The funeral procession of the fisherman Tabrez Sayekar being taken out at
Sakhri Nate Village in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra on Wednesday.
(Photo: Vivek Bendre)
“The Maharashtra government has promised an inquiry into the death but also suggested the protests were politically motivated by the right-wing Shiv Sena Party and not based on genuine local concerns.”
No “genuine local concerns” about six huge reactors, on a coast with an average of four significant earthquakes every year!
In a slightly larger context, Shiv Sena (The Army of Shivaji) was originally a movement (instead of a political party) composed of Maharashtri Marathi-speaking peasants and laborers resisting the influence of much more prosperous immigrants from other Indian states who grabbed the best jobs in globalized Mumbai.
But after a few years party-leaders transformed this genuine indigenous movement first into shock-troops to break up Communist unions in Mumbai and later forged a political alliance with Rajiv Gandhi’s BJP, with its incoherent but definitely racist and anti-muslim hindutva agenda.