Yesterday, a rally held to thank people for the successful implemetation of the odd-even traffic formula in Delhi turned sour after a protester threw ink at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. It wasn't the first time Kejriwal had been attacked with ink, nor is he the only Indian political figure to be inked.
There have been a series of ink attacks on Indian politicians in the last few years, sometimes as a form of protest and sometimes as a tool of political intimidation.
For instance, Kejriwal faced a couple of ink attacks before he became the chief minister. He had ink thrown at him in 2013, and then again in 2014, when he was attacked with eggs and ink by a member of the right-wing organisation Hindu Vahini Sena while campaigning for the Lok Sabha general elections in Varanasi.
Last October, politician and writer Sudheendra Kulkarni had black paint thrown at him by members of the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena for organising the book launch of former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasturi. The attack was widely criticised and Kulkarni went ahead with the book launch and the press conference with his blackened face.
A week later, Rashid Engineer, an independent legislator from Jammu and Kashmir, was attacked by a right-wing group called the Hindu Sena for hosting a beef party at a MLA hostel in Srinagar.
In 2014, Kejriwal's former Aam Aadmi Party colleague and academic Yogendra Yadav was smeared with ink while addressing a Women's Day event in Delhi. In the same year, a lawyer threw ink at businessmen Subroto Roy, currently under arrest for money laundering, accusing him of stealing money from the poor. In 2012, a man threw ink at spiritual leader Baba Ramdev during a press conference.
Numerous Indian politicians have also had shoes thrown at them by protesters in the last few years, including former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, former Indian home minister P. Chidambaram and Bharatiya Janata Party leader LK Advani.