Mumbai, November 29
Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has hit out at his nephew Raj Thackeray even as senior party leaders and colleagues from the BJP began negotiations to end the feud between the two.
In a hard-hitting editorial in party mouthpiece Saamna, Thackeray hit out at his nephew and his men for entertaining delusions of grandeur. “Those who live in the shadow of the Himalayas should not think that they are bigger than the mountain,” Mr Thackeray wrote.
Mr Bal Thackeray went onto warn his nephew’s men that the Shiv Sena was not anyone’s “personal property”. “The Shiv Sena is not my personal property. It belongs to the ordinary Shiv Sainiks, who toil for the party and the ordinary Maharashtrians,” Mr Thackeray said. He chided Raj’s men for misusing their energy to trash the car belonging to Saamna Executive Editor Sanjay Raut, which he felt could have been used in the recent bypoll at Malvan where the Shiv Sena was mauled.
Virtually branding the rebels as a gang of traitors, Mr Thackeray asked them to ponder about their political careers without the Shiv Sena. “Everyone who stabs the Sena in the back should ponder over where they would have been had it not been for the Sena,” Mr Thackeray said. However, Mr Thackeray refrained from making a direct attack on Raj, who was virtually his adopted son, till Uddhav appeared on the political scene in the 1990s.
The 79-year-old Thackeray couldn’t help likening the plight of the Shiv Sena to that of his idol, Maratha warrior Shivaji Maharaj, during his last days. “Even Shivaji Maharaj had been worried about the future of his kingdom in the face of warring relatives,” Mr Thackeray wrote.
Meanwhile, attempts were still on to bring about a truce in the Thackeray family. Senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari called on Raj Thackeray to help him thrash out an amicable settlement with cousin Uddhav Thackeray. Uddhav himself told reporters that he would speak to the media after reaching an agreement with his cousin.
