I think I am a closet feminist," Chetan Bhagat tweeted a day before International Women's Day. I guffawed, as any self-respecting woman would. I would have laughed louder only if Narendra Modi had suddenly declared he was secular. But we digress.
When a man calls himself a feminist, at a time when even women hesitate to embrace the term, you cannot help but take notice. And when that man is a best-selling novelist with 2.35 million followers on Twitter, you need to do more than sit up - you need to check his track record. Since Mr Bhagat has been a self-appointed dispenser of advice to Indian women on various occasions through his column in The Times of India, let's take a look at this body of work.
Exhibit A: His 2011 column titled "Don't worry, be happy", based on a Nielsen survey that said Indian women are the most stressed in the world. Mr Bhagat first indulges in a lot of hand-wringing, because according to him (a) Indian women are the most beautiful and (b) "as mothers, sisters, daughters, colleagues, wives and girlfriends - we love them." He reveals his true colours right there, but the fun's just begun.
The idea of a world without women terrifies Mr Bhagat because, among other things, "There would be body odour, socks on the floor and nothing in the fridge to eat". So it's not just about objectifiying women and refusing to recognise them as individuals, but our karma and dharma seem to be housework and inspiring men to use deodorant. And while their fathers are raising a stink, literally, just by raising their deodorant-less arms, Mr Bhagat predicts that children in this all-male universe will turn into "drug addicts" and "psychopaths". Apart from this truly awful stereotyping, that's a slap on the faces of all those men out there who are bringing up children alone or with male partners.
Mr Bhagat then goes on for a bit about how India treats its women and says that attitudes need to change. But since that takes time, he offers five "solutions" to women, starting with how we should not "think" we are without power. How do we do that? By "giving it back" to our mother-in-law, or to our boss, if we don't feel valued because men do that all the time, didn't you know? He saves his best for the last: "... most important, don't get competitive with other women. Someone will make a better scrapbook for her school project than you. Another will lose more weight with a better diet. Your neighbour may make a six-dabba tiffin for her husband, you don't - big deal."
It takes some skill to be doubly insulting in the same paragraph. Not only is this strange competitive streak what's keeping us women down, but we're also competitive about scrapbooks, diet and tiffin for our husbands. All the modern woman's priorities, right there.
But that was just the beginning. On Women's Day in 2013 (may I take a moment to thank Mr Bhagat for sparing us this year?), he rehashed his old theme of five self-help points for women "to make things better for their own kind". We women are told not to be so hard on each other and that we need to change "the relatively quick adaptation to feed male egos". Of course, women need to stop being chauvinistic, too - our various women politicians' reactions to rape and sexual harassment are a useful pointer. But while he pontificates about how "A pretty woman's promotion makes other women wonder what she had been up to to get the job", why not put in a word about how men judge women based on what they wear and how they look? Oh wait, it's too hard and takes too long to make men change their attitudes, right, so let's just go on with that classic feminist theory about how a woman is her own worst enemy.
His latest pearl is in his February column ("The new vote bank for politicians"), after Rahul Gandhi's disastrous interview: Aam Aurat. This post appears promising because Mr Bhagat writes: "How do you explain to men that a woman has the right to wear attractive clothes, or perhaps even look sexy, but not be deemed as 'asking for it?' These are uncomfortable questions, and the answer lies in altering male attitudes and behaviour." He's finally making sense, you would be tempted to think. But then, Mr Bhagat goes down his favourite route and tells us if we are serious about empowering ourselves, we have to do it ourselves. In case you're wondering how, that too is explained: "Assert yourself, don't back down and be too eager to please the men. If you accept inequality, you are harming womankind." Easy peasy, isn't it?
Part of our efforts, he advises, should be to make the men change, "one guy at a time". Alright, so why don't I begin with you, Chetan Bhagat. You will, no doubt, continue to dish out advice to Indian women, but please do us all a favour and stop calling yourself a feminist while doing so. That's just adding insult to injury.
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