India, July 8 -- In the latest chapter of the 'Marathi pride' saga unfolding in Maharashtra over the past two months, the streets of Thane on Tuesday saw angry men and women raising slogans and being picked up or pushed into buses by cops.

These were workers of Raj Thackeray's MNS and Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT), newly patched-up after two decades, who wanted to hold a march against the local traders. These traders had held a march, too, last week after MNS workers beat up some of them who could not speak in Marathi.

Police did not allow the march-versus-march, saying that the MNS and UBT protesters refused to follow a designated route.

But they went ahead anyway, preferring to be loaded onto buses in a dramatic fashion than hee...