This Gandhi advocates violence

Much of the josh in election campaigning has been taken out by the Election Commission's Code of Conduct for political parties. Everyday, the commission's observers watch over candidates like hawks and pounce on those who dare to push their luck. Moreover parties too compete with each other to act as policemen of the commission, complaining like good students to the principal about how their opponents have allegedly crossed the line.

In this context, Varun Gandhi, son of animal activist and PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals) campaigner Maneka Gandhi, has been in the news lately for mouthing expletives at Muslims. The EC has apparently served notice on Varun and he has got himself anticipatory bail expecting an arrest.

People who remember his father Sanjay Gandhi would know that controversy should run in this family since that was what Sanjay Gandhi was famous for. Top of the list of his controversies was the population control one where he forcibly got people in Delhi to undergo vasectomy. He believed the only practical way to get to the issue was to yield the knife at the source of the problem, rather than trying to convince people about the importance of controlling the sizes of their families and expecting them to practice family planning.

Young Mr Varun must have taken a chapter out of his father's book and probably thinks, like his father, that the best way to resolve a problem is to just cut it off. That's why he apparently was advocating cutting off the limbs of Muslims who threatened Hindus. Wonder what his mother has to say to her son's fancy for the knife since she goes around advocating vegetarianism and non violence against domestic animals.