‘‘The tiger is wounded.’’Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray brandished a sword, offered to find Rahul Gandhi an Indian wife, and repeated — almost as often as he lectured and warned non-Maharashtrians — that the party cannot be written off.‘‘The tiger is wounded but not dead. A wounded tiger always springs back. I may be in a cage but don’t dare to tease me.’’ Thackeray began and ended his annual Dassera address — standing straight through the hour and referring to notes — with the assertion (pointedly to the media) that the Sena survives despite its debacle at the Assembly polls.‘‘If some of my rallies had not been cancelled due to ill-health, we would have won 10 more seats.’’It was only after expressing that brief regret to cadres and an attentive ‘‘Hindu’’ audience at the Maharashtrian heartland of Dadar that Thackeray moved on to Maharashtra-for-Marathis — exactly what partymen waited to hear, to repeat in future campaigns to reassert the Sena’s grip over the state.Thackeray said he was not against all migrants.‘‘Those who migrated here before 1995 are Maharashtrians, except for Bangladeshi Muslims. Those who have lived here for 40-45 years should not call themselves migrants,’’ he said.The aggression was softened, but only barely.He warned that the Sena would expect pre-1995 migrants to also blend into the ‘‘culture of Mumbai’’ and not trouble sons-of-the-soil with hate campaigns.‘‘Hindus don’t fight between themselves,’’ he cautioned. ‘‘The Sena will not tolerate it.’’The Sena’s aggressive stand against the settlement of migrants into Mumbai and the state is now under heavy analysis as a prime cause of alienating voters — markedly in Mumbai — and reducing its tally in this Assembly election.To effectively clarify that he’s not against all non-Maharashtrians, he brought along notes — names of non-Maharashtrian Rajya Sabha members nominated by the Sena — like Chandrika Kenia, Ram Jethmalani, Sanjay Nirupam and Pritish Nandy.‘‘Is there a Marathi mantri in Uttar Pradesh or Laloo’s Bihar?’’ he asked, with a repeated reminder, that for the Shiv Sena, ‘‘Maharashtra is a Marathi state.’’On the Sena’s violent attack on Bihar migrants at suburban Kalyan station during a railway recruitment drive, Thackeray said Sena activists became aggressive that day because advertisements were allegedly printed in UP and Bihar but not in Marathi newspapers.‘‘There were so many migrants at Kalyan, daily commuters could not get into trains. That’s when Sainiks decided to intervene.’’Unlike his rival Congress-NCP alliance still squabbling over the chief minister’s post, he maintained early in the speech that there is no infighting within the Sena.‘‘So what if somebody wants to be CM?’’ he said, with son Uddhav and nephew Raj sharing the stage. ‘‘I will decide, the public will decide.’’His speech took a dig at the Gandhi family again. ‘‘How can a man who loves a foreign girl love his nation?’’ Bal Thackeray’s speech dragged Rahul Gandhi into his regular digs at Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. ‘‘Rahul will marry a foreign girl.like another Sonia.We can find him a wife if he finds it so difficult.’’
