Who Are You Mr Aditya Thackeray?
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Aaditya Thackeray has once again discovered the word “Mumbaikar.” It is a convenient word for a politician who has lost the ideological ground on which his political family once stood. Reacting to the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s controversial advisory on Garba and Dandiya, Aaditya Thackeray asked: “Who are these people to give us a certificate of Hindutva?” He then declared that whether it is Dahi Handi, Navratri or Ganpati, the first identity of people in Mumbai is that they are Mumbaikars.
Yet the lesson apparently has not been learned. Instead of asking why the traditional Shiv Sena voter walked away, UBT is now lecturing Mumbai about what Mumbai supposedly believes. This is breathtaking political arrogance. Aaditya Thackeray cannot lose the ideological argument and then appoint himself the interpreter of Mumbai's conscience.
Mumbai is not UBT's private property. Mumbaikars do not require Aaditya Thackeray to tell them who they are. And certainly nobody needs Sanjay Raut to explain Hindu festivals to Hindus. Raut has jumped into the Garba controversy asking, in effect, who says Muslims cannot play Garba, while attacking the VHP's position.
That is why the UBT's present posturing looks less like secularism and more like political desperation. Instead of saying, “I disagree with this method but Navratri is a Hindu festival,” he reaches for the safest political escape hatch available to today's opposition politics:
Mumbaikar.
Mumbai's cosmopolitan character does not require Hindus to become apologetic about Ganpati, Navratri, Dahi Handi or any other part of their civilisational culture. Secularism is not cultural surrender.
The man who routinely invokes Bal Thackeray's legacy now finds himself attacking a Hindu organisation for arguing about the religious character of a Hindu festival.
Absolutely. But then he should practise the principle himself. Mumbai belongs to Mumbaikars not to the Thackeray family. And Mumbaikars are perfectly capable of deciding whom they want to represent them. They have voted. They have rejected UBT. They have moved on. That is the fact UBT cannot escape by repeatedly shouting “Mumbaikar.”
That is why the Garba controversy is bigger than Garba. It exposes the ideological bankruptcy of a party still carrying the Shiv Sena name while increasingly distancing itself from the political philosophy associated with that name.
Their verdict was delivered at the ballot box. UBT should read it.
The problem is not that Aaditya Thackeray has no certificate of Hindutva. The problem is much more serious - UBT has lost Hindutva, lost political credibility and lost the right to lecture Mumbai about its identity. And if after all this Sanjay Raut still wants to know who speaks for Mumbai, the answer is painfully simple - Not him. Not Aaditya. The voters do.
There is only one problem with this grand declaration. Who appointed Aaditya Thackeray the spokesman of Mumbaikars? Mumbai certainly did not. The people of Mumbai have already spoken through elections. And UBT has already received its answer. The party that inherited the name, machinery and emotional legacy of Bal Thackeray paid a heavy political price for abandoning the Hindutva political space and embracing an alliance with Congress and the so-called secular bloc.
Mumbai is not UBT's private property. Mumbaikars do not require Aaditya Thackeray to tell them who they are. And certainly nobody needs Sanjay Raut to explain Hindu festivals to Hindus. Raut has jumped into the Garba controversy asking, in effect, who says Muslims cannot play Garba, while attacking the VHP's position.
But there is a question Raut should answer first - When did the Shiv Sena become the political defence counsel for every argument against a Hindu organisation? This is the extraordinary transformation of UBT. The original Shiv Sena made Hindutva a central pillar of its politics.
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Today's UBT seems to regard Hindutva as an embarrassing relative who should be mentioned only when an election requires it. Bal Thackeray never built the Sena by apologising for Hindu identity. He did not spend his political career asking whether somebody would approve his secular credentials. He understood something brutally simple - a political party cannot survive by becoming ashamed of the constituency that created it. UBT has not understood it. The electorate did.
Mumbaikar.
Everyone is a Mumbaikar. Everyone belongs. Everyone participates. Beautiful words. But they answer a question nobody asked. The question is whether a Hindu religious festival is allowed to retain its Hindu character. Pluralism does not mean deleting the identity of the majority.
And this is where UBT's ideological collapse becomes visible. The party has moved so far from its original position that it now seems more frightened of being accused of being “too Hindu” than of being accused of betraying the political legacy it inherited. What a transformation.
The party once asked others to prove their loyalty to Maharashtra. Now it seems desperate to prove its acceptability to the very political ecosystem that opposed its ideological origins. And Sanjay Raut has become the loudest voice of this transformation.
There is something almost tragic in the spectacle. Balasaheb built a movement around Hindu assertion. His political heirs are now debating whether Hindu assertion itself is politically acceptable. And then comes the ultimate irony. Aaditya says Mumbai belongs to everyone.
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The electorate has already told UBT - You abandoned the political identity that made the Shiv Sena powerful, and we noticed. The electoral punishment was not an accident. It was a lesson. But UBT seems determined to interpret defeat as a demand for further ideological retreat.
Aaditya says he does not need a certificate of Hindutva. Fine. Nobody is interested in giving him one. But he does need to answer for what happened to the Hindutva of the Shiv Sena. He needs to answer the voters who once saw the Sena as their political vehicle. He needs to explain why the party that once stood proudly in the Hindutva camp is now so eager to attack those asserting Hindu identity.
And above all, he needs to stop pretending that he speaks for every Mumbaikar. Mumbaikars can speak for themselves. They already have.
The problem is not that Aaditya Thackeray has no certificate of Hindutva. The problem is much more serious - UBT has lost Hindutva, lost political credibility and lost the right to lecture Mumbai about its identity. And if after all this Sanjay Raut still wants to know who speaks for Mumbai, the answer is painfully simple - Not him. Not Aaditya. The voters do.