully, and requires no budget allocation. The same political class that trades in "attacks on women" on October 5 had, not long ago, watched 800 Chennai sanitation workers — mostly women — dragged into buses around midnight for daring to protest the privatisation of their livelihoods outside Ripon Building. Where was the honour of women then? Where were the protectors when the demand was not a speech but a job? Periyar, who made the emancipation of women the very spine of the Self-Respect Movement, would have recognised this theatre instantly. His question was never "who insulted whose family?" but "who owns the power, and whom does it serve?" A politics that discovers women's dignity 48 hours before polling — and forgets it 48 hours after — is not respect. It is marketing. And the pattern is not Tamil Nadu's alone. This week, students at Cornell University smashed the doors of their administration building because an institution they pay to protect them stood accused of protecting alleged rapists instead — "at Cornell rapists are protected, protestors are expelled," they painted. From Ithaca to Chennai, the script rhymes: institutions defend themselves; women are told to be grateful for the rhetoric. Here is the harder test, and it applies to Vijay's TVK, to the DMK, and to every party that will thump its chest about women today: publish the record. How many cases of violence against women were chargesheeted on time under your watch? How many sanitation workers got permanent jobs instead of midnight buses? How many survivors found the system on their side? The voter in Madurantakam and Dharapuram queues up today. She is not a symbol of anyone's honour — she is a citizen with a vote and a memory. The parties have spent the campaign telling her who insulted whom. She might instead ask who stood with her when there were no cameras. That is the only honour that counts, and no bypoll-eve speech can manufacture it.