Opinion Uddhav & Raj bury hatchet but can they refresh Brand Thackeray for future?
Neither of them is a Bal Thackeray who would have taken the opportunity to galvanise the state. However, Raj and Uddhav can take a cue from M K Stalin or Mamata Banerjee on how to make regionalism more appealing in order to counter the BJP’s religionism
This gives the Thackeray cousins an opportunity to prove their political mettle. Neither of them is a Bal Thackeray who would have taken the opportunity to galvanise the state. The political landscape in India today is broadly divided into two sections. In the first section are those parties that, at some point, were associated with the BJP and were later stung and suffered at its hands. The others are those trying to avoid being swallowed up and swamped by the BJP. The Thackeray cousins are attempting to migrate from the former to the latter.
Estranged till recently, Uddhav Thackeray, head of a truncated Shiv Sena, and his cousin Raj, whose perceived importance has often outstripped his actual political strength, have decided to join hands for the forthcoming municipal corporation elections, including in the coveted Mumbai region. Beaten by the BJP, the two wish to turn the tables on the saffron samrat whose blessing both were jostling for not so long ago. With the announcement of the alliance, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) have buried two decades of animosity.
Raj, once considered heir apparent to his charismatic uncle Bal Thackeray, set up his own outfit, the MNS, when the Shiv Sena patriarch chose his son Uddhav to lead the party. In March 2026, the MNS will enter its 21st year. Having survived two decades, during which Raj’s political pendulum swung from being a staunch supporter of the BJP to becoming one of its harshest critics, the MNS has witnessed a massive erosion of its support base. On the other hand, the Shiv Sena, led by Uddhav Thackeray, was in a state of happy coexistence with the BJP for three-and-a-half decades before it decided to embrace the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party and Congress to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) that robbed Devendra Fadnavis of a second stint as Chief Minister in the 2019 assembly elections.
The BJP, as part of its larger game plan, first outflanked the Shiv Sena on the Hindutva agenda and later robbed the latter of its “Marathi” plank. Way back in December 1987, long before the BJP’s Lal Krishna Advani undertook the nation-wide rath yatra for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya, it was Bal Thackeray who made Hindutva an election issue in a by-election in a Mumbai suburb. Bal Thackeray, while campaigning for Ramesh Prabhu, sought votes on communal lines, for which he was later disfranchised for six years by the courts and the Election Commission.
A little before this, the late Pramod Mahajan had successfully forged an alliance with the Thackeray-led Sena to oust Congress from the BMC. Later, Advani’s yatra and the subsequent Ayodhya agitation only strengthened the bond between the two. All was well when it was going well. However, post 2019, Uddhav’s escapades with Congress-NCP angered the BJP, which taught him a lesson by engineering defections in the Shiv Sena and taking away Uddhav’s right-hand man and the party’s most resourceful person, Eknath Shinde. With Bal Thackeray no more, Shinde’s defection was a double blow to Uddhav. Along with the chief ministership, he was to realise that an extended alliance with the BJP had taken away the Shiv Sena’s “Marathi” plank. When it was with the BJP, the Uddhav-led Shiv Sena enjoyed power and quietly sidestepped, if not buried, its Marathi agenda. The BJP’s shock treatment compelled it to go back to its roots.
On the other hand, the BJP hobnobbed with the MNS but stopped short of a formal alliance. While the BJP initially saw in the MNS an alternative to the Shiv Sena, Raj Thackeray’s anti-migrant (read: Anti-Hindi) stance prevented it from bringing him into the fold. Once it successfully split the Shiv Sena, the BJP no longer needed either of the Thackeray brothers.
This explains why the Thackeray brothers were compelled to bury their two-decades-old hatchet and join hands to challenge the BJP’s hegemony. Though much has changed in the last three decades — most significantly, Mumbai’s demography — there certainly is a section, though weak and small as of now, that supports the Thackeray cousins. And this is not the only reason they garner sympathy.
The BJP is seen as making various states its “vassals” and revealing an apparently anti-federal facet to its politics. This is the reason the BJP had to make a hasty retreat and stay the state government’s decision to introduce Hindi at the pre-primary level in schools. The first person to challenge the Fadnavis government on the issue was Raj Thackeray, who received active support from Uddhav. The state’s ill-timed decision on Hindi helped the Thackeray cousins revive and polish their original plank, that of the “Marathi Manoos”.
This newfound bonhomie, however, raises some questions: Is it too late for them to pose any challenge to the BJP? Is the issue of Marathi pride still relevant? And, most importantly, can it stoke the embers and create political fire?
The answers will lie in the cousins’ ability to widen their appeal and convert the issue into a regionalism versus religion battle, since the BJP is set to play — yet again — its minority-majority card. A senior BJP leader recently raised the bogey of Mumbai getting a mayor from the minority community if voters didn’t support the party. In its desperation to bag the BMC, the BJP seems to have forgotten that J Boman Behram, Mumbai’s first mayor way back in 1931, was from the minority community. Since then, the city has been led by 22 mayors who weren’t from the majority. This is the virtue of the country’s first megalopolis, which the BJP is trying to portray as its vice. The communal pitch will become only more shrill as election fever is heightened.
This gives the Thackeray cousins an opportunity to prove their political mettle. Neither of them is a Bal Thackeray who would have taken the opportunity to galvanise the state. However, Raj and Uddhav can take a cue from M K Stalin or Mamata Banerjee on how to make regionalism more appealing in order to counter the BJP’s religionism. This battle will also determine the longevity of Brand Thackeray.
The writer is editor, Loksatta
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