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India’s Hindu right has a new hero: A 17th century warrior king
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Visitors with the Shivaji statue in Malvan, a small town in Maharashtra, India, in January. There has been a surge of interest in the Hindu warrior in recent years.
PHOTO: ATUL LOKE/NYTIMES
Anupreeta Das and Suhasini Raj
BODHAN, India – On the morning of March 20, 2022, passers-by in the south Indian town of Bodhan were taken aback to find that an almost 3m statue of a 17th century Hindu warrior king had been erected without authorisation at a busy intersection.
By the time police arrived, a few dozen men, both Hindus and Muslims, were pelting stones at each other. The local authorities, worried about a full-blown riot, swiftly imposed a ban on public gatherings.
