Police officers are protesting against Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal for calling them ‘thulla’. Kejriwal, who has locked horns with the Delhi Police, recently used a derogatory term ‘thulla’ to describe the police.
Two retired policemen from Delhi have even filed a case seeking action against him. The Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi later clarified that since it is a non-cognisable offence, no case has been registered against Kejriwal.
A police officer from neighbouring Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh has gone a step further. Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dharmendra Singh has asked his subordinates to address each other as ‘thulla’ in protest against Delhi CM Kejriwal’s statement on Delhi police.
He has even sent an official letter addressed to all his colleagues asking them address each other as ‘thulla’. Incidentally, Kejriwal’s own house is in Kaushambi area of Ghaziabad.
According to BRF dictionary, this is a slang term for “policeman” and is often heard in the Eastern parts of India. The proper pronunciation of this word is “thoo-lah”. It may also be spelled as “Thula” or “Thullah”. The term is used to denote a stereotypical slow moving police constable with a big gut.
The origin of this term has to do with the word for a sack made of jute fiber, which is “thula” in some languages in the Eastern part of India. As it happens, police constables in many states in India are issued a brown starched uniform that looks like it was made from a sack. Hence the word for “jute sack” was morphed into slang for “police”.
People in other parts of India use different slang words to denote policeman.
