Maneka Gandhi's Facebook Q&A session exposes Indian chauvinism and why feminism is a 'dirty' word

When I first joined The Ladies Finger, I got stuck in a long conversation with a once-close friend who told me I should write a piece on why feminism is such an unpopular word. Of course, he didn’t mean unpopular with men, but in life, because apparently, feminism was a marketing tool — an idea that began as a ‘Good Cause’, but grossly morphed into a way for ‘bad women’ to take advantage of ‘good men’. Exactly a year after this conversation, women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi spent 29th June on Facebook, answering every question that anybody had about the work that her ministry had done in the last three years. One commenter has started a new hashtag — apparently, “#MalehaterManeka is empowering the ill-motivated and characterless women to destroy Indian men and familyship.” If it wasn’t hard to take these terribly worried men seriously so far, this was sure to do it. Government is not going to save your life, rather they have made your life intolerable.” It didn’t take long for a man to comment saying grandly, “Soon there will be a ministry for man and only man.” Gandhi said she would happily support such a group, but it seems like there already is.