The ideal daughter-in-law of ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’, mangalsutra sparkling with spunky born-again traditionalism, is now India’s not-so-ideal HRD minister. From soap-opera star to feisty BJP spokesperson, from the youngest member of the Union Cabinet to recent avatar as Christmas-stealing Grinch, Smriti Irani attracts fierce criticism uniting Modi loyalists and baiters. Columnists pour scorn on her for not being “educated” enough, her I-too-have-a-degreefrom-Yale statement became Twitter gold, her visits to palmists make headline news, her meddling ways with IITs elicit gloating I-told-you-sos from her increasing tribe of haters.

That she was once a beauty pageant swimsuit babe adds an exciting edge to the bitch-fest. Attractive, successful woman with opinions? Pre pare for a public stoning. If such a woman also happens to be a politician, she can swathe her persona with totems of Bharatiya nari-ness, but she’s still the perpetual gatecrasher in the upper echelons of power, and never mind all that talk of out-of-the-box government.

No doubt that leviathan ministry from hell known as HRD needs an expert who will steer it deftly from meddling to facilitation, from ideological warhorse to catalyst of educational excellence. But were Arjun Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi and even the erudite Kapil Sibal not equally guilty of undue interference in school and university education? Did the Sahmat-inclined Arjun Singh and the RSS-inclined Joshi also not use their tenures at HRD to push ideological agendas? Did the “packing” of bodies like the ICHR with either leftist historians or, in turn, by saffron historians not take place in the tenures of Singh and Joshi?

When the Sibal-led HRD did away with the 10th standard board exam, were there personal attacks on his appearance, personal beliefs or family life? Smriti Irani may be floundering a bit in HRD, she interferes, she’s powerless to stand up to the Sangh’s education agenda and perhaps tries too hard to live down her “modern” image. But the attacks on her are of a kind that would never be directed towards a male minister. Do we comment on Piyush Goel’s clothes? Are we concerned whether Thawar Chand Gehlot visits astrologers?

Do we know the name of Prakash Javadekar’s wife? Did we complain of Lalu’s lack of education when he took over the railway ministry?

Women politicians and women in public life in general are caricatured in the way men hardly ever are. Most women politicians bear family honorifics like “amma”, “didi” and “behenji”.Their “abnormality” is always to the fore; they are cast either as virago, dominatrix, shrew or loony. Attractiveness is akin to a sin in any woman who is not a filmstar, model or a recognizable sex symbol; being attractive is enough to consign her to the hellfire of disdainful contempt, from both men and women, because if she is attractive she must be “non-serious”. In politics, the de-womanised woman is the norm. Most women politicians cultivate a certain designer insanity, a manufactured strategic madness that inspires shock and awe and silences patriarchy by bursts of public eccentricity. Mamata, Mayawati, Jayalalithaa are all examples of how women politicians have to change the rules of public behaviour to keep the men in their parties on a permanent knife edge. Even Indira Gandhi, dismissed as a goongi gudiya when she first became Prime Minister, had to adopt an imperious style to establish herself as the supreme leader while Sonia Gandhi’s primacy is a direct result of the saas-bahu principle and the South Asia phenomenon known as “female accession to male martyrdom”.

In the BJP, though, a woman politician has perhaps an even tougher ride. The Sangh Parivar has always been a male-dominated patriarchal force, where women must play the role either of the vote-catching Sita or crowd-pulling sadhvi. For years, the ‘royal’ Vijaya Raje Scindia was the Sangh’s sole woman face. Her daughter Vasund hara has often been on a collision course with the patriarchs of the RSS, her appearances at fashion shows and candidly modern regal lifestyle challenging the dutiful, tradition-upholding housewife image that political women must convey. Not surprisingly, trailblazer women like Sushma Swaraj and now Smriti Irani have been forced to stay conformists to survive, their sari-draped, sindoorsplashed image a deliberate attempt to ensure that they aren’t seen as “westernized”, independent women in the eyes of the Sangh.

If Smriti Irani had stayed in the dutiful, tradition-upholding housewife mould of the saasbahu serial, a supporting actress to the male star line-up, she would have been universally acceptable. But as a putative star herself, an opinionated, ambitious individual and assertive HRD minister, the 38-year-old former beauty queen is almost inevitably Public Enemy No. 1.