Sena MP quashes speculation of a Shiv Sena-BJP reunion
Mumbai: Senior Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut on Sunday stoked a fresh controversy by remarking that “A true ‘Hindutvavadi’ would have shot Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah and not Mahatma Gandhi.” His remarks coincided with the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 74th death anniversary or Martyrs’ Day.
He said this in response to a tweet by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in which the latter had said that a Hindutvavadi had shot Mahatma Gandhi dead but that “Bapu is still alive today wherever the truth prevails.”
Raut remarked, “The demand for Pakistan was Jinnah’s… he was responsible for the violence that followed Partition…if the killers (Godse and others) were real men, they would have shot him (Jinnah) and not Gandhi. That would have been an act of patriotism. But by shooting Gandhiji, the world was saddened, and still mourn his assassination (October 30, 1948).”
The Shiv Sena leader’s remarks against Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse were a thinly veiled swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJPs) whose leaders have openly hailed Godse on occasion.
The BJP is currently in opposition in Maharashtra where an ideologically opposed tripartite coalition of the Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray holds power.
It is rather ironical that Thackeray’s father, late Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray had infamously lauded Nathuram Godse’s act at an election rally in Pune in 1991 in support of the BJPs then Lok Sabha candidate Anna Joshi when both saffron parties were allies in Maharashtra.
Sanjay Raut’s remarks underscore the Sena’s growing affinity towards the Congress and Rahul Gandhi post the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Uttar Pradesh last year.
More importantly, ever since the Sena struck an alliance with the Congress and the NCP to deprive the BJP of power in Maharashtra, the party’s relationship with ‘Hindutva’ and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has been markedly ambivalent, with the BJP losing no chance to criticise Uddhav Thackeray’s party of having abandoned its Hindutva stand.
Meanwhile, in his weekly column Rokhthok in the Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana, Raut quashed speculation of an ‘under the table deal’ for a BJP-Shiv Sena reunion, remarking that the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of Uddhav Thackeray was Maharashtra’s “political future.”
Raut, the Sena’s chief spokesperson, further took potshots at the BJP by remarking that Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, in his address to Shiv Sainiks on January 23, had turned the tables on the BJP which has been critical of the Maharashtra Chief Minister over his illness.
Thackeray, had undergone a cervical spine surgery a couple of months ago, lambasted the BJP’s alleged “double standards” on ‘Hindutva’ in his address on January 23 while detailing how the Sena had “rotted” during its alliance with the BJP in the State.
Raut in his weekly column in party mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ further remarked, “The message from Uddhav Thackeray’s speech made it clear that the MVA of the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress is the political future of Maharashtra and there is no truth in the speculations that there was an ‘under the table deal’ happening between the Shiv Sena and BJP.”
Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis (BJP), in a swift rejoinder to Thackeray’s speech, had said that the Sena had been able to grow politically only when it was in alliance with the BJP.
The Sena leader argued further, “Uddhav Thackeray’s speech and Devendra Fadnavis’s response to it have made the state’s politics clear and there is no room for confusion now…there is no possibility of a Shiv Sena-BJP ‘reunion’ after Fadnavis’s response.”
Criticizing Fadnavis, Raut pointed out that senior BJP leaders in the past like Gopinath Munde, Pramod Mahajan or Eknath Khadse had never behaved towards the Sena in a high-handed manner.
He further remarked that the MVA was there to stay in Maharashtra and that the BJP would have to spend the next several years around the Raj Bhavan, referring to the BJP approaching the Governor on numerous occasions regarding various issues pertaining to the State in the recent past.
The 25-year-old alliance between the Shiv Sena and the BJP had ended after the parties bickered acrimoniously after the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls over the issue of sharing the Chief Ministerial post. Despite the BJP emerging as the single-largest party in the State, the Sena forged an alliance with the NCP and Congress to form a government under Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership.
