1984 Bhiwandi riot

The 1984 Bhiwandi riot was a Hindu-Muslim riot that occurred in May 1984 in and around Bhiwandi town in Indian state of Maharashtra. It left 146 people dead and over 600 injured. On 17 May 1984, riots broke out in industrial belt from Bombay, Thane, and Bhiwandi. In all, 278 were killed and 1,118 were wounded. The Shiv Sena's increasingly harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric and radical tactics, which emerged from 1984, were directly related to these riots. In April 1984, at Chowpatty Beach in Bombay, Bal Thackeray delivered an anti-Muslim speech in which he repeatedly employed the offensive term landya and called Muslims "a cancer on this country", stating:

Its only cure is operation.... Oh, Hindus, take weapons in your hands and remove this cancer from its very roots.