Bollywood’s most venerable heart-throb has been dragged into a row over Bombay’s immigrant population that has provoked days of street skirmishes.

Taxi drivers from north India were pulled from their cabs and beaten by far-right gangs demanding that “outsiders” should be barred from India’s most cosmopolitan – and overcrowded – city. Police leave has been suspended across Maharashtra, the state that surrounds Bombay, amid fears of further trouble.

The spark came when Amitabh Bachchan, the Bollywood idol who moved to Bombay from north India in the 1960s, was criticised for funding a girls’ school in his home state of Uttar Pradesh. The decision not to back a Bombay-based project was called “disloyal” by a local politician whose supporters then went on the rampage.

Bachchan’s Bombay home was pelted with bottles while north Indian rickshaw drivers had their vehicles burnt. Street hawkers, shops and cinemas showing north Indian films were also attacked in sporadic violence that continued yesterday.

Raj Thackeray, a cartoonist turned would-be political leader, whose attack on Bachchan a week ago triggered the unrest, said: “The violence . . . was a spontaneous reaction of local Maharashtrians who, for a long time, have been sick and tired of these migrants who come here and ruin the local culture.”

Police in Bombay logged a case yesterday against Mr Thackeray, who leads the hardline Maharashtra Navnirman Sena party, for dividing people on ethnic lines and inciting riots. There are concerns that his arrest may cause more violence.

Bachchan, known as Big B across India, is said to be “deeply saddened” by the incidents. “He felt that a country is being created within a country,” a confidant said.

The war of words underpinning the violence grew over the weekend. After one north Indian leader promised to distribute lathis (bamboo batons) to Bombay’s migrant population, Mr Thackeray promised to supply koyta (sickles) to his men in readiness for running street battles.

Potential targets appear more bemused than frightened. Dilip Singh, a taxi driver originally from the northern state of Bihar, said: “What do we do? Thackeray is crazy, but I have to make a living.”

Alist anguish

— Shilpa Shetty was subjected to racist name-calling on Celebrity Big Brother last year. The Indian Minister of State for External Affairs lodged a complaint with Tony Blair

— Sanjay Dutt, the Bollywood actor, was jailed for six years last year for his involvement in weapons deals with bombers who attacked Bombay in 1993

Source: Times archive

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