Mumbai: There are two political events in Mumbai where crowds do not have to be hired and trucked in to create a false show of strength: the death anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar on 6 December and the annual Dusshera rally addressed by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. These are the two days when loyalists come on their own in packed trains, alight at Dadar railway station and then walk another 15 minutes to reach the Shivaji Park area where the city’s big political rallies are traditionally held.
So old timers in Maharashtrian-dominated area took notice of the fact that this was happening all over again when Raj Thackeray held a political rally. It was an advance warning to other political parties that the leader of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had struck a chord with his growing band of supporters, even as his divisive political acts threatened Mumbai’s famed cosmopolitan culture and made him the man many love to hate.
Illustration: Jayachandran / Mint
There were similar reports from other urban centres in Maharashtra, of teeming crowds listening with rapt attention when Raj Thackeray spoke. “You could feel the electricity in the air during his campaign speeches,” said Avinash Gowariker, a photographer and close friend of Raj Thackeray, who went along for many of the rallies. “He has Balasaheb’s skills of oratory. But that’s not all. Raj did not go around making empty promises as most politicians do. It almost seemed as if he was shaking people out of their inertia. Every rally was like a wake-up call,” he added.
The results of the state assembly elections, out on Thursday, show that Raj Thackeray and his party have made huge inroads into the Shiv Sena’s voter base in cities such as Mumbai, Thane, Pune and Nashik. His party’s own tally is a modest 13 in a 288 seat state assembly. But the MNS split the opposition vote and helped the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combination return to power for a third time in a row.
“The MNS has decimated the Shiv Sena, especially in urban areas and, to some extent, even in rural areas. The MNS is trying to occupy the opposition space which the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, have failed to do. However, we must remember the divisive politics of the MNS are not good for a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai. Since the three years that he formed the MNS, apart from his own charisma, a combination of factors helped Raj Thackeray. To begin with, the media gave him ample publicity. Two, the NCP helped it to an extent by going soft on it on several issues. Three, he managed to capture the constituency that Shiv Sena has been losing,” said B. Venkatesh Kumar, professor of political science at Mumbai University