‘Muslim women will be last to benefit from reservation bill’: MP Iqra Hasan | India News
Kairana MP Ikra Hasan Chowdhury. (file image)
New Delhi: One of only two Muslim women in the 543-seat Lok Sabha, Kairana MP Ikra Hasan Chowdhury on April 17 voted against the fast-track women’s reservation amendment. He said he did not reject the idea of women quota but questioned who would actually serve this particular version of it“Muslim women, especially poor, rural, OBC and minority women will ultimately benefit,” he said. TOI Wednesday “By linking reservation to restrictions and censuses, you are holding women’s representation hostage to a political calculus that has rarely been in our community’s favor.
Chowdhury, one of two Muslim women in the house alongside Trinamool Congress’ Sajda Ahmed, who represents Kairana in western UP, said her skepticism about who the bill would actually reach was not theoretical. “There is no clarity on OBC or minority women. If the most marginalized are still absent, what are we really achieving?”About two years into his first term, The Samajwadi Party The MP and SOAS University of London postgraduate said the whole debate remained at its core, a “studio-polished metropolitan conversation”, which “touched the most” the constituency he represents.Ambition, he says, is itself a function of access. “Only privileged women – family in politics, connections – can even think like that.”Even where quotas already exist, the pipeline is narrow and pre-protected at the “major level”. “Because of panchayat reservation, women can at least imagine local leadership. But you still don’t see new faces – without husband’s support or family already in politics, it doesn’t happen.” Some women, she added, started out as someone’s daughter or sister and created their own space. “But we are still a deeply patriarchal society. A dedicated space has to be created deliberately.” He said it was the ground reality — not parliamentary procedure — that shaped his vote.“I come from a political family. Still, it took time for people to accept that women can lead,” said the Kairana MP. She said the ceiling for Muslim women in Indian politics has barely been scratched. Throughout the history of the Lok Sabha, only 18 Muslim women have been elected. Today, there are two.His structural alarm is “restraint link”. He pointed to Assam and said “the 2023 reshuffle reduced the number of Muslim-majority seats, raising fears of declining Muslim representation. Delimitation is not neutral”.He said he sees “same politics” in triple talaq. “It criminalized a civil matter—even in the name of helping Muslim women.” Both moves, in her reading, “are wrapped in the language of women’s liberation while serving an entirely different purpose. “It’s about playing with minds, not giving women a voice.”
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The opposition was not even “properly” consulted on the issue of women’s reservation in Parliament, he added. “Reforms of this scale required greater consensus. They didn’t have the numbers, so they didn’t try.”
