Mahua Moitra is a misfit in Indian politics. She rejects the notion that a woman must ideally be married, and if she happens to be divorced, single or widowed, should not openly date or be seen to be in a relationship. Nor should she drink or smoke in public or be seen arm in arm with a man.
Moitra, 49, is a divorcee. She drinks wine occasionally, has her nails done once in a while, likes Ferragamo shoes and carries a Louis Vuitton handbag.
It gets worse. She went to college in the US and was a banker with JP Morgan Chase in New York and London, so is, ipso facto, westernised. As an opposition MP from West Bengal, she denounces the ruling party and has accused the prime minister, Narendra Modi, of cronyism in allegedly favouring the controversial tycoon Gautam Adani.
When attacked, she hits back twice as hard, usually topped with a dollop of withering sarcasm.
Is it any wonder that she feels she is a target for character assassination, particularly from members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), with its conservative notions about society and women?
Moitra accuses the BJP of portraying her in an unflattering light by circulating photos, taken at a private birthday party in 2020, that show her leaning into a fellow MP with a glass of wine in her hand. She says a jilted ex cropped the photos and gave them to the BJP to circulate on social media.
“I’m not going to make excuses for who I am. I am not going to change who I am to fit the paradigm. Let the paradigm shift with me. When I returned to India to enter politics, I was clear that I wanted to be in public life but by being myself,” she says.
It’s a grey, smog-filled morning in New Delhi and Moitra is sitting on a leather armchair in her elegantly furnished official bungalow. Her hair is damp from a shower and she’s wearing a casual skirt and white top. Her rottweiler, Henry (“he thinks he’s King Henry”), alternates between slobbering by her side or sprawling on the leather coffee table.
Moitra shows no sign of fatigue after a bruising few weeks of news coverage. First it was the ex and the photos. “I have terrible taste in men,” she says.
Then a BJP MP accused her of accepting bribes to ask questions in parliament at the behest of a businessman – charges she has dismissed as absurd, telling one interviewer that she has no need of bribes to buy upmarket shoes because she can buy them herself.
As to the “expensive gifts” she is accused of accepting, she says one – a Hermès scarf – was a birthday gift and the other was some Bobbi Brown makeup brought in duty free by a friend.
The accusations, she says, are all part of the usual misogyny in Indian politics – she is often referred to as “ambitious” and “domineering” – which she says has been made worse by the BJP’s 10-year rule. The media ordeal she has been subjected to is, she says, an attempt by the BJP to stop her relentless attacks on the government over Adani.
If Moitra does not conform to the stereotype of a female politician, it’s because no one told her what it was. She grew up in a family in Kolkata where gender equality was a given. “My family is progressive and non-traditional. I didn’t grow up with Indian roles of how a woman should be.”
When Moitra came back to India in 2008 to enter politics, the party she ultimately joined, the Trinamool Congress, was (and still is) led by a woman, Mamata Banerjee, who encourages women to be themselves. Almost half the party’s MPs in the national parliament are women, far more than for other parties.
Moitra’s party rules in the state of West Bengal. The state, like others, has its own pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses, which include two who embody feminine power. “In Bengal, we see the feminine form and women not as submissive but as shakti [strength]. Our goddesses are Kali or Durga, strong conquerers,” Moitra says.
These factors encouraged her to believe that she could engage in grassroots political activity without getting caught up in the hypocrisies of Indian politics. These hypocrisies include having clandestine sexual relationships and dressing down to signal a pro-poor image – while the drawers at home are maybe full of Rolex watches and Gucci sandals, accessories reserved for private functions when no photographers are around.
Moitra refuses to go along with this pretence. “I like to be fit, I like to look a certain way,” she says. “My constituents don’t want me to look unwashed and unkempt. If I’m in boring clothes, they tell me to wear bright colours.”
A friend, supreme court lawyer Rebecca John, explains why Moitra is one of a kind in politics. “The Indian man, more so the politician, cannot handle a woman who has a brain, is well educated, understands finance, is confident, and exercises sexual agency. That’s why the right goes after her,” she says.
In early November, when Moitra appeared before the parliamentary ethics committee to answer questions on the corruption allegations, she stormed out, along with half the panel, after being asked insulting and salacious questions by the chair.
Questions included: Who do you talk to late at night and how many times? You call so and so a dear friend … does his wife know? Give us a log of your late-night calls. Which hotels do you stay in and who with? “You can say no if you don’t want to answer,” said the chair.
“Do you mean to tell me you can ask me if I am a prostitute and I should say no?” a furious Moitra asked the chair, a BJP MP.
Today she says: “I mean if someone like Dominic Cummings uses the C-word for a woman, it’s bad, but at least it was in private. This was the chair of an official committee talking to me like this in public.”
At this point Henry starts whimpering, thinking her raised voice means she is upset. She gets up to cuddle him before conceding that perhaps there is one thing she needs to change about herself: her choice of men. “Let’s face it, this has distracted to an extent from the focus I want to give my constituents. In public life, you have to be extra selective about who you let into your life,” she says.
Moitra is not so conceited to think she can be a role model for anyone, but she is certain that new role models are badly needed for women in public life. “If I can be the first politician who is comfortable in her own skin, I’m good with that.”
