Medieval-era Sheesh Mahal unveiled in Shalimar Bagh
The restoration of Shalimar Bagh was undertaken on the initiative and under the direct supervision of the L-G Saxena, who first took serious note of the dilapidated and crumbling heritage structures—buried under silt and overgrown vegetation due to decades of neglect—during his visit to the site in January last year.
The responsibility of restoring this heritage site was entrusted to the DDA under the technical supervision of the ASI.
The restoration work aligns with the vision of 'Vikas Bhi, Virasat Bhi', under which the DDA, along with ASI, has undertaken numerous restoration and preservation efforts highlighting Delhi's rich heritage. The restoration of Shalimar Bagh follows the successful conservation of sites such as Mehrauli Archaeological Park and Anangpal Tomar Van in South Delhi.
Speaking on the occasion, Union Minister Shekhawat said the Ministry of Tourism and Culture was proactively working to protect and promote the rich heritage of the country, particularly Delhi, under the leadership of the PM Modi. He lauded the DDA's conservation efforts and assured full support of the Centre in protecting these heritage jewels.
L-G Saxena commended the DDA and ASI for their meticulous restoration and urged Delhiites to become stakeholders in preserving these priceless sites to ensure they remain clean, green, and encroachment-free. CM Gupta thanked the L-G for his dedicated efforts in reviving Delhi's neglected heritage and appreciated his constant guidance on developmental works in the city.
Built in 1653, Shalimar Bagh has witnessed many historic events from the Mughal to British era. As part of the restoration, ASI revived the Sheesh Mahal's heritage elements, while DDA developed a Mughal-style Char Bagh landscape to complement the monument.
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Indian Express
a minute ago
- Indian Express
Vivek Agnihotri's Bengal Files: Who was Gopal ‘Paantha' Mukherjee, and what did he do on Direct Action Day?
A resident of Kolkata, Shantanu Mukherjee (45), has complained to police that filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri's forthcoming Bengal Files tarnishes the image and reputation of his late grandfather Gopal Mukherjee. Agnihotri's film is about the communal riots that raged in Kolkata for four days beginning August 16, 1946, the date designated by the Muslim League as 'Direct Action Day' to create Pakistan. The Great Calcutta Killing was followed by bloody riots in Bombay, Noakhali (in today's Bangladesh), Bihar, Garhmukteshwar, and several places in Punjab over the next few months. Gopal Mukherjee, known by the moniker Gopal 'Paantha' because his family owned a mutton shop in central Kolkata's College Street (paantha is goat in Bangla), was a leader of one of the major street gangs that were active during the Direct Action Day violence in the city. Gopal Mukherjee and his group, supposedly comprising more than 800 young men, took it upon themselves to protect Hindus in their area from gangs of Muslim rioters. 'We have no problem with a film being made on Gopal Mukherjee. But the vulgar way in which he has been depicted is very offensive… The director did not consult us even once while making the film,' Shantanu Mukherjee told The Indian Express. In the official trailer of the film that is now available on YouTube, an actor in a beard and wearing long hair piled on top of his head apparently in a manner preferred by Gopal Mukherjee, declares that India is a nation of Hindus, blames Gandhian non-violence for the 'victory' of Jinnah, and is shown hacking frenziedly at people in the street with a sword. British Prime Minister Clement Atlee had announced the transfer of power in March 1946, although no date had been fixed. In May, the Cabinet Mission proposed a plan for an interim government, which both the Congress and Muslim League rejected. The League had committed itself to accepting nothing short of Partition and the creation of Pakistan. Its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, proclaimed that there would now be 'either a divided India or a destroyed India'. In a public address, Jinnah declared that 'One India is [now] an impossible realisation… It will inevitably mean that the Muslim will be transferred from the domination of the British to the caste Hindu rule… Freedom must mean freedom… Hundreds of millions of Muslims will never agree merely to a change of masters.' (cited by Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (2025)) On July 29, the League called on Muslims across India to observe August 16 as Direct Action Day, with strikes, hartals, and protests. But in Bengal, and Calcutta specifically, the situation went totally out of control. Bengal as a whole was Muslim-majority, but most of the 54% Muslim population of the province lived in areas that would become East Pakistan and subsequently, Bangladesh. The city of Calcutta was 73% Hindu. Muslims were concentrated in North Calcutta and in the Metiabruz area by the Ganga, and were mainly part of the city's underclasses. In the provincial elections of January 1946, the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, a provincial branch of the Muslim League, had emerged victorious, and H S Suhrawardy – a future Prime Minister of Pakistan and an early mentor of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Bangladesh – became prime minister (chief minister) of the province. Almost all members of Suhrawardy's cabinet belonged to the League. In his book, A History of the Bengali-speaking People (2001), historian Nitish Sengupta wrote that Suhrawardy's cabinet without a single upper caste Hindu was a 'strong message to them that the government was determined to rule Bengal without associating with the bhadralok class'. 'For them (upper-caste Bengali Hindus) this was a foretaste of what was likely to happen to them if the whole of Bengal went to Pakistan,' Sengupta wrote. Suhrawardy announced a public holiday in Bengal on August 16. The air in Calcutta was thick with apprehension and foreboding. 'The 16th began as an anxious day for everybody. No one knew what was going to happen. [The Muslim League Leader, Khwaja] Nazimuddin's statement that the Muslims did not swear by non-violence did not lead us to anticipate that active preparations for looting etc. had been going on… No police men were visible anywhere, and even the traffic police had been withdrawn,' the anthropologist Nirmal Kumar Bose wrote to his friend, the writer Krishna Kripalani, in Delhi. (Cited by the historian Ramachandra Guha in a 2014 column in The Telegraph, Calcutta) There were reports of Hindus putting up barricades to stop anticipated Muslim processions, and of Muslim gangs forcing Hindu shopkeepers to down their shutters. 'There was going to be a very big Muslim meeting at the Maidan (a vast open space in central Kolkata) at about 2, and Muslim crowds began to pour in from towards Cossippore [in North Calcutta] about 12. Every one noticed with some anxiety that the processionists carried lathis and brick bats in hand,' Nirmal Bose wrote in the letter cited by Guha. The meeting, attended by an estimated 1,00,000 people, was addressed by Nazimuddin and Suhrawardy. What Suhrawardy told the crowd remains disputed — it is said that he announced he had taken steps to restrain the police, which was understood as an invitation to loot and murder — but his speech was followed by a massive outbreak of violence in the city. Suhrawardy himself 'spent a great deal of time in the Control Room in Lall Bazar [police headquarters], often attended by some of his supporters', Frederick Burrows, Governor of Bengal Presidency, wrote to Viceroy Lord Wavell on August 22. (Cited in Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885-1947 (1983)). His presence at headquarters presumably prevented the police from taking action against the rioters and killers, who ran amok across the city using knives, rods, firebombs, and pistols. Through August 17 and 18, the violence intensified. It was only on August 19 that the military was called in. The chaos and bloodshed continued sporadically, and on August 21, Bengal was put under Viceroy's rule. Bose, the anthropologist quoted by Guha in his column, wrote that he saw 'dozens of corpses lying about,… the air became foul, and vultures for a whole week littered the roofs of Calcutta, and feasted on the corpses until they could do no more'. The American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White covered the riots for Life magazine, and her pictures of vultures lining the roofs of homes as the rotting bodies of riot victims littered the streets below present some of the most shocking recollections of the violence. For a long time, Calcutta remained divided between Muslim and Hindu zones with very little movement between them. Historians of Bengal believe that the Calcutta riots of 1946 were by far the most cataclysmic event leading to the partition of the province a year later. Much of the street violence during the Great Calcutta Killing was 'a pogrom between two rival armies [of Muslim and Hindu and Sikh] of the Calcutta underworld', Burrows wrote to Wavell in his official note mentioned above. 'Murder', Sarkar wrote in his book, 'was the primary objective…, not – as often in earlier communal outbreaks – desecration of temples or mosques, rape, or attacks on the property of relatively privileged groups belonging to the opposite community'. What is known of Mukherjee and his role in the violence comes primarily from a book on the 'Calcutta underworld' published in 1996, and an audio interview that Mukherjee gave to Andrew Whitehead of the BBC in 1997. According to The Goondas: Towards a Reconstruction of the Calcutta Underworld by Jayanta K Ray and Suranjan Das, Mukherjee was born in 1916 – which would make him 30 years of age in 1946 – and lived in Malanga Lane in the Bowbazar area of central Kolkata. He was '5 feet 4 inches in height, wore long hair like ladies, sported a moustache and long beard', Ray and Das wrote. In his interview to Whitehead, Mukherjee, who spoke in Bangla and said he was 83 years of age, said that on August 16, 1946, he was sitting at his meat shop when he saw a party of Muslim League volunteers marching with sticks in their hands and raising slogans of 'Lad ke lenge Pakistan' (We will fight and snatch Pakistan). Soon afterward, Mukherjee said, there was news that a couple of milkmen had been slaughtered in Beleghata [in North Kolkata]. The news sparked riots between Hindus and Muslims in Mukherjee's area, Bowbazar. He shut his shop and gathered some 'boys' in order to protect the residents of the neighbourhood, Mukherjee told Whitehead. As news of more attacks in the Chandni Chowk area [in Central Kolkata] came in, Mukherjee decided to go there, leaving his boys in charge at College Street. 'There were two houses where a large number of Muslims resided. If the violence spread, there would be massacres, so I went to see what could be done,' Mukherjee said in the interview. He then described scenes of looting and arson, of himself taking on rioters with a sword, and of brickbatting. Mukherjee said that he had told some of his Muslim friends that they had been living as neighbours for years and should not be rioting. But when he failed to stop the violence, he decided to fight back. 'I realised we had to save the country. If the whole area went to Pakistan, there would be more torture and bloodshed,' he told Whitehead. He said that he instructed his boys to retaliate ferociously. 'If you come to know of one murder, you should commit 10 murders, that was my order to my boys,' Mukherjee said. Mukherjee said that he and his boys had used whatever weapons they could lay their hands on – knives, sticks, rods, and guns. They had been stocking up on some weapons over the last few years, he said. 'I had two American pistols. We got some weapons during the 1942 movement. Then during the Second World War, the American army…were in Calcutta. If you gave them Rs 250 or a bottle of whisky, they would give you a pistol and a hundred cartridges. That way we secured all these weapons, and we used them during the troubles,' Whitehead wrote in an account of his conversation with Mukherjee, which was published in The Indian Express at the time. In his interview to Whitehead, Mukherjee did not give a count of the number of people he or 'his boys' had killed during that period. But he claimed that he had ensured that his group attacked only the attackers, and not any ordinary Muslims on the roads. He also gave strict orders to his boys to not misbehave with Muslim women, Mukherjee told Whitehead. Shantanu Mukherjee told The Indian Express that his grandfather 'came from a revolutionary background and was inspired by the life and work of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He was part of the Atma Unnati Samiti (Self Development Association) which was one of the revolutionary nationalist groups in Bengal like Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar'. Gopal Mukherjee, Shantanu Mukherjee said, 'attacked only those members of the Muslim League who were spreading violence. He did not attack anyone from their families, women, children or the elderly… Had he not attacked the rioters from the Muslim League, this (Kolkata) would have been Bangladesh. The whole map of India would have been different.' Asked by Whitehead during the interview if he felt proud of his actions in 1946, Gopal Mukherjee said: 'It was not about pride. It was about duty. I believed that I had a duty to help people in distress.' Was there any connection between Mukherjee and the Indian National Movement? A year after the Great Calcutta Killing, Mahatma Gandhi visited Calcutta and appealed to people to surrender their arms. Mukherjee told Whitehead that several of the rioters surrendered their weapons, but he refused to meet Gandhi despite being called twice. He finally allowed himself to be persuaded by some local Congress leaders after he was called for a third time, but he still refused to surrender his weapons to Gandhi. 'I went there. I saw people coming and depositing weapons which were of no use to anyone – out-of-order pistols, that sort of thing,' Whitehead quoted Mukherjee as having told him. 'Then Gandhi's secretary said to me: 'Gopal, why don't you surrender your arms to Gandhiji?' I replied, 'With these arms I saved the women of my area, I saved the people. I will not surrender them.'' Whitehead wrote that Mukherjee had told him that he told the people around Gandhi: 'Where was Gandhiji, I said, during the Great Calcutta Killing? Where was he then? Even if I've used a nail to kill someone, I won't surrender even that nail.' Shantanu Mukherjee said his grandfather had established a revolutionary organisation called Bharatiya Jatiya Bahini, and had participated in the Quit India Movement. 'Due to some difference of opinion he had stopped working for the nationalist cause for a while after the Quit India Movement. His organisation resumed their activities in 1946,' he said. Ray and Das wrote in their book that following the riots of 1946, Mukherjee and his associates were pushed into a life of crime and lawlessness. They received liberal financial help from prosperous Calcutta Hindus during the riots, and were hailed as saviours. After the situation returned to normal, however, they were ostracised and looked at with contempt. 'This probably induced Gopal Mukherjee and his followers to take recourse to organized 'crime' as a means of livelihood. Their involvement with 'lawless acts' now ranged from armed dacoities like the Sonarpur Dacoity case and the Guinea Mansion Dacoity case, to armed hold-ups, house burglaries, smuggling, petty snatching and thefts,' Ray and Das wrote.
New Indian Express
4 minutes ago
- New Indian Express
Gujarat unveils ambitious district planning reforms: GARC Report proposes major overhaul
AHMEDABAD: In a landmark move aimed at decentralising development and strengthening grassroots governance, the Gujarat Administrative Reforms Commission (GARC) on Thursday submitted its fourth report to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, outlining sweeping reforms to overhaul the district planning system. Chaired by former Union Finance Secretary Dr Hasmukh Adhia, the report recommends a complete structural shift in how planning decisions are made at the district level with a focus on empowering elected representatives and significantly enhancing local development funds. Key Highlights Massive Budget Expansion: The report proposes a seven to eight-fold increase in district planning budgets over the next five years translating to nearly Rs 10,000 crore in additional annual funding. Dissolution of District Planning Boards: The existing five-decade-old boards would be replaced by constitutionally mandated District Planning Committees (DPCs), in line with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. These new bodies would be led by elected members, ensuring more participatory and accountable governance. Seven-Point Reform Agenda: The Adhia-led panel outlined a comprehensive seven-point reform package to address longstanding inefficiencies Unified Taluka Planning Committees: A single platform to clear all local schemes and funds, avoiding duplication. Simplified Policy Framework: Consolidation of existing Government Resolutions into one unified order for decentralised planning. Fixed Planning Calendar: Beginning consultations at the village level by June–July, with final approvals before fiscal year-end. GIS-Based Monitoring: Introduction of a geo-tagged, public dashboard system directly linked to the state's financial architecture. Grant & Staffing Rationalisation: Merging of smaller schemes, apprenticeship models, and deployment of retired professionals to ease staffing crunches. Enhanced Accountability: Social audits, collector-led reviews, and performance awards to drive transparent implementation. New 'Backward Taluka' Index: A modern classification system based on 45 Human Development Indicators aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), replacing outdated metrics.
India Today
17 minutes ago
- India Today
Raj Thackeray and the politics of hate
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated November 10, 2008)A statue of the Great Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji in a classic battle pose dominates Shivaji Park, a spear's throw from Raj Thackeray's residence. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS ) leader, like his uncle Bal Thackeray, frequently flaunts Shivaji's name to rally voters at his public meetings in Maharashtra. The distortion of history is conveniently ignored. Shivaji fought and defeated powerful Mughal invaders to create a unified India, albeit a Hindu one. Raj Thackeray is doing the opposite: dividing India by unleashing his goon squads on fellow Indians, with fatal consequences, just because they happen to come from outside the state. The strategy to play to the Maharashtrian gallery and steal the vote bank from under his uncle's nose is obvious, but the ramifications are evil and dangerous. Having literally scented blood, his increasingly militant and mindless supporters are now indulging in open arson, destruction of property, and murder. The passenger from Bihar who was kicked and beaten on a train till he died is the latest manifestation of the politics of hate that has been unleashed in India's commercial It would be tempting to wonder how a petty tyrant and gangster like the young Thackeray could be allowed to hold the country's most cosmopolitan city to ransom. The answer is to be found in the political career of Raj's uncle Bal Keshav Thackeray, founder of the Shiv Sena, which is best defined by the ancient credo—saam (communicate), daam (buy), dand (force), bhed (divide). Thackeray built his party by playing the Marathi manoos card over 40 years ago. While his son Uddhav has been busy imparting lessons on the merits of globalisation, for nephew Raj, who split from the Shiv Sena three years ago, the four principles are sacred testaments. After adopting a universal political philosophy embodied in the MNS flag that has bands of saffron for Hindus, green for Muslims and blue for Dalits, he has quickly leapt to the final—divisive results are more than encouraging, if the recent incidents of violence in Mumbai are an indication. While MNS has sowed the seeds of dissent between the Marathis and 'outsiders', it's the unsuspecting man in a local train who got lynched even as a hate-ridden Bihari youth opened fire in a BEST bus. That's the kind of hatred Raj Thackeray and his MNS is spreading. The incident of October 28, when Dharamdev Rai, a migrant labourer from Gorakhpur district in Uttar Pradesh, was lynched by Marathi-speaking youths after a clash, has left the nation shocked. Just a day earlier, Rahul Raj, a 23-year-old Bihari youth from Patna, travelled all the way to Mumbai with the sole intention to avenge the attack on fellow Biharis by the MNS over the past one year. But after he opened fire and held 13 passengers hostage at Kurla, he was shot down by the a corporate parallel were to be drawn, what's happening in Mumbai and the Shiv Sena is akin to a battle for succession. An ailing patriarch, his son who is seen as a rank outsider and a streetsmart nephew who believes he was the successor. Add to that the weak leadership in a state where the two ruling coalition partners are constantly trying to outdo each other. The situation was tailor-made for the opportunistic Raj to play with fire to carve out his own niche. When he started taunting the 'outsiders', Mumbai's ruling class looked the other way. When aspirants for railway jobs were beaten up and prevented from taking examinations, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh initially seemed to view it as a problem that would go away on its own. But when the pressure got on him, he finally decided to book Raj under Section 153 of the IPC, which ensured that the MNS chief was out of jail within 24 hours. It was a familiar compromise. Raj could have easily been booked for more serious offences which would have ensured a longer stay in jail. A Bombay High Court judge, Justice J.N. Patel, had already condemned his actions and likened him to a terrorist. There was also a case pending against him in Jamshedpur, where a non-bailable warrant had been issued against him for denigrating a community (Biharis). Instead, there was shameful capitulation from all concerned, an indication of the psychological blow that one man and his rabid followers have inflicted on India's maximun police cannot be expected to do any better when Joint Commissioner of Police K.L. Prasad, who showed spine by reminding Raj that Mumbai was not anyone's ancestral property, is told to lie low. And when the nation expected its leaders to act decisively, nothing was forthcoming from those who mattered. The silence from Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi was sphinx-like, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call for sanity seemed under duress, coming as it did after the unlikely combine of Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Steel Minister Ram Vilas Paswan lodged protests. Many feel that it is Lalu's style of politics that may have enraged the MNS all, he had provoked the MNS activists by announcing that he would perform Chhath Puja in Mumbai. Worse, his ministry conducted the railway recruitment examinations in Mumbai without advertising the vacancies in Marathi whose MNS failed to save either its honour or its deposit in several local elections, couldn't have asked for anything better. With less than 2,000 cadre, of whom at best 500 can be said to be hardcore, he had the media and even big business eat out of his hands. It was Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways who propelled Raj to greater glory by rescinding the sacking of nearly 2,000 airline employees after he threatened to stop Jet Airways flights in and out of Mumbai. The silence of the political class and civil society to his uncivil ways, coupled with the total absence of professional protesters among Mumbai's out-of-work film directors and actors meant Raj was playing a match where the opposition had not even turned up. With the elections round the corner, it suits everyone to have the Marathi votebank split between Shiv Sena and the MNS. Says Sanjay Raut, Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena spokesperson: 'The rise of the MNS will damage the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) the most, as their performance is dependent on this segment. The next to suffer will be the BJP as wherever they are contesting in the state, the Marathi manoos vote will go to the MNS as Sena won't be contesting in that seat.'advertisementWhile bigwigs like NCP chief Sharad Pawar continue to believe that Raj is nothing more than nuisance and is best ignored, it is precisely that attitude which has emboldened the MNS leader to accelerate his campaign of hate. Already, the damage done by the violent outbursts by his unruly cadre is evident. Earlier, anyone from outside Maharashtra, who made Mumbai or the state his home, could visit the beach or roam around the streets without any fear. Today the 'outsiders' are living in terror, wondering when the next attack will started out as a race between two competing Thackerays—Raj and Uddhav—has now snowballed into a national crisis with Mumbai as their playground. Much of the blame for that lies with politicians from all parties, the state leadership and even the Centre. Home Minister Shivraj Patil comes from Maharashtra and should be taking the lead in bringing Raj to heel. Instead, he is playing the Invisible Man. The chief minister is at loggerheads with his own Home Minister, R.R. Patil, with the result that signals are confused and Raj ends up being treated with kid gloves. If they have any excuse for that approach, it can only be that they are taking their cue from the Central leadership which has refrained from any outright condemnation or action to neutralise the MNS menace. AICC general secretary in charge of Maharasthra, Margaret Alva, usually vocal and outspoken on most issues concerning the state, has been conspicuous by her silence. For Mumbai, a city under increasing siege, the ultimate twist of irony is that Raj broke from the Shiv Sena saying, in his resignation letter to his uncle, that he wanted to promote a 'modern and progressive state'.From his recent antics, his dream of a modern and progressive state is everyone else's nightmare. As a gunman hijacking a state transport bus in broad daylight fill television screens one day and mindless rioting and arson the other, India has reason to be worried each time Raj dreams. Inciting extremism will have its own repercussions but the state's politicians are oblivious to such a threat as all that they are concerned about is combating the growing influence of Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. With governance collapsing in Maharashtra, the state machinery has lost the will to combat extremist MNS and its naked violence has claimed many victims, but most of them are those who are powerless in the face of such aggression. Taxis and autos are possibly the worst hit by any political agitation, as in any mob violence public transport becomes the first target. Last week, the MNS supporters hit the streets and burnt taxis and auto-rickshaws in such a way that nobody was willing to go anywhere near Bandra Court the day Raj was arrested and brought to the court. The fear of being attacked made drivers park their vehicles and refuse to move. Says A.L. Quadros, president, Bombay Taximan's Union: 'Taxi and rickshaw workers are on the road and are attacked in by-lanes where no one can see them. They are not even given any claim as most drivers are daily wage workers.' Obviously, rioting hits them hard a segment of society, Raj Thackeray is perhaps an alternative they've so far not had. While Jet Airways employees approaching the MNS after they were sacked is the most prominent example, several others have sought help from the party. When Bandra's New English School asked its students to pay their annual fees at one go, the parents approached local MNS leaders for help and launched a signature campaign to pressure the management. The decision has since been revoked. On grounds of anonymity, a mother of one student says: 'The MNS leaders took up our cause and made the management take notice. Our voice would have gone unheard otherwise.' Small wonder, the Shiv Sena is looking rather foolish even as Raj projects himself as a saviour of the common men in its own backyard. While his methods are bordering on criminal, the public response suggests that there are as many Maharashtrians disgusted with his strong-arm tactics as there are those who may silently sympathise. However, with job fears becoming an emotive issue, his strategy may be politically viable if constitutionally wrong. Raut acknowledges that Raj has the power to damage other parties in the state, including the Sena. 'Each time a new party comes into being, it does eat into the votes of the existing parties. About 10-12 of our seats will be affected, but the maximum damage will be to others.' Ask him if a section of the party regrets losing Raj, and the answer is, 'Yes, but I cannot comment on that.'Like almost any crises in recent times, the conflict in Maharashtra has the potential of triggering off a bigger and more dangerous confrontation that will pit Indians against fellow Indians. The unlikely coming together of Bihar's worst political foes has already prompted the state's people to counter violence with violence in what promises to be a tit-for-tat battle. Lalu's threat to suspend trains in states where rail passengers have been attacked and Amar Singh's pledge to send Samajwadi Party workers to protect non-Maharashtrians in Mumbai is a clear sign that the political stakes are being raised and could trigger a full scale conflagration. For India, there would be no greater tragedy than to allow a mere rabble-rouser to orchestrate such a situation.—with Farzand Ahmed in Patna and Subhash Mishra in LucknowSubscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
