Sudheendra Kulkarni, head of an Indian think tank, was doused with ink by Hindu radicals. Credit Divyakant Solanki/European Pressphoto Agency

Source: New York Times

By

Sylvie Kauffmann

The Indian organizers of two concerts by Ghulam Ali, a veteran Pakistani singer, did not want to take chances. They had received local government assurances about security for the Oct. 9 and 10 concerts in Mumbai and Pune. But faced with protests from a regional right-wing Hindu party, Shiv Sena, they decided to cancel the shows. “You know the Shiv Sena people,” the manager of one of the venues explained. “They may still create troubles.”

A few days later Sudheendra Kulkarni, chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, was attacked in his car by a group of “Shiv Sena people” who doused him with oily black ink. He had been due to take part in a book launch by a former Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, an event the foundation had refused to cancel. He still appeared with the author, his head blackened and his clothes soiled, his face almost unrecognizable, to condemn this “attack on democracy,” before going to the hospital to have the ink removed.

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