‘Mumbai being handed over to Gujarat’: Why Raj, Uddhav Thackeray have fallen back on an old faultline ahead of BMC polls

His cousin and Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray expressed this concern in an interview to The Indian Express last week, linking it to the BJP’s attempts to break the Sena. “After Balasaheb (Thackeray, his father) passed away in 2012, the BJP’s top leadership, largely Gujarati, wanted to stake a claim on Mumbai.” He, however, added that Gujaratis living in the city for generations had nothing to do with this sort of politics.

BJP hits back

The BJP responded with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis labelling the remarks a “fake narrative” that the cousins had come up with for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls in the absence of an issue. “In Mumbai, there is no such divide based on communities. Nobody can undermine Mumbai’s significance nor break it from Maharashtra,” the CM said on Monday.

Targeting Uddhav, BJP insiders said in the 2014 and 2019 elections, the undivided Sena led by him had organised events to reach out to Gujaratis in the city, putting up posters that read, “Jalebi fafda, Thackeray aapda (Jalebi and fafda, Thackeray is ours).” The fafda is a popular Gujarati snack.

State BJP president Ravindra Chavan said the Thackerays were uneasy about the fact that the BJP had expanded in the state and in Mumbai had found acceptance among Marathis, the traditional vote bank of the Sena (UTB) and the MNS. “Whether it is Gujaratis, Marathis, or North Indians, everyone has voted for the BJP.”

“Where is the divide between Marathi and Gujarati in Mumbai?” asked senior BJP MLA Parag Alavani. “When the undivided Shiv Sena was in alliance with the BJP for the last three decades, the Gujarati-Marathi divide was never raised by Thackerays.”

Dismissing the criticism, Sena (UBT) leader Harshal Pradhan reiterated his party objected to the BJP leadership — Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah are from Gujarat — ”trying to exploit Mumbai through industrialists”.

Language and politics

This fear that Mumbai could slip out of Maharashtra’s control has long been part of the political language of the Shiv Sena and parties that emerged from it, such as the MNS.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as demands for states based on language gained momentum across the country, Marathi speakers sought a united Maharashtra. Bombay, as the city was known at the time, stood at the centre of this churn. Control over it meant access to wealth, trade and political influence.

A powerful group of businessmen, professionals and industrialists came together under the banner of the Bombay Citizens Committee. Led by cotton magnate Sir Purushottamdas Thakurdas and backed by figures such as J R D Tata, the committee had one clear demand: Bombay should not become part of Maharashtra. The majority of BCC members were Gujarati-speaking businessmen.

Their argument rested on three main points: that Bombay was a multilingual and cosmopolitan city where Marathi speakers were not an absolute majority; the city as the country’s economic lifeline was too important to be controlled by one linguistic group; and third, Bombay was geographically and culturally distinct from the Marathi heartland.

Marathi counter and the final call

The Samyukta Maharashtra movement, which cut across party lines, castes and ideologies, opposed this view. Congress leaders, socialists, Communists, Jana Sangh members, and Dalit leaders all came together as part of it to demand a united Maharashtra with Bombay as its capital.

They argued that Bombay depended on Maharashtra for labour, water, and transport links, and the city was the centre of Marathi newspapers, publishing and cultural life. Separating the city from the state would permanently weaken Marathi political and economic power, argued the movement’s proponents.

The Jawaharlal Nehru government at the time was uneasy about linguistic states, fearing they would deepen regional divisions and weaken national unity. Violence had already broken out in 1955 in various parts of the state over this issue, in which several people died. A year later, in 1956, the States Reorganisation Commission proposed keeping Bombay in a bilingual state of Marathi and Gujarati speakers, while carving out Vidarbha as a separate Marathi state.

The recommendation sparked widespread anger. Political pressure mounted in Parliament and several Maharashtrian leaders, including Finance Minister C D Deshmukh, resigned from the Congress in protest. Despite attempts at compromise, including proposals to make Bombay a city-state or a Union Territory, the agitation continued.

By the late 1950s, it became clear that governing Bombay without addressing the Marathi sentiment was unsustainable. Political calculations also changed after the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti cut into the Congress’s votes in elections. On May 1, 1960, the Centre finally split the bilingual Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat, with Bombay becoming Maharashtra’s capital.

Tool for Thackerays

Though the Sena was formed in 1966, nearly six years later, party founder Bal Thackeray’s father Prabodhankar Thackeray played an important role in Samyukta Maharashtra, linking the movement with self-respect, social justice, and the Marathi identity through his speeches and writings.

The Sena repeatedly used the message of a threat to Mumbai from outsiders to tap into identity and economic anxieties, arguing that without strong Marathi political control, Mumbai and the people who built it could lose their place in the city. This approach brought political dividends in 1985, when political differences between Maharashtra Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil and Bombay Congress chief Murli Deora spilled into the open.

In an attempt to weaken Deora, Patil floated the idea that Mumbai could be brought under Central administration because it had become “too rich”. He followed it up with a remark that the Sena seized on: “Mumbai may be in Maharashtra, but I don’t see Maharashtra in Mumbai.”

The Sena turned the civic elections that year into a larger debate over Mumbai’s place within Maharashtra and its Marathi identity. The strategy paid off as the Sena won 74 of the 139 seats it contested and went on to control the BMC.

By raising the issue once again, the Thackeray brothers, trying to regain their footing, are hoping to use it to script their political revival.