Mamata's nephew and TMC take victim-shaming to a new high

Here is how he took victim shaming to a new high. "Mod ganja, charas bondho, tayi ki protibader gondho (alcohol and drugs are banned. Is that why it smells of protest?)" asked Abhishek Banerjee, president of the Trinamool Congress Yuva Committee, MP and the darling nephew of West Bengal's CM Mamata Banerjee on his official Facebook page.

Perhaps he is referring to the nationwide protest by students from across India against the violence meted out to the students of Jadavpur University on September 17. We say perhaps because it is possible he doesn't have a clue.

Banerjee's very next post read: "There is constant propaganda by certain sections to pit us against the student community. We are not." It is not quite clear what they are not? Is it a) Not humans?  b) Not the student community?  c) Not against the student community? If the answer is option "c" then why call the willful thrashing of 37 unarmed students peacefully protesting around the Vice Chancellor's office, a "chhoto ghotona" or small incident?

Why ask students who have only joined the university to study to "leave and find their place in any other institution" though many of whom actually boycotted career-defining exams to join the protests. How worked up do you need to be to deliberately miss an exam in a state where the unemployment rate is at 4.5 per cent? A rate, which one may point out, is nearly double than that of the national statistic. How outraged must those thousands of students be to have walked for miles, braving days of incessant rain to march peacefully in order to raise their voices and be heard?

Beneath Banerjee's status message someone posts a hazy picture of an attractive looking young woman surrounded by protesters. It looks like she has a cigarette in her hand. The subtext is: don't take the protesters seriously - they smoke, drink and maybe even smoke up. The same argument that was used to dismiss and demean countless other case of sexual assault against women, the same questions that were raised against the young woman whose molestation and subsequent browbeating by representatives of the university, the students were protesting against. The same argument that was raised against Suzette Jordan, the Park Street rape survivor whose assault a representative of the party dismissed as a "misunderstanding between a lady and a client."

It is not clear what they are not. But it is clear they are not in favour of unarmed dissent. Not in favour of a woman's right to love who she wants and not in favour of any individual freedom that they deem immoral.