Shiv Sena’s autocratic attitude is nothing new for the world, but this time their target was the king of Bollywood, Shahrukh Khan. Shahrukh’s culpa – speaking his mind. Well he should have known better.

In the recent IPL team selection, none of the cricketers from Pakistan were selected.

This was apparently done to send a stern message to the Pakistan Government to stop its terrorist activities else face social banishment. Shahrukh, as the owner of IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders, says that instead of calling the Pakistani players for the auction and not selecting them could have been handled better.

This comment hurt the Shiv sainik’s ‘nationalist’ sentiments and resulted in the burning of Shahrukh’s effigies, along with hate columns in Shiv Sena’s newspaper ‘Saamna’ and threats to stall the release of SRK’s new release ‘My Name is Khan.’

Shiv Sena has been a believer in showcasing muscle power and this seems to be another tactic on their part to recover from the recent loss in the elections. It was interesting to see the entire media and Bollywood backing Shahrukh Khan, because to be fair, all he did was express an opinion.

This whole controversy came from mixing up separate issues. Firstly, strained diplomatic relations between the two countries was the reason to prevent Pakistani players from getting selected.

Then, a sincere personal opinion was made into a threat to the country’s security and sovereignty by a political party that has been actively engaged in regional politics which has been trying to secure Mumbai/Maharashtra only for the people born there. Bizarre??

While Shahrukh stuck to his stand, Bollywood celebrities rallied around him in support.

Shiv Sena had to finally say they will not disrupt the screening of ‘My Name is Khan’ though they still condemn Shahrukh’s comment and demanded an apology.

No doubt this issue is about Shahrukh being helped in a soft stand by the Sena, however, what we need to really worry about is the tolerance that citizens show to the everyday divisory political gimmicks by such institutions.