June 20, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-us-Sani 15, 1429

MUMBAI, June 19: The Shiv Sena’s call for Hindu suicide squads to counter “Islamic terrorism” has caused outrage and brought embarrassment to the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance, with which it is allied.

The inflammatory comments appeared on Wednesday in an unsigned editorial in Saamana, the official newspaper of the Shiv Sena, a regional party whose politics is based on nativist pride for the people of Maharashtra state.

“Islamic terrorism is on the rise in India and in order to counter Islamic terrorism, we should match it with Hindu terrorism,” the unsigned editorial said in Marathi.

“Just like Islamic extremism, to safeguard the country and Hindus we must create Hindu suicide squads if Hindu society is to be saved.”

Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, has seen deadlier bomb attacks than any other Indian city in the last 15 years _ almost all blamed on ‘Islamist extremists’.

The bombs have killed hundreds of people and sometimes stoked communal violence.

The editorial also urged that Hindus should “create terror” in Bangladeshi settlements, on the outskirts of Mumbai, and elsewhere in Maharashtra.

The Congress has called for the arrest of Bal Thackeray, who founded the party 42 years ago and still leads it today, newspapers reported.

The BJP distanced itself from its Hindu-nationalist ally.

“People should not take the law into their own hands,” M. Venkaiah Naidu, a senior BJP leader, was quoted as saying in several newspapers on Thursday. “It is the duty of the government to counter terror.”

The editorial, titled “The dud bombs of Hindus! Why embarrass us?”, was prompted partly by two low-intensity bombs that were planted in theatres in northern suburbs of Mumbai earlier this month. One exploded and injured a handful of people, the other was defused by police.

Police arrested four people who said they were associated with radical Hindu groups and planted the bombs because they were upset by the portrayal of Hindu gods in the plays running at the theatres.

The Saamana editorial called the bombs “ridiculous and stupid” because they succeeded only in hurting a few people who were Hindus, and had no impact against “Islamic extremism”.

Neelam Gorhe, a Shiv Sena spokeswoman, said the editorial should be understood as a rhetorical piece, and she did not think the party was planning to form suicide squads.

“As Uddhav Thackeray said yesterday that if someone is attacking us then it is a right to retaliate,” she said, referring to the party president, adding that violence should only be used as a last resort.

Elections are due in Maharashtra next year, and analysts said Shiv Sena could be reinforcing its Hindu-nationalist and Marathi credentials, especially since a breakaway party has recently launched its own campaign against immigrants from other parts of India.

—Reuters