A low-intensity, crude bomb exploded at an auditorium in Thane today and wounded seven people, the second time an auditorium showing the same Marathi play — which apparently takes a dig in passing at chhat puja performed by north Indians — was targeted in the area in four days. But police said they were also probing the role of some Hindu groups that had protested against the play for “denigrating Hindu mythology”.Wednesday’s explosion in Thane hit the municipal corporation-managed Gadkari Rangayatan minutes before the start of Amhi Pachpute (We Pachputes), a Marathi satire. The device, which was packed with nails, was placed in the basement of the building near the booking office and went off at 4.10 p.m. before a ticket clerk who spotted it could call the police.On Saturday, an auditorium in nearby Navi Mumbai, which was staging the same play was also targeted by a crude bomb. That bomb was found under the seats during the interval and had to be exploded in a controlled detonation outside the hall as it could not be defused.“There are just too many similarities in both cases for it to be a coincidence. We are investigating along with the Thane police,” said D Sivanandan, Commissioner of the State Intelligence Department.Amhi Pachpute is a satire that revolves around two middle-class Maharashtrian families that are struggling to make ends meet, said its producer Santosh Kanekar. Written and directed by well-known Marathi playwright Santosh Pawar, its actors are mostly new faces, he added.“We have a scene where a character has to leave and punning on chhat puja, the other character says ‘chhat, chhat, chhat’ asking him to go away,” Kanekar told The Indian Express. “This is more suggestive and not direct and is made just in pure humour. We do not know why this has to be targeted.” Ramrao Wagh, Navi Mumbai’s police commissioner, said police were investigating the contents of the play but added that “from what I have heard, the humour is not very caustic”. Chhat Puja, performed by Hindus in Bihar and eastern UP, has become controversial in Maharashtra in recent months after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray opposed it during his campaign against migrants from north India. Marathi theatre critics, however, said the play also had a mythological subtext with a subtle reference to similarities between the five Pachputes and the Pandavas. The plot revolved around a property dispute between the five brothers and their cousins, they said, adding that director Pawar had run into trouble with pro-Hindu groups as his plays had Hindu mythological parallels.A little-known group called the ‘Hindu Janajagruti Samiti’ (HJS) had protested against Pawar’s play Yada Kadachit in Sangli in Maharashtra in June last year saying “incidents from Ramayana and Mahabharata have been ridiculed in the play”. While the play was staged under tight security in some districts, shows in some others were cancelled, said the website of the organisation known to be active in Maharashtra and the Konkan region.Thane Police Commissioner Anil Dhere said, “We are aware that some groups had protested in the recent past against Santosh Pawar’s plays. We are probing this angle as well. These groups will be under the scanner.”A May 29 ‘news report’ on the HJS website said that “the producer and writer of the play have once again played with religious sentiments of Hindus by staging the same play in a new form”, alleging that Amhi Pachpute was a new version of Yada Kadachit. A note from the editor of the website added, “It seems that the producers, taking advantage of over-tolerance of Hindus, do not understand gentleman’s language. God (Dharma) will not forgive such heretics for making mockery of Hindus’ objects of worship.”
