Bal Thackeray

Bal Thackeray (1926-2012) was an Indian don spiritual leader. He headed a political party known as Shiv SenaFile:Wikipedia's W.svg. His group Shiv Sena's motto is Mumbai for Marathis. (Mumbai is a metro city where people from all over India come and live). Shiv Sena vehemently claim that they are not anti-Muslim.

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“”If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.
—Bal Thackeray[1]

Views

Thackeray was very vocal in his opposition to people who migrate to Mumbai, to non-Hindus (especially Muslims), and to illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. In the late 1970s, as part of his "Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians" campaign, Thackeray threatened migrants from South India with harm unless they left Mumbai. In 2002, Thackeray issued a call to form Hindu suicide squads to counter alleged Muslim violence.

On Muslims

He equated Islam with violence and urged Hindus to fight terrorism and Islam. He regularly wrote inflammatory anti-Muslim columns in his newspaper Samna. He criticized former Indian president A. P. J. Abdul Kalam since he was a Muslim.

Admiration for Hitler

Bal Thackeray was a great fan of Hitler. He said that Muslims in India will meet the same fate German Jews did. [2]

Religious beliefs

Ironically he claimed that he is an atheist, perhaps in an attempt to discredit atheists.[3]

gollark: Well, microwaves, but so is the micro:bit radio, so meh.
gollark: It is not currently, strictly speaking, osmarks internet *radio™*.
gollark: I kind of want to attain two micro:bits, thingy them to my server and laptop via UART over USB, and transmit osmarks internet radio™ over their surprisingly capable wireless radios.
gollark: Unrelatedly, it turns out that the unused micro:bit on my desk still functions perfectly.
gollark: No, this is actually illegal; you *will* act as Microsoft preconfigures it to be.

References

Footnotes
  1. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hitlers-strange-afterlife-in-india
  2. In rod we trust, Varsha Bhosle, 29 January 1998
  3. The Rebirth of Shiv Sena: The Symbiosis of Discursive and Organizational Power, Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Uday Singh Mehta, Usha Thakkar, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 371-390, JSTOR link (requires subscription) Google Search result showing the quote
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