'Hit below their eardrums': In Mumbai, Thackeray cousins go no-filter

NEW DELHI: After more than 20 years of political estrangement, cousins Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray came together on Saturday at a joint rally in Mumbai.The event, titled Awaj Marathicha (Voice of the Marathi) marked the first time since 2005 that the two leaders shared the same political platform.Organised to celebrate the rollback of two state government resolutions introducing Hindi from Class 1 in schools, the rally also signalled a potential new political alliance.

“We’ve come together to stay together,” Uddhav Thackeray declared at the gathering.'Yes, we are gunda'He then turned his attention to the BJP, accusing it of political opportunism. "You (BJP) have used us enough already. If you didn't have the support of Balasaheb Thackeray, who knew you in Maharashtra? Who are you to teach us about Hindutva? When riots were happening in Mumbai, then we Marathi people had saved every Hindu in Maharashtra, be it anyone.

If you are calling Marathi people 'gundas' doing their protest, seeking justice. Then yes, we are gunda."

Calling for lasting unity among regional parties and leaders, he said, "Our strength is in our unity, whenever some challenging time comes, we all come together, but we all have experienced that when the challenging time passes, we all go for our personal interests, which should not happen this time..." Uddhav also accused the BJP of damaging Maharashtra’s industrial and economic base, "They always ask us what we did for Marathi people in Mumbai during our rule in BMC.

Now we are asking the question: in the last 11 years of your rule, what have you done? You have pushed away Mumbai's important establishment to Gujarat. Businesses are being transferred to Gujarat. Big offices are going to Gujarat. The diamond business has already shifted to Gujarat, so you have made all attempts to break the backbone of Maharashtra and continue to do that, and you are asking questions to us.

"'You must hit below their eardrums'Raj Thackeray on the other hand addressed both the language issue and the criticism directed at his party."Be it Gujarati or anyone else here, must know Marathi, but there is no need to beat people for that if they don’t speak Marathi. But if someone shows useless drama, you must hit below their eardrums. I tell you one more thing: if you beat someone, don’t make a video of the incident. Let the person beaten up tell that he has been beaten up, you don’t need to tell everyone that you have beaten someone."

He also pushed back at those who questioned the MNS's commitment to Marathi simply because their children studied in English-medium schools."They say that our children have learnt in English medium schools. So what? Dada Bhuse studied in Marathi schools and became a minister. Devendra Fadnavis studied in an English-medium school and became the Maharashtra CM. So what? I would tell you that I studied in a Marathi school, but my father, Shrikant Thackeray, and uncle, Balasaheb Thackeray, studied in an English medium school. Can anyone raise a question about their love for Marathi? Tomorrow, I will learn Hebrew also.

Will anyone raise a question about my pride in Marathi?" He concluded his speech by framing the Hindi language policy as a broader test of regional resilience. "I don’t have anything against Hindi, no language is bad. It takes a lot of effort to build a language. We Marathi people ruled over a lot of states during the Maratha Empire, but we never enforced Marathi on those parts. They started with the experiment of imposing Hindi over us and were trying to test if we would not have opposed it, they would have gone upto making Mumbai separate from Maharashtra."