Shiv Sena forgot to count itself in when it accused actors Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan of idiocy over the Indian Premier League (IPL) controversy. While idiocy is not a crime, though, vandalism certainly is. So, while you may disagree with Shah Rukh Khan's duplicitous show of support to the Pakistani cricketers, you can only deride the Shiv Sena's reaction as downright unpardonable.

Why, in Lord Shiva's name, do we have to repeatedly suffer this politically frustrated and socially disruptive outfit's brazen mockery of the law? The state government, with the entire machinery of law enforcement at its command, has much to answer for on this count.

Shah Rukh Khan, as argued earlier (http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/just-because-his-name-khan), first ignored the Pakistani cricketers in the fray and then later said he found their boycott humiliating. Shiv Sena's raucous reaction, and the inevitable backlash, has however effectively let Khan off the hook. Thanks to such poor politics, Shiv Sena can no longer claim even a single member of Parliament from Mumbai, and has just 11 of the 48 members of Parliament from the entire state of Maharashtra. The mandate robs the state government's failure to rein in the Sena activists of any political excuse either.

Of course, Shiv Sena's problems are more deep-seated than any ideological allegiance to regional chauvinism. This, as nobody can easily forget, is the same party that had lost its voice for several days when a handful of terrorists lay siege to Mumbai on November 26, 2008. That was a time when Gajendra Singh Bisht and other, mostly non-Marathi commandos valiantly battled Pakistani terrorists for hours.

Shiv Sena, along with its younger avatar, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, is most welcome to slide to political irrelevance, but so long as it disguises itself as a political party it should not be allowed to behave like a bunch of hooligans.