Sena learns to go to battle without her street fighters

Months after Chhagan Bhujbal was appointed as the opposition leader in the upper house by Congress, a murderous gang of Sainiks descended on his official hut near Mantralaya and destroyed everything they could find as they searched for him. Years later, Bhujbal told an interviewer that he would have been lynched if he had not been hiding in a bathroom. His crime was a speech delivered in the legislative council attacking the Seine and its government led by Manohar Joshi.

That was in July 1996. Bal Thackeray was alive. And this was the only way Shiv Sainiks knew how to deal with an attack, political or otherwise.

Today, while another prime minister of the Seine, this time a Thackeray, is under relentless attack from the former party partner, the BJP, there has been no backlash from Sainiks. The only aberration: the beating of a former naval officer who had sent a cartoon satirizing Uddhav Thackeray in a WhatsApp group, it was just that, an aberration.

The attackers did not have the sanction of the top leadership and were following the orders of a shakha pramukh acting outside their league.

But the Seine is fighting back. It is fighting back in the mold of its new leader who has worked very hard to reshape the party’s bully image into that of a progressive and inclusive development-focused organization. So the fight is not fist fighting, it is not naked aggression. It is not the Sainiks who stand up to their detractors. It is the Seine, a party in power, fighting back.

Over the past two weeks, the party’s TI Cell has brought cases against those who defame the CM or his son, Tourism and Environment Minister Aditya Thackeray; the police arrested television journalists who allegedly tried to break into the Thackeray family’s country house in Raigad; motions for breach of privilege have been filed against editors of strident television channels; a BMC demolition squad (BMC is controlled by Sena) demolished alleged illegal buildings at actor Kangana Ranaut’s office after he compared Mumbai to Pakistani-occupied Kashmir; a Mumbai police team detained a man in Calcutta for threatening Seine spokesman Sanjay Raut; a union of cable operators controlled by the Seine seeks the blackout of a television channel whose editor and presenter challenged Raut to confront it in an interview; and an old architect suicide in which this television editor is accused.

That is Shiv Sena’s new fight. The only old offensive tool being used in this fight is the Saamna party newspaper, which shouted ‘ukhad diya’ in jubilation when the JCB smashed into Kangana’s office.

But this is a great test of the old versus the new. The BJP, still pained at being denied a second term in Mantralaya, has been relentless. What has hurt Sena the most are his attempts to link Aaditya to the actor Sushant Singh RajputDeath by suicide. Stories are spreading that Aaditya is spending time partying with Bollywood.

Devendra Fadnavis

In ways reminiscent of the BJP’s ‘pappu’ campaign that caricatures Rahul Gandhi, Aaditya is being called a ‘baby penguin’. The reference is to Aaditya’s pet project of bringing penguins to the Byculla Zoo, but the goal is to paint it as an ‘indulgent, titled’ dynasty that is more interested in ‘nightlife’ than any meaningful social and political work.

The attack, among others, is being led by BJP MLA Nitesh Rane. After the High Court allowed the Bihar police to take over Sushant Singh Rajput’s case, Rane tweeted: ‘Ab baby penguin toh giyo !!! It’s SHOWTIME! ”. On August 11, he tweeted again: “Wouldn’t it be fair if the Maharashtra cabinet minister who was appointed to the supreme court today resigned for a fair trial in the SSR case? Or are the rules different here?

The only other time that Shiv Sena suffered such an intense attack was during the murder trial of Ramesh Kini in the mid-1990s. In July 1996, just one year after the first Shiv Sena-BJP Government When he came to power in the state, the body of Ramesh Kini, a Dadar resident, was found in a movie theater in Pune. His wife Sheila accused Raj Thackeray, who was then the second in command after Bal Thackeray in the party, of conspiring with the owner of the building, where the Kini family had an apartment, to have her husband killed.

The case was addressed first by the academic and social activist Pushpa Bhave and then by Bhujbal. Although the CBI authorized Raj, her political career suffered, giving Uddhav a chance for promotion.

Member of Rajya Sabha and Sanjay Raut, spokesperson for the Seine He said the Sena workers have shown exemplary restraint after Uddhav’s swearing-in as CM. “There is no shortage of aggression in the Seine. But when you are in power, there are certain limitations. Maharashtra is a state where the rule of law exists and will continue to do so. The Shiv Sena is committed to ensuring the rule of law. The opposition is testing our patience. But we will not let them provoke us, ”he said, adding that the fight will be political, legal and ideological.

“We do not file complaints against anyone or everyone. We have filed complaints against those who are repeatedly selling fake news, hate speech and transformed photos of the CM. The police have registered FIRs that show that our complaints were well founded, ”said Varun Sardesai, a Yuva Sena official.

If Bal Thackeray is watching from his perch over the September monsoon skies, one can be sure he doesn’t approve of the Seine’s soft focus. But back in the day when his Sainiks routinely looted the offices of newspapers and television channels, this animal called social media did not exist. Furthermore, in those days no Thackeray occupied an office in Mantralaya. Today, two do.