If politics is all about perception and setting the agenda, Maharashtra Navanirman Sena (MNS) chief Swararaj aka Raj Thackeray has managed to master this skill.
After the 1,900-odd Jet Airways employees were sacked recently, they could only think of Raj as their saviour, which tells the story about the growing clout of this breakaway scion of the Thackeray clan in Mumbai.
Raj is now eyeing the position made famous by his estranged uncle and Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray who enjoyed the dubious distinction of being a politician who could bring Mumbai to a halt by raising a finger.
Raj has modelled himself on his uncle. Arguably not as talented a cartoonist as his uncle but a cartoonist nevertheless, Raj has the other quality Balasaheb had: He plays by his instinct. His cousin Uddhav, named heir to the Sena political fortune by Balasaheb which was reinforced at the Vijaya Dashami rally of the Shiv Sena this year, likes to plan his moves in advance.
Raj is a hate object of Left liberals, Hindu nationalists and north Indian leaders like Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh. But the more they attack him, the more Maharashtrian support rallies behind him. The Maharashtrian middle class and lower middle class may not agree with his methods but they feel issues raised by Raj are valid.
Thackeray was arrested and put behind bars and tied up in a series of offences all over the state. But politicians from the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) realise they cannot be seen to be acting against the interests of Maharashtra or the Maharashtrian cause. Heavyweights like Sharad Pawar and Revenue Minister Narayan Rane, therefore, vary of being openly critical of Raj’s political position.
In fact, Pawar went so far as to reject Railway Minister and his Cabinet colleague Lalu Prasad’s call to ban the MNS. His suggestion instead was that the posts of class III and IV employees, not just in Indian Railways but other state-run entities, be filled from among the local workforce. Rane came out in open support of Raj asserting that there was nothing wrong with the issues raised by the MNS chief, it was his methods that could be wrong.
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In this entire “north Indians go back” episode, it is ironic that the Shiv Sena, the original champion of the ‘sons of the soil’ cause, has been feeling sidelined. Sena leaders complain in private that Raj is nothing but a creation of the 24x7 electronic media and the go-soft directive to the police machinery from the Congress-NCP leadership. They could be right.
Raj had been reduced to the margins of political circle in Maharashtra after last year’s municipal elections. The MNS’s political activity was restricted to promoting Maharashtrian culture through culinary shows, book exhibitions and poetry reciting sessions.
Sena leaders may not like to admit but unwittingly they provided an issue for the MNS to revive itself. With an eye on next year’s Assembly polls, Sena was trying to be cosy with the large north Indian vote bank in the city using the Holi festival as a pretext.
Then Raj Thackeray’s anti-north Indian remarks at a culinary show, the smashing of a few taxis and television cameras gave a new lease of life to the MNS.
The Congress-NCP government, which is fighting nine years of anti-incumbency and has taken a beating on issues like power crisis, farmer suicides and the crumbling urban infrastructure, is against the ropes. Initially, the alliance felt Raj would be a good weapon to cut into the Sena’s vote bank in Mumbai and other urban areas.
However, the Shiv Sena’s clout in the rural areas is increasing as it has aggressively campaigned on issues like farmer suicides, loan waiver and 12 hour-power cuts in rural Maharashtra.
But now the genie refuses to go back into the bottle. In the late 1960s and 1970s, it was the Sena that the Congress used as a weapon to combat Communist and Socialist-led unions in Mumbai. Transgressions of the Sena during that period were ignored and this nurtured it to become a political force. Raj Thackeray and the MNS are the 1960s and 1970s revisited.