Heena Sharma Blog

More than 1,000 migrant workers in Mumbai gathered outside the station in Bandra on Tuesday and demanded transportation arrangements to go back to their hometowns, hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the extension of the ongoing nationwide lockdown till May 3. Surviving on food from charitable institutions and living in cramped houses, the distressed people swarmed the station at around 3 pm on Tuesday, without any plan in mind. A case has been registered at Bandra Police station under section 143, 147, 149, 186, 188 of IPC read with Section 3 of Epidemic Act against 800-1000 unidentified people in connection with the incident of gathering in Bandra. Union Home Minister Amit Shah called up Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and expressed concern over the gathering of migrant workers in Bandra. The Union Home Minister stressed that such gatherings weaken India's fight against the coronavirus and the administration needs to stay vigilant to avoid su...

Few parties manage to stay relevant through a generational change. Shiv Sena is the exception. When it was formed, its founder Bal Thackeray saw it as forum to arouse the Maharashtrian-ness of those who lived in the state, making the Mangalorean, the North Indian, the Tamil, Telugu, and the Malayali the ‘other’. The Communists and the Congress were also targets of Marmik, a cartoon magazine Thackeray founded that poked fun at the outsiders and the meek Maharashtrians. It also gave an ideological cover for breaking the Communist-dominated trade unions in and around Mumbai's textile mills. But he soon found that the ‘Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’ slogan had limited appeal outside Mumbai where non-Maharashtrians were seen as performing an economic service and not necessarily as a threat. A change of track followed with Sena supporters becoming the vanguard of the Hindu movement, speeding ahead of the BJP. Later, owing to the efforts of BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, an agreeme...