'The political responses to Rajan Vichare, a Shiv Sena MP, stuffing a chapati into a fasting Muslim’s mouth at the Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi last week tell us something about the texture of Indian politics after the general election... When the story broke, the Shiv Sena’s reaction was to flatly deny that such an incident had occurred.
"A BJP Lok Sabha member today added insult to the injury caused by a Shiv Sena counterpart, compelling the Narendra Modi government to express regret. When the Sena MP’s outrageous behaviour towards the Maharashtra Sadan caterer’s employee cropped up in the House, Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri rushed menacingly towards protesting Opposition members and warned them: “This is Hindustan, not Pakistan.” Parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu disapproved of Bidhuri’s conduct and asked him to apologise.
"Taking law and order into his own hands is not something new for Rajan Vichare, the Shiv Sena MP from Thane who force-fed a Muslim catering supervisor to break his Ramzan fast at Maharashtra Sadan last week. In the last 25 years, around 24 cases have been registered against the senior Sena leader in various police stations of Thane...
"A group of around 11 Shiv Sena MPs, apparently angry over not being served Maharashtrian food, allegedly forced a Muslim catering superviser who was fasting for Ramzan to eat a chapati at the new Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi last week. Within hours, IRCTC, the Indian Railways subsidiary that was catering for the Sadan, stopped all operations in protest, and complained in writing to the Maharashtra Resident Commissioner, saying the employee, Arshad Zubair S, had been “deeply pained and hurt… as religious sentiments are attached”...
'It has been three weeks since a young Pune techie, 28-year-old Mohsin Sheikh, was killed in a mob attack on the outskirts of Pune, but Punekars are yet to recover from the shock. Until May 31, when the Hindu Rashtra Sena unleashed a weekend of bloody mayhem in the Unnati Nagar and Satav Plot area of the Hadaspar suburb, they would have vouched for their city’s cosmopolitan and secular fabric. Suddenly they are not so sure anymore. Some are even wondering if it existed at all...
"Lok Sabha witnessed ruckus today after a Shiv Sena member remarked that saffron flag would be hoisted atop the Red Fort leading to a brief adjournment. Opposition members protested when Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav (SS) said they would unfurl saffron flag on the Red Fort in Delhi. Jadhav was speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address to Parliament. Opposing the remark, members from Congress, Trinamool Congress and Left parties urged the Speaker to remove it from the records..."
"“Hinduize the politics, militarize the Hindus,” declares a logo used by the Hindu Rashtra Sena, seven of whose members have been arrested for beating a Muslim information technology worker to death in Pune on Monday night. The attack on 24-year-old Mohsin Sadiq Shaikh, who was returning from prayers at a local mosque, came the day after mobs damaged approximately 190 public buses after rumours that derogatory images of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray had been posted on Facebook and WhatsApp.
"The news of a Muslim being killed by a mob on a public street in Pune on Monday night brought back disturbing memories of the 1992-93 riots. Not since then, at least in the major cities of Maharashtra, has a Muslim been lynched thus by a Hindu mob. The state has seen many communal riots since then, but when this killing took place, there was no Hindu-Muslim riot on. There were just the usual gangs of Hindutva vandals out on the streets venting their anger against a Facebook post.
"Tension prevailed in Pune, after an angry mob went on rampage in the town over morphed pictures of the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackery, Chhatrapati Shivaji and other Hindu gods which were shared on Facebook on Saturday, and later re-circulated on WhatsApp, according to reports in the Indian Express and Hindustan Times. A Muslim IT professional, who was no in way connected to the circulation of the pictures, was attacked by the mob and killed, say the news reports.
"Soon after killing a Muslim youth unconnected with uploading indecorous morphed pictures of late Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray and Maratha icon Chhatrapati Shivaji on Facebook, his alleged killers, belonging to a Hindu extremist outfit, exchanged an ominous message on their mobiles. The message said, ‘Pahili wicket padli’, which means: The first wicket has fallen.
