| Hello and welcome to Mind the Gap, a newsletter that adds perspective to the week's gender developments. Does the word rashtrapati reflect the times we live in? Read on... THE BIG STORY: Words-worth: time to change the word rashtrapati?  images.hindustantimes.com/img/2022/07/28/1600x900/droupadi_murmu_rashtra_patni_adhir_chowdhury_1658989263537_1658989274730_1658989274730.jpg" alt="" width="100%" /> (Right, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and left, Droupadi Murmu) When Pratibha Patil was elected the first woman president of India in 2007, there was some discussion on whether the word rashtrapati could apply to a woman. Some felt that the word pati, literally a husband but also used in a larger sense of lord or head, was gendered. Would a more appropriate title for a woman president then be rashtrapatni? Fortunately, the offensive idea was tossed almost as soon as it was suggested. And Patil continued to be known as the rashtrapati throughout her tenure. Now, nearly 15 years later, with the election of India's second woman president, Droupadi Murmu, the old question has emerged again albeit as a political flashpoint between the BJP and Congress after Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury referred to President Murmu with the epithet, 'rashtrapatni'. The BJP led by women MPs Smriti Irani, minister for women and child development and Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister, erupted in an uproar, accusing the Congress of demeaning the president and demanding an apology from Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. Chowdhury has written to President Murmu and apologised. He claims the term was 'a slip of the tongue'. Unambiguously masculine The word 'president' comes from the Latin praesidere which literally means to 'sit before', linguist Ben Zimmer told National Public Radio in 2016. The problem arises when you translate the word into Hindi that assigns genders to nouns. "When the word rashtrapati was adopted after Independence, it was in the abstract to mean a governor or ruler, not literally the husband of a nation," Ali Taqi, Hindi language teacher and director-founder of Zabaan.com told me. In fact, rashtrapati was already in use, to describe the head of the Congress party, now known in Hindi as adhyaksh, regardless of gender. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru is widely credited for suggesting the term rashtrapati for president. Hindi words for minister (mantri) and head (pradhan) are gender neutral. But the tendency especially in the early days, after earmarking 33% seats for women in village and council elections, the phenomena of husbands putting up their wives as proxies led to the coinage of pradhan patis, indicating where the real power lay. But rashtrapati is unambiguously masculine, not just in its suffix but also in its assumption that the head of a household, or by extension a nation, with the attendant duties of protecting it is male. Equally clearly 75 years ago, our founding fathers (and mothers) did not envisage a woman as the country's constitutional head. New consciousness  images.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_630x354/HT/p2/2020/07/10/Pictures/_fc69b3c4-c2a4-11ea-bed6-81066a26d6e8.jpg" alt="" width="100%" /> Today there is a paradigm shift in how we use words and all over the world there is a move to change language to reflect greater equality. Ironically, as a backlash to this movement for linguistic gender equality, the city government of Buenos Aires has recently banned teachers from using gender neutral words in the classroom saying that to do so mangles the Spanish language. As more women enter public life, chairperson replaces chairman, your honour becomes the appropriate way to address a woman judge (my lady would just be crass), police personnel/officer and not policeman, firefighters not firemen. I wrote on gendered language in a 2020 column for Hindustan Times. If the male is no longer the default option for a host of professions, then should the head of the nation be exempt? The political storm caused by Adhir Ranjan Choudhury's inappropriate term will blow over. But will it lead to a debate for a new word to more appropriately describe the constitutional head of our nation? So, what would be a more appropriate replacement for the times we live in? In 2007, Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray had suggested the gender neutral 'rashtra adhyaksh', but the suggestion was never taken up. Is it time for India to consider replacing the word rashtrapati with a more gender neutral term? What do you think? Write to me at: %%41%%. IN NUMBERS Rs 84,330 crore is the net worth of India's wealthiest woman, HCL Technology's Roshni Nadar Malhotra. The average wealth of the 100 richest Indian women is Rs 4,170 crore (against Rs 2,725 crore in 2020). The youngest on the list is 33-year-old Kanika Tekriwal of JetSetGo with a net worth of Rs 420 crore. Source: Leading Wealthy Women List, 2021 by Hurun and Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd WE SEE YOU images.hindustantimes.com/img/2022/07/30/original/Screenshot_2022-07-30_at_4.42.20_PM_1659179555819.png" alt="" width="100%" /> (courtesy: Khabar Lahariya) One of my favourite websites, Khabar Lahariya reports from Chitrakoot on how Hasina who began her working life as a construction worker is now a skilled mason, a profession that is almost entirely dominated by men. So far, Hasina has built over 10 homes supervising large teams of workers at every site, sourcing material and negotiating charges with customers, reports Khabar Lahariya | 
