A sweet shop owner in Mumbai’s Bandra West was forced to cover his shop sign with newspaper pages after Shiv Sena leader Nitin Nandgaokar wanted “Karachi” dropped from its name.
“I hate the name Karachi. The city in Pakistan is a hub of terrorists. You can name your ancestors in the banner… I pay my respects to them. You came from Pakistan but this is your home. You’ll have to do it (change the name). We will help you with the business. I will give you time… change the name to something in Marathi,” the Sena leader is heard saying in a video exchange between the two that was caught on camera. It’s not clear when the video was shot.
Following the incident, the shop covered its name with a newspaper. Subsequently, Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP, Sanjay Raut, clarified that the demand for changing the shop’s name is not the party’s official stance.
In a similar incident last year in Bengaluru, some men allegedly barged into a Karachi Bakery, a six-decade-old bakery chain outlet in Indiranagar and demanded that the management remove the word ‘Karachi’ from its name following the Pulwama attack that killed 40 CRPF jawans.
A week after the Indiranagar incident, another Karachi Bakery’s outlet manager in Bengaluru claimed he received a call from someone who threatened to “blast the store” if the word Karachi wasn’t removed from signboard, NDTV reported.
Karachi is the largest city of Pakistan and the capital of Pakistani province of Sindh.
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Rushda Fathima Khan is the Staff Reporter for The Cognate.
