Mumbai: Taking his cue from Nicolas Sarkozy, Bal Thackeray has demanded a ban on the burqa. In a strongly-worded editorial in Monday’s edition of party mouthpiece Saamana.The Shiv Sena patriarch praises the French president, deprecates the attitude of India’s “thakela-pakela (tired and bored)” rulers and warns against “the dangers of Islam”.

“I congratulate Sarkozy. He is an ideal ruler. Their (French) rulers never appease the Muslims for vote-bank politics,” Thackeray writes in the editorial, asking”our rulers to ban the burqa and implement the uniform civil code.”
“Sarkozy is a strong man, not a thakela-pakela leader like ours. Half the leaders running our country need to look for places for their funeral,” Thackeray writes.

Between the lines
Bal Thackeray has also taken a potshot at a senior BJP leader from Maharashtra, without naming him. Sarkozy kisses his wife Carla Bruni in public, unlikepoliticians such as “former Haryana deputy CM Chand Mohammad and a similar one from Maharashtra”, who do it in secret, he has written.