Raj Thackeray in a cleft stick — Hindutva or influx?

Are there stirrings of a new profile for the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)? If his recent public posturing is anything to go by, party chief Raj Thackeray is baiting two votebanks to see which one emerges a better bet.

After expressly steering clear of Hindutva, he is now testing it openly to see if it works. At the same time, he doesn’t want to give up his calling card, the anti-North Indian rhetoric, just in case the Hindutva bid doesn’t sell. So, he takes on a music show with Pakistani singers who have, incidentally, been in the city for years. At the same time, he continues to blame Biharis for the city’s ills.

Ever since MNS came into being, there were loud whispers of its Hindutva leanings. But while borrowing his issues generously from the Sena legacy – ‘Mumbai’ instead of ‘Bombay’, Marathi signboards and employment for sons of the soil — he did not touch the saffron plank till recently.

Insiders say Raj is not happy with the way his party has shaped up. He finds the calibre of his subordinates poor and his cadres ineffectual. He feels the Marathi card has played itself out and he needs a new platform. The party has crawled when he had willed it to pole-vault. Though there are Muslims among his cadre, many are suspicious of his antecedents and are staying out.

An MNS leader said Raj wanted to re-leverage his party before the civic polls by scuffing Hindutva but was dissuaded at the last minute by his advisors. He has finally attempted it as a possible solution to his political aspirations. He set the pitch with a layered performance at his August 21 rally. Unlike his previous public outings, which have been straight, even if not necessarily from his heart or even logical, most of his speech was fractured with contradictory fragments.

At one level, he was wooing the Sena vote bank by fuming about the Muslim rioters who got away with murder with their August 11 act. At another level, he was safekeeping his Muslim voters by telling them Hindutva was not on his mind, only Maharashtra was. For the benefit of news cameras, a few Muslim faces in the crowd were frontlined by his media managers. His double stroke confused the MNS ranks who are still not sure which way their leader is going.

Their doubts were confirmed by his subsequent sabre-rattling targeted at the Pakistanis in the city who have always been unwelcome for Hindutva supporters. Through this dual diatribe, Raj is actually seeking an answer for himself: Will Hindutva help or should he stick to taking potshots at North Indians?

As the MNS insider said, at the end of the day, Raj’s primary goal is to take over the Sena or upstage it, his perceived patch-up with cousin Uddhav notwithstanding. Till the first is not possible, he will keep trying the second in a thousand ways.

If his re-pitch works, he will plunge headlong into it. If it doesn’t, he has provided a safety valve for himself in the same speeches. He will step out, shrug those sentences away and slip on those which fit.

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