MUMBAI - A POLITICAL party in Mumbai best known for its anti-immigrant rhetoric has decided to launch its own chain of fast-food stands, but with an ideological flavour that could stick in some throats.
The Shiv Sena already has a powerful, dichotomous influence over India's financial capital: It runs the city through its control of the municipal authority, and its followers habitually paralyse parts of the city with rowdy protests.
Now, it wants to extend its influence over the city's most popular snack - vada pav, a potato cutlet sandwiched between two buns.
'We are making a chain like McDonald's,' said Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut.
The vada pav, usually eaten with chilli, serves to symbolise the party's struggle against Mumbai's cosmopolitan essence.
The Shiv Sena believes the city belongs to the Hindu Marathi community, less than half of all Mumbai residents, while all others are the city's guests.
Naturally, many Parsis, Gujarati Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Christians from communities that have played defining roles in the city since its colonial beginnings disagree.
So, too, do tens of thousands of migrant Indians who squeeze into Mumbai each year to seek their fortune.
Regardless, Mr Sanjay Gurav, who is setting up the fast-food chain, said only Marathis will be hired at Shiv's vada pav stands, in keeping with the party's founding goal of protecting the interests of the Marathi men it calls 'sons of the soil'.
And where a McDonald's server might wish a customer a nice day, Shiv's vada pav vendors are expected to exclaim 'Jai Maharashtra!', a Shiv Sena slogan meaning 'Hail Maharashtra!', the Marathi-dominated state of which Mumbai is the capital.
