AFTER Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) Chief Raj Thackeray's attack on Jaya Bachchan over her alleged anti-Marathi remarks, Shiv Sena has now targeted Bollywood ‘badshah' Shah Rukh Khan for his Delhi origin. “Shah Rukh says he is a Dilliwala. If you are from Delhi, then why have you come to Maharashtra,” Sena Chief Bal Thackeray said in an editorial in party mouthpiece ‘Saamana' on Tuesday. “You come to Maharashtra to earn fame and wealth but once you have had your fill, then you will evoke the name of the region from where you came from. And Marathi people are expected not to utter a word in their own state,” the Sena mouthpiece said. “If you have a sense of regionalism, then what is wrong if we also indulged in it a bit,” ‘Saamana' said. “In southern states, the anti-Hindi campaign has been on for the last sixty years. There is a ban on Hindi films and Hindi news in Tamil Nadu. In Assam, those speaking in Hindi are killed,” it said. “Why don't the people who boast here that they are from UP or Bihar go to these areas and unfurl the Hindi banner,” the editorial said. “Amitabh Bachchan does not belong to a region or language. When it comes to his art, walls of regionalism and language crumble down. He is such a great actor,” ‘Saamana' said. However, when his wife proclaims that “we are from Uttar Pradesh”, how does one fathom that, it asked. On Monday, the Sena had threatened Amitabh Bachchan and his family with a boycott of their films. Bachchan, who hails from Uttar Pradesh and found fame and fortune in Mumbai, has become a lightning rod for critics who say immigrants have sidelined local people from Maharashtra. The latest row erupted after Bachchan's actress-politician wife Jaya spoke in Hindi at a Bollywood function in Mumbai on Saturday, prompting Raj Thackeray, head of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) to issue the boycott threat. Bachchan said she would speak in Hindi as her family hailed from a state where the language is widely spoken. Hindi is also the national language. The remark irked MNS, which announced a boycott of films starring any member of the Bachchan family -- Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya, their son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai. “She has made this comment out of spite,” MNS spokesman Shirish Parkar told Reuters. “If she wants to stay in Maharashtra and even then not speak the state language (Marathi), this is unacceptable to us.” “We will not allow any film which has any member of the Bachchan family in it to run in Maharashtra. Nor will we allow any product they endorse to be sold here.” Television reports said MNS party workers in Mumbai tore down posters of Amitabh Bachchan's “The Last Lear,” a film slated for release on Friday. Last week, some party activists were arrested for vandalising shops in the city after owners failed to put up signboards in Marathi language. Earlier this year, MNS workers in Maharashtra were accused of intimidation, damaging vehicles and beating up taxi drivers, who are mostly migrants. For generations, rural Indians have tried to escape poverty by migrating to big cities like Mumbai in search of jobs. Less than 50 percent of Mumbai's 17 million residents are Maharashtrians. Many hail from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two of India's poorest states. The issue had surfaced in Mumbai during the 1990s when the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party attacked migrants, but the party changed tack after realising the crucial role immigrants played in the economy. -Reuters __
