Women’s hips are fat like barrel: DMK leader courts controversy

Chennai: DMK leader Dindigul I Leoni has landed himself in trouble after making derogatory comments against women while campaigning for DMK candidate Karthikeya Sivasenapathy in Coimbatore. 

In the video that started doing rounds on social media, Leoni can be heard saying, “You know, there are many types of cows. In farms, you would have seen foreign cows. People use a milking machine for foreign cows. A person will switch on the machine and 40 litres of milk will come out in an hour. By drinking that milk, all our women have become fat like a balloon. Earlier, a woman’s figure looked like the number 8. They could carry children on their hips. But now, if they hold a child, it slips away because they have become like a barrel. All our children have also become fat.”

A man from the crowd then got on the campaign vehicle and showed Dindigul Leoni a handful of poor-quality ration rice. He took a pinch of grains from the man’s hand and passively said, “The rice brought from the ration shop is not good. So vote for Senapathy.” 

Soon, people on social media started reacting to the comments and called him out for the sexist remarks.

Gayathri Raguram, president of the BJP’s Art and Culture Wing, said, “What a shame! What milk does he drink? Does he know what happens to women’s body post pregnancy or during hormonal change? Kanimozhi DMK, what do you like to say to this kind of male chauvinist? Is this the respect your party people have for women?”

Television anchor and political analyst, Sumanth Raman also expressed his views and requested Thoothukkudi MP and Secretary of DMK’s women’s wing, Kanimozhi to ‘restrain’ people like Leoni from speaking,

The comments from Leoni came despite one party worker trying to distract him, by handing him a small quantity of rice provided as government ration and asking him to speak about its poor quality. While Leoni did speak on the rice for a minute, he came back to comments on women.