A political storm has erupted in Maharashtra after state minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashish Shelar claimed that Hindi-speaking workers were beaten in Mumbai and likened the incident to the July 2 Pahalgam terrorist attack in Jammu & Kashmir. Shelar said he was “in grief” over both events, drawing a direct parallel that opponents called inflammatory. Shiv Sena (UBT) and other opposition parties condemned the comparison. Party spokesperson Anand Dubey urged the state’s health minister to examine Shelar’s remarks, while MP Sanjay Raut argued that equating Marathi speakers with terrorists was an insult to the state’s culture. Former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray told reporters that his party is “not against Hindi” but will resist any attempt to impose it, accusing the BJP of trying to divide voters along linguistic lines. The dispute escalated when BJP MP Nishikant Dubey warned Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray that people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh would “beat you repeatedly” if provoked, prompting rebukes from NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar, Congress leaders and even fellow BJP MLA Sanjay Upadhyay, who urged all sides to avoid rhetoric that fuels bitterness between languages. The flare-up comes only weeks after the Devendra Fadnavis-led government reversed an April order that would have made Hindi a compulsory third language in primary schools. The rollback, celebrated jointly by estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, has revived the decades-old debate over Marathi pride and Hindi “imposition”, underscoring how language politics remain a potent electoral issue in India’s wealthiest state.