India, Aug. 30 -- Like a messiah to the Maratha morcha activists, Manoj Jarange-Patil stormed Mumbai with 40,000 supporters, bringing parts of the country's commercial capital to a near standstill from Thursday night. It was a calculated show of strength, a preview of the political muscle he can flex.

Chanting loudly, they arrived via both road and rail. They flooded local trains, choked arterial roads along the eastern flank of the island city, turned the Eastern Freeway into a giant parking lot, and transformed Mumbai's largest railway terminus, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT), into a colossal waiting room. Their eventual destination on Friday was Azad Maidan, where Jarange-Patil launched his indefinite hunger strike. ...