Before the law against rape was reformed, complaints of rape were regarded sceptically if no one had heard the victim scream. The Congress-led Democratic Front government in Maharashtra has invoked a similar principle in arguing that the since the Marathi-speaking men who beat to death Dharamdev Rai, the migrant worker from Uttar Pradesh, were not shouting slogans in support of any Marathi outfit or leader, this last killing may not have been a hate crime. The state government’s prevarication is as much to be condemned as the wave of anti-north Indian sentiment that has been fired by Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. The shooting down of Rahul Raj by the police, following hard upon the unexplained death of Pawan Mahto on the day candidates for the railway board examination from outside Maharashtra were chased away by MNS thugs, has by now established an alarming enough pattern of bloodshed and hatred for the state government to act rather than just talk of action.

The significance of what is happening in Maharashtra, with its reflections in Bihar can be gauged by the fact that the most powerful leaders from the latter state, across political parties and rivalries, met the prime minister to talk about the situation. Ethnic or linguistic violence is not unknown in India, but it has been associated largely with less cosmopolitan cultures than that in Mumbai. The ethno-linguistic chauvinism that Mr Raj Thackeray is using as the basis of the MNS’s regionalism threatens the very basis of the federal structure of the republic. To demonstrate that Maharashtrians hold the better jobs and the migrants the menial ones is to fall into the trap of the MNS, and its parent, the Shiv Sena. It is an Indian’s constitutional right to move and work wherever in the country he wishes; no one can stop him. If the state government is serious about its promised action, it will have to think of ways to address the politics of hatred while also cracking down on each incident of violence against migrants. What is most frightening, perhaps, is the possibility that all politics in India is now being driven by the lure of votes through division. The same cynicism may be driving Mr Raj Thackeray and his opponents. Certainly the state government’s apparent inability to do enough suggests that in a divided state, there will be two sides to take the pickings.