It appears that castiest slurs will never leave us, even if we are going through one of the worst pandemics in history. After Atul Khatri’s horrific statement against Rangoli Chandel, a Chennai man has been critcised for something similar.
A 77-year-old Brahmin man from Chennai has been booked for hurling castiest remarks at a sanitation worker, The News Minute reported.
The report comes from a video shared on Facebook where the man, identified as Chandrasekhar, a resident of IIT Colony, is heard saying in Tamil that the worker earns money by collecting excreta.
தூய்மை பணியாளரை தகாத வார்த்தைகளில் பேசிய சங்கி..
Posted by Kasi Mani on Tuesday, April 14, 2020
“You are earning because of us. The reason why you collect faeces is because we have come here. You earn by doing that,” he rages on. When the sanitation worker calls him out, asking, “Are you saying I’m eating shit?” The man without hesitation replies, “Yes, you are!”
The video was shared on social media and was widely criticized. The sanitation worker, identified as Manikantan, filed a complaint with the Pallikaranai police that in turn registered an FIR. However, given the man’s age, they said that they would not arrest him immediately, and would wait for the courts to reopen.
On Thursday, Twitter suspended Kangana Ranaut’s sister Rangoli Chandel’s account over hate speech on the micro blogging platform. The move was a result of several members of the industry reporting Rangoli’s tweet over the stone pelting incident in UP. She expressed that ‘mullahs and media should be lined up and shot dead’.
Celebs like Kubbra Sait, Reema Kagti and Farah Khan Ali were among those who reported the tweet. However, comedian Atul Khatri who also joined the ‘I Hate Rangoli Club’ turned his quote into a casteist remark.
He wrote, “She’s a bloody Chandaal”. For those unversed, Chandala or Chandaal is a Sanskrit word for someone who deals with disposal of corpses, and is a Hindu lower caste, traditionally considered to be untouchable.