Former US president George W. Bush may not exactly be a favourite with the fairer sex, with all his tough 9/11 talk and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan during his presidency. But women’s issues dominated his talk during his first visit to India after leaving the White House.
In India, his host was Shobhna Bhartiya, the proprietor of Hindustan Times who had invited him for the annual leadership summit. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosted lunch for this “great friend of India” at his residence, Bush was seated between two women – Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. Bush sounded genuinely curious when Kumar mentioned the women’s reservation bill.
Speaking at the conclave, Bush invoked the Taliban’s tyranny over women as one of the reasons to justify the US war in Afghanistan. “They won’t let girls go to school, what kind of people are these?” he queried.
