Last week, the death of one man revealed to the world that a nation of 1.2 billion people is not as democratically secure as it claims to be. On Nov. 17, Indian politician Bal Thackeray passed away in Mumbai, prompting a complete shutdown of the fourth largest city in the world. Virtually every government office and commercial establishment in the city was closed, and taxi and rickshaw drivers stayed off the streets, which had been occupied by hundreds of thousands of people mourning the loss of perhaps the most significant politician Maharashtra, the western state containing Mumbai, has ever known. Condolences from preeminent Indian public figures poured in, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling for calm “during this period of loss and mourning” and citing Thackeray’s “strong leadership.” Politician Sonia Gandhi prayed for him, actor Amitabh Bachchan praised his grit and singer Lata Mangeshkar likened his death to an orphaning of the Maharashtrian state and people. This would be a relatively insignificant event, except for one detail­: Thackeray was a political mob boss who admired Hitler, incited killings of Muslims and used mafia-esque violence as a means to his xenophobic ends.

Thackeray established the Shiv Sena party in 1966 as a method of advocating strongly for the protection of the political and professional rights of native Maharashtrians in Mumbai. He felt that immigrants from other states in India, particularly the South, were soaking up jobs that rightfully belonged to Marathi people, utilizing his masterful linguistic command and larger than life persona to sway politicians, newspapers and voters alike while developing a political monopoly around himself en route to becoming the Godfather of Mumbai by the ’90s. He used the debilitating poverty in the city to his advantage and easily convinced the poor that the slums of Mumbai — commercialized for the rest of the world by the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” — would be slums no more if other Indian sects were forced to leave. The Shiv Sena was originally founded on positive, if ethnocentric, principles but soon developed into what it is today — a political gang of killers and racists.

The true nature of Thackeray and the Shiv Sena’s extremism is perhaps best exemplified by the Bombay Riots of 1992-1993 during which 900 people were killed. In the middle of severe communal tension between Hindus and Muslims in December 1992, Muslim fanatics burned six Hindus alive, including a physically handicapped girl. According to the official government inquiry, the Srikrishna Commission, Hindu passions and anger were artificially stoked by inciting reports by Thackeray’s major newspaper, whose Jan. 1, 1993 headline read, “Hindus must be aggressive now.” Shiv Sena leaders took to the streets to lead retaliatory riots with fellow Hindus, and soon radical violence engulfed the entire city. The war for Mumbai that had been started and stoked by fanatics like Thackeray culminated in a horrific series of bombings by a Muslim terrorist organization that killed 250 and injured 700. At the end of it all, the Srikrishna Commission officially blamed the Shiv Sena for inciting violence against Muslims. The recommendations of the inquiry, however, were not implemented by the ruling party of the state — the Shiv Sena.

Thackeray’s résumé of moral and legal violations is extensive, and it should be clear that his death, not his life, was a blessing. To the disgust of any level-headed individual, though, it appears the Indian government will carry on his agenda. In the aftermath of his death, Shaheen Dhada, 21, posted a Facebook status saying, “People like Thackeray are born, and die daily and one should not observe a bandh [city-wide shutdown] for that.” Her friend, Reenu Srinivasan, liked the status. Both girls have been arrested by the Indian government for, ironically, “outraging religious feelings of any class” and “statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes.” The girls, whose criminal misdoings were initially reported to the police by a Shiv Sena leader, were remanded to judicial custody for 14 days during which a group of Shiv Sainiks attacked Dhada’s uncle and ransacked his orthopedic clinic.

In his emotional reflection on Thackeray’s life, journalist Javed Iqbal wrote, “Indian democracy becomes a long, hard, impossible journey towards human justice, any kind of it.” For all its claims as a secular democracy in a region otherwise dominated by religion-led totalitarianism, India is doing an atrociously poor job of standing out. Its political system is notoriously corrupt, but for every public figure and politician to genuinely and publicly mourn the loss of a man whose Inflammatory Comment Hall of Fame includes such gems as “I am a great admirer of Hitler. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle” and “[Muslims] are spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer” is a failure that stretches beyond mere dirty politics. It is an acceptance of a poisonous status quo, one that has killed thousands of innocent people, perpetuates hatred and xenophobia and renders farcical the sideshow that is Indian democracy. I am half-Marathi by lineage and proud to be so. But when I see pictures of Shiv Sena leaders and hear excerpts of their rhetoric, it sickens me that my people are associated with ignorant thugs who revered a deceptive racist. And when I witness the ubiquitous tolerance of this anti-democratic venom by the government while two girls sit in jail and their families are terrorized, I am not proud to be Indian.

Sameer Jaywant is a staff columnist. Email him at [email protected].