The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP)'s daylong shutdown on Monday in support of Hindu pontiff Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswathi had mixed impact across the nation, ranging from forced blockades to plain indifference.
No incidents were reported in Tamil Nadu, where a court declined to extend the police custody of Shankaracharya of the Kanchipuram mutt, arrested on November 11 in connection with the murder of a former employee of the monastery.
Even as there were no visible effects of the VHP's strike call in the state, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president LK Advani arrived in the Tamil Nadu capital Chennai.
"There should be strong protests against the Shankaracharya's arrest as it has hurt us all," said Advani, who initiated the BJP's three-day relay hunger strike in New Delhi by observing a fast on Saturday.
Upon his arrival at Kanchipuram, Advani said Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha had behaved with the pontiff worse than the pre-independence British regime.
Response to the strike was poor in Maharashtra and Bihar, mixed in Gujarat, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, the Jammu region and Andhra Pradesh, and severe in Jharkhand and Orissa.
In Andhra Pradesh, the shutdown was partial in Hyderabad and other major towns. Shops and business establishments in a few business centres of Hyderabad were closed. It had no impact on the transport and other government services.
The response in Gujarat was lukewarm, which was unusual given the influence that VHP enjoys in the state.
Shops and commercial establishments were open and traffic on the roads appeared to be normal. Schools and colleges were closed but only because of the annual post-Diwali vacation.
In a desperate bid to raise the pitch, protestors threw stones at two state-run buses in Vadodara. VHP activists were detained in the communally sensitive Godhra town.
In Orissa, several cities were reportedly paralysed by the shutdown. In Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, buses went off the roads.
BJP leader Jual Oram and VHP leader Biswambharanath Mishra were among those detained in Rourkela while protesting.
Workers of the BJP, VHP and Bajrang Dal were detained while they were trying to disrupt trains and buses.
The BJP's ruling partner in Orissa, Biju Janata Dal (BJD), distanced itself from the strike, refusing to be drawn into the "politics of religion".
In Jharkhand, VHP veteran Pravin Togadia drove through different parts of Ranchi waving to activists of the VHP and the BJP who damaged government and private property as they went about enforcing the shutdown.
Shops and schools in Jharkhand were closed, and attendance in government offices was poor.
"Italian religion will not be acceptable to us. Release the Kanchi seer!" shouted some of them. The first comment was apparently aimed at Italy-born Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
In New Delhi, the shutdown call had little impact with protests confined to small pockets.
A group of Hindu leaders dressed in shades of saffron called on President A P J Abdul Kalam to present to him a memorandum and seek his intervention in securing the pontiff's immediate release.
The BJP's three-day sit-in, held in the middle of a busy New Delhi road earmarked for demonstrations, was the most visible sign of protest on the issue.
Over 80 VHP activists were arrested in Chandigarh even as the strike evoked a mixed response in Punjab and Haryana.
VHP workers clashed with the Chandigarh Police while trying to force commercial establishments to down shutters.