Muslims fear hate campaign

THREATS by leaders of the recently elected Hindu fundamentalist government in the western Indian state of Maharashtra to 'annihilate' Muslims augurs a period of sectarian tension in India's richest and most industrialised state.

The spectre of communal unrest in Bombay, imminent given that Bal Thackeray - the head of the Shiv Sena party - is not likely to call off his anti-Muslim campaign, is also worrying businessmen and industrialists, many of whom are dependent on Muslim labour.

And, though the ire of Mr Thackeray is ostensibly directed at illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh and Pakistan, he has put millions of Muslims on notice in the state capital Bombay.

He has set a 'test' for Bombay's 1.8 million Muslims by asking them to join the drive to hunt down illegal immigrants.

Mr Thackeray, who is a former cartoonist and an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler, told Muslims that there was one path open to them to join in the national mainstream - by helping the Government track down illegal Muslims.

'And if you do not participate,' he warned in Samna (Confrontation), the party's newspaper, 'then you can blame your own fate.' Mr Thackeray who calls himself the 'remote control chief minister' - having given the job to Manohar Joshi, a trusted lieutenant - proudly claims to have taught Bombay's Muslims a 'long-overdue lesson' during Bombay's sectarian riots in 1992 in which more than 1,200 people died.

During the fortnight-long riots, gangs of armed Shiv Sena activists, covertly supported by a sympathetic police force, rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods, killing and looting.