Moral Policing As ItRolls Out Elsewhere

June 2004: Shiv Sena activists attack Mumbai cinema halls screening Girlfriend, a Bollywood film on a lesbian relationship

August 2005: Maharashtra government bans women dancers from dance bars

September 2005: Anna University, Chennai, bans women from wearing jeans, T-shirts and tight-fitting outfits

September 2005: Controversy in Tamil Nadu after actress Khushboo said that pre-marital sex was fine provided girls practised safe sex. Dalit Panthers of India and Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) activists spearhead the campaign against her.

November 2005: Rajasthan police issue a guidebook for tourists on their take on indecent behaviour after a newly-married couple kiss in public

December 2005: The police in Meerut, UP, launch Operation Romeo against obscenity. But couples dating in a public park were targeted.

May 2006: Protests by the Hindutva brigade in Gujarat against Aamir Khan after the actor demands rehabilitation for the Narmada dam displaced. Multiplexes in the state refuse to screen his film, Fanaa.

May 2007: Chandramohan, a student artist at MS University, Baroda, assaulted by Hindutva activists and arrested by the police for "offending" religious sentiments in his painting

April 2007: The Sindhi community in Bhopal issues edict asking girls to stay away from Muslim boys after Priyanka Wadhwani’s wedding to Mohammed Umer

August 2007: Writer Taslima Nasreen is attacked in Hyderabad by an unruly Muslim crowd including three MLAs of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen

June 2008: Loksatta editor Kumar Ketkar's home attacked by activists of Shiv Sangram for questioning the decision to build a 309-ft tall statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea off Marine Drive

January 2009: Raj Thackeray's MNS activists turn violent in Mumbai university for making Marathi an elective subject in social science courses. Party activists also attacked a Bhojpuri cinema hall in Nashik on Republic Day.