Everyone does it. Political parties in India, whatever their promises about women’s empowerment, often demonstrate gender bias. The situation is much worse when women are political leaders. They are the first, often the only, targets of personal abuse from rival parties during a political contest. Sonia Gandhi, for example, was called a ‘foreigner’ to mark her as an unfit leader. Women politicians are usually perceived as having gone beyond accepted social roles or professional slots; abusing them has the silent — nowadays not-so-silent — support of many. But the Bharatiya Janata Party has taken personal abuse to a level of systematic virulence unknown before. To be fair to its leaders, they are almost gender-neutral in this — Rahul Gandhi as target is an example — but that is the best that can be said: almost. Personal abuse of opponents is an excellent method of rabble-rousing without the trouble of having to be logical, truthful or accountable. But to have a woman as opponent is best; the chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, provides an opportunity for the BJP to raise the stakes in the vicious game of abuse.

Ms Banerjee is no shy violet when verbally attacking rival parties, but belittling opponents by targeting their gender or person is unacceptable in political leaders in an absolute, black-and-white sense. Recently, the West Bengal BJP chief, who reserves the choicest insults for the chief minister of his state, wondered why Ms Banerjee did not wear Bermudas to show off her plastered leg. The mockery is visual and crass, deriding a woman leader campaigning with a visible injury. Equally fun-loving was the prime minister, repeatedly intoning ‘Didi’ as the taunting refrain of a campaign speech. It is startling when the prime minister of the country expresses contempt and the desire to humiliate by emulating roadside Lotharios. Perhaps he does not believe in the dignity of his chair or the meaning of the power he represents. With the prime minister enthusiastically joining the game of personal abuse, the BJP state chief would probably consider the Bermudas taunt quite tame. Unless people stand up against the overall annihilation of propriety and decency in language as well as the vicious rhetoric used to diminish women politicians, the crudest personal insults will become the most treasured political weapons.