Mumbai/IBNS: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty Kundra has sidestepped the ongoing Hindi-Marathi row in Maharashtra by calling herself "daughter" of the state.

Speaking at the teaser launch event of her upcoming KD- The Devil, Shilpa said, "I can speak Marathi. I am a daughter of Maharashtra.

"We are here to talk about KD so we won't deviate and indulge into controversy. This picture is already a multilingual one. We can even dub in Marathi."

The language row escalated after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers went aggressive and assaulted a shopkeeper for not speaking in Marathi.

In a video which went viral on social media, some of the workers- identified as belonging to Raj Thackeray's MNS- were seen thrashing the 48-year-old shopkeeper, named Babulal Khimji Chaudhary, who struggled to respond to the onslaughts.

Reportedly, the workers questioned the shopkeeper over not speaking in Marathi. The shopkeeper tried to explain that he didn't know Marathi was compulsory and also he lacked knowledge in the language.

When the MNS workers asked the shopkeeper which state he was working in, the shopkeeper responded, "Maharashtra".

When the protesters asked about the language spoken in Maharashtra, the shopkeeper said, "All languages are spoken here."

The workers got angry at the shopkeeper's response and started slapping him one by one.

One of the men who slapped the shopkeeper defended their actions saying "it was his attitude that led us to slap him".

Speaking to NDTV, MNS worker Amol Patil said, "If he had spoken to us properly, he would not have been slapped. It was his attitude that led us to slap him. Of course we know many people don't know Marathi. But there is a decent way of replying when asked."

"Had he (shopkeeper) said, 'I will learn Marathi, maybe one of you can teach me', we would have been glad to help. It is all about how they behave with us when we ask them if they speak Marathi."