The Thackerays

Coming back to home on my bike late last night, my attention is caught by a big shiv sena banner with the picture of Uddhav Thackrey and It says “Pradarshan Navhe, Pragatiche Darshan” – Don’t Demonstrate, Let us progress.
Before that I could have completed my thoughts on this banner, There comes the second banner with another thackrey and this one reads “Let us gather for a demonstration ”.

Wow! I say. The dizziness which often seizes me, while driving back home late in the night, is now completely gone away from me. What makes these banners really intriguing to me is that one comes from the son of Bala Saheb who has been made legal heir of Thackeray legacy by Bala saheb himself but doesn’t sound like typical Thackeray at all. The other comes from who left Thackerays because he was not getting his due there and was in the quest of his own identity but sounds precisely the way Bala Saheb would have sounded in his heydays.

This is not the first incident which brought me to this conclusion. There are others indeed. In his last rally, Raj giving open challenge to Lalu Prasad yadav to do “chhat Puja” in mumbai, quoting selective Ambedkar’s writings from “Linguistic state and state founded on the basis of minorities” that “Ambedkar had warned against the high headedness of North Indians” and once again battering his favorites “The Bachhans”.

On the other side, Uddhav while addressing a public meeting on Sunday at Goregaon talks about promoting the entrepreneurial skills of maharashtrian youths by selling vada pavs and contemplates to tie up with famous vada pav retail chain “Jumbo King” of Maharashtra to produce more employment for locals.

These incidents give me the impression that one who has been handed over Bala Saheb’s legacy knows the demand of time and working towards what is needed to woo the people today while the other is still carrying that old age theory of Divide by religion, caste or region and rule.

I think this all started when Raj’s party MNS performed miserably in 2007 Bombay municipal corporation while Uddhav very intelligently marched his resources to get a considerable win for Shiv Sena BJP alliance. Raj got frustrated and started looking out for anything which will enable him to become true heir of Bala Saheb what he dreamt of when he left Shiv Sena.

So, what he chose, the easiest of the lot – spit the venom against North Indians in mumbai. So, he basically tried to emulate his idol to become the true leader of “Marathi Maanush”.

I get this feeling sometimes that he is in so much hurry that he doesn’t understand or may be he doesn’t want to understand that what he is doing will not do any good to his politics instead this will end up giving one more crack to this country’s integrity.
Gone are the days when people were fooled by politicians with their emotional and disintegrable speeches. To support this, when I tried to discover how my maraathi friends react to the way Raj is behaving. I won’t like to alter their responses being a non-marathi. They say and they say it very categorically that yes they are concerned by the influx of people in mumbai from other states but they don’t agree with Raj’s theory of resolving it. They would like to go for better way outs – making more job opportunities for local people in their own state or they would like to see centre taking some initiatives so that people earn their livelihood in their own state. After all, who wants to be away from their own places and called an alien and migrant in some other state.

Now, who is this fistful of people whom Raj is leading. They are following every slogan of him, every move of him and giving him all the fuel required on his self-destructive journey. This reminds me of Lalu ruling Bihar for almost twenty-five years. It was cast based gushy politics and people were simply fooled by this smart guy. Though pretty late, Bihar has learnt its lesson. Maharashtra being one of the most progressive and industrious state of modern india, I would expect Maharashtrian to react much more sharply and strongly to anything which is done with the sheer intention to grab the power or to become a bigger leader in size.

As always, It doesn’t matter how leaders are behaving, It is always the people who decide in a democratic country.

So, Back to Thackrayes, one seem to be playing cool and knows completely what “Maraathi Maanush” wants today. He is in balance between what his mentor and father expects from him and what the people of Maharashtra expects from him.
The other seem to be frustrated and just playing with the easiest idea available which is only going to weaken our country and If he thinks that this approach is going to make him a power-house leader, This country has changed drastically, the world is looking towards us in envy. So, The people of this country is making right decision more often than not and I belief they are not going to follow a leader who still believes in “Divide and rule”.