An Indian thug, gangster, or hired muscle who uses violence; a criminal enforcer.
From Hindi goonda or Marathi gunda, possibly from a Sanskrit or Prakrit root. The term became widely used in colonial India and entered English through British accounts of Indian crime and street violence.
Goonda has become the template word in Bollywood films—it's so embedded in Hindi cinema that Western audiences now recognize it as the quintessential Indian gang member archetype.
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