The Sena chief went on to add that artistes like Shabana Azmi should refrain from showing their private lives on the screen.

Tongue in cheek, perhaps, Thackeray said that the Sena was even ready to extend support to the film if names of the two protagonists Radha and Seeta were replaced with `Shabana' and `Saira'.

Taking objection to the setting of a Hindu household against which the film unfolds, he said people related to the cinema sometimes seemed to forget impact of the media on common man.

Meanwhile, Dilip Kumar refused to comment on the issue. A close friend of Kumar requesting anonymity said that among those who telephoned Dilip Kumar after the Sena demonstration yesterday were Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Congresspresident Sonia Gandhi and Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, who is also the State Home Minister.

The thespian is a co-petitioner with director of Fire Deepa Mehta, Mahesh Bhatt and other Bollywood personalities who have sought protection for screening of the film which was disrupted by Shiv Sainiks in Mumbai and New Delhi.

Rationalising his stand, Thackeray said ``as long as it was peaceful there can be nothing objectionable in that and if people can not tolerate party activists stripped down to their underwear, then how can you put up with scenes of nudity in the film.''

Asked if Dilip Kumar had contacted him or he had spoken to the veteran actor, Thackeray retorted ``I have not been in the mood to keep friendship with Dilip ever since he accepted the award Nishane-e-Pakistan''. ``Dilip Kumar was on top in the Indian film industry and could have been Nishan-e-Hindustan, where was the need for him to accept the award from Pakistan,'' the Sena chief asked.

Thackeray alsoclarified that the demonstration was absolutely spontaneous, not done at his directive. Later in a statement, Thackeray said his party would withdraw its agitation against the film if certain portions of it, including the scene where the Indians were abused, were deleted. On the lesbian theme of Fire, Thackeray said he objected to it as ``it is not our national culture and artistes like Shabana Azami should keep their private lives to themselves and not show it on the screen.''

In a poser, he said ``has lesbianism spread like an epidemic that it should be portrayed as a guideline to unhappy wives not to depend on their husbands and is this the meaning and message that should be given to spoil younger generations and those who have no idea about it ?''

Thackeray opined that the film Satya had been criticised for depiction of violence, but the movie had at least ended with the message that crime was bad and there was an end to it. On the contrary, Fire conveyed an altogether different meaning tosociety, he felt.

The Sena chief said he did not care how many international awards were bagged by Fire in the guise of an art film, but could Indian society tolerate ``so-called progressive culture of the West where they marry in the morning and take divorce in the evening.''

Support for Thackeray's line came form unexpected quarters when Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi defended the action of Shiv Sainiks by saying that anything could not be allowed to be shown in films in the name of freedom of expression. However, disagreeing with the Sena chief, Advani told newsmen in Gujarat ``there is no place for vandalism or indecency; peaceful demonstrations are part of democracy which can be understood. However, there is no place for violence or exhibition of human parts in it,'' he stressed.

Meanwhile, Janata Dal leader Ram Vilas Paswan, in a statement in New Delhi, strongly condemned the action of the Shiv Sainiks.

The of CPI(M) and Congress' Mumbai units havealso strongly condemned the demonstration. In a statement here today, Mahendra Singh, secretary of the city committee termed the agitation as ``obscene and intimadatory'' and said it was nothing but ``a crude attempt to terrorise artistes who had withstood the Sena's terror tactics.''