When Shinde Sena MLA spewed a ‘South' slur
In the video, Gaikwad, a second-term MLA from Buldhana in Vidarbha, is seen forcing a hostel employee to sniff dal in a carrybag, before punching him. The staffer at the Akashwani MLA hostel, right opposite Mantralaya in south Mumbai, falls. Gaikwad claims his fists of fury were goaded by poor quality dal and stale food, alleging that the canteen management is a repeat offender. The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later inspected the canteen and suspended its licence.
Under fire for his lack of restraint, Gaikwad went on to burnish that point with a verbal volley on 'the attitude of people from the South'. The said community, he said, 'operated dance bars and ladies bars in Maharashtra' and 'ruined its culture and youth'. His pique apparently originates with the canteen contractor, said to be a Shetty from Karnataka. The recourse to nativist vocabulary was a transparent attempt to deflect focus from his own misdemeanour, and its effect is minimised by the fact that the speaker has earned some renown as an equal opportunity offender.Days earlier, he had made disparaging remarks about Chhatrapati Sambhaji, for which he had to apologise. In May, Gaikwad lashed out at the Maharashtra police, calling it 'the most inefficient police department in India and the world', with a compulsive penchant for 'hafta (extortion)' to boot. That had made even CM Devendra Fadnavis see red. Last September, Gaikwad offered Rs 11 lakh to anyone who would 'chop off the tongue' of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. He also claimed to have killed a tiger and worn its tooth as a pendant. When AIMIM MP Imtiaz Jaleel criticised Gaikwad for his canteen exploits, he threatened to assault Jaleel too.advertisementShinde is said to have upbraided Gaikwad. After three days of Opposition protests, Fadnavis stepped in and a suo moto non-cognisable case was filed by the Marine Drive police. But the man remains defiant for now.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
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It will also be more humane. Additionally, we can use technology to determine who may not be an Indian national. We can use AI and regional dialect recognition patterns to figure out if someone is from a district in India or Bangladesh. What we cannot do is allow non-persecuted Bangladeshi Muslims to change the demography in the border states when sources close to Mohammad Yunus are already talking about Greater Bangladesh and the takeover of India's north-eastern states. Yunus himself has talked about Bangladesh holding the key to India's north-east. So, far from being a needless exercise, SIR must precede every state or general election. It would help if EC could draw on a painstakingly compiled and regularly updated NRC. No serious nation can afford to compromise its borders or allow ineligible foreigners to influence local politics. R Jagannathan is the former editorial director, Swarajya magazine. He tweets @TheJaggi. Views are personal.
