FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 2024
Pradeep Lawande
Recently, the newly elected rashtrapati of India Honourable Mrs Droupadi Murmu was referred to by Adhir Ranjan Chawdhary, leader of the Congress as Rashtrapatni. This enraged some BJP stalwarts who then strongly criticised Chowdhary. Later on, Chowdhary conceded his mistake which he said was due to his bad Hindi. He also tendered a written apology to the new Head of the state over his above remark.
But why MP Chowdhary might have thought of calling the new rashtrapati as rashtrapatni? Perhaps his logic might have been like this: Pati in Hindi means husband and feminine gender of pati is patni. Now if an elected male president is called rashtrapati, then it follows that an elected female president be called rashtrapatni.
But the above reasoning of Chowdhary is not correct. It is true that pati means husband of a woman. But this word has some other meanings too. Thus pati also means lord, master and ruler. Raghupati means Sriram, the lord of Raghu dynasty. Chatrapati means universal monarch and adhipati means ruler. And unlike the word pati, the term patni has only one meaning. Patni simply means wife of a man. Therefore, it is totally incorrect to call a female rashtrapati as rashtrapatni.
But this does not mean that calling a female president as rashtrapati is correct. Just as it is wrong to call her as rashtrapatni, it is equally wrong to call her rastrapati. Because pati is primarily a masculine word. All the words cited above viz Raghupati, Chatrapati and adhipati are of masculine gender. Similarly rashtrapati is a male word. Therefore, calling a female as rashtrapati is absolutely wrong.
Here is one instance that can guide us as regards this controversy. Netaji Subhashchandra Bose called Mahatma Gandhi as Rashtrapita for the first time. Thenceforth all people of India proudly and lovingly call Mahatmaji as rashtrapita. Now suppose if Gandhiji was female instead of male, then would we have called her as rashtrapita? Certainly not. We would have called her as rashtramata. Similarly calling Mr Pratibha Patil or Mrs Draupadi Murmu as rashtrapati is not correct.
In the past, there was supremacy of males in society. That is why we come across many expressions dominated by males. In the following two sentences viz 1) Man is a rational animal and 2) All men are mortal, females are seen to be excluded. Today winds of gender equality blow all over the world. Therefore, we see changes in so many English words. Thus spokesman is replaced by spokesperson, and chairman by chairperson.
It might be the influence of the adage ‘might is right’ that was responsible for the inclusion of male dominating phrases in our languages. It is true that physically man is mightier than woman. Bull is mightier than cow and he-buffalo is mightier than she-buffalo. In Hindi the term ‘valour’ means purusharth – a word derived from the noun purush meaning a male person. In our Goa in recent past, a capable woman was referred to as ‘bab’ – a form of address to a man! We are bothered about the father of any movement, not its mother. During the seventh decade of the last century , some critics called late Mrs Indiraji as “the only man in the cabinet”!
