archana: I have come to break Draupadi’s curse: Archana Gautam | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: She is bold and beautiful, and successful. That she is a Dalit, only adds that bit of hurt, and grit, to her persona.
“Actress Hema Malini is an MP from the neighbouring temple town of Mathura. Did these Hindu leaders/sadhus question her election candidature like they are slamming mine?” asks an incredulous Archana Gautam.
Since the day Congress announced Archana as it’s candidate for the Hastinapur seat, the little-known model and movie actor has been inundated by a coarse avalanche of her bikini-clad pictures on social media. As if on cue, the religious seers raised a red flag over “such a woman’s” suitability to fight elections from the holy town of Mahabharat mythology.
But with stigma and struggle part of her hardscrabble upbringing in the deeply feudal western UP, Archana has come too far to back down now. “I am being run down while Hema Malini was not. . . I think because I am a Dalit. Else, she also wore skimpy clothes. . . This is trolling,” she told TOI.
It is difficult to figure out if Archana’s grit flows from her tough upbringing or if her flight for freedom, that took her to Mumbai, Chennai, and landed the wide eyed go-getter on silver screen, steeled her to question and confront.
But the 26 year old knows her Ambedkar enough to credit her growth to the Constitution, and also to tell the sadhus that their opposition to her is akin to “bringing religion into politics”, contrary to the “secular Constitution”. After finding Untouchability all around her growing up, she found it liberating that “there is no discrimination in modelling/film industry”.
It is intriguing that the articulate young “star” attracting such attention is from the weak Congress ticket. But she says Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has enabled her aspirations to move to the next level. “I am confident Congress can win. My voters have voted SP, BSP, BJP. I am asking Hastinapur to give me a chance too. I will develop my village. I am a local,” she says with conviction. In Mayawati, she finds an “inspiration of the community” and is urging people to support her like they did “our elder sister”.
Far from the puritan worldview of conservatives, Archana paints in their midst a society where “girls like me” are harassed by rowdies no sooner we step out on the streets and are promptly pushed back inside the oppressive four walls. “Our girls have small dreams but even they die early. . . My victory will liberate them,” she says, of her dream behind the political plunge.
In the end, the trolled Dalit girl sees a historic mission for herself. “Draupadi had cursed Hastinapur that no woman will rise from here. That curse will be broken this time by a woman,” she said, with the confidence of a self-made person.