THACKERAY'S TIGHTROPE WALK

From lambasting Hindutva politics to giving plum portfolios to allies NCP and Congress, Uddhav Thackeray is doing everything he can to keep his government steady

- Kiran D. Tare

On December 17, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray strongly criticised the police action at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University during a protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), equating it to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre during British rule a century ago. Thackeray was speaking during the state legislature session in Nagpur. Later, he even said that his party, the Shiv Sena, had made a grave mistake in the past by mixing Hindutva with politics.

While the remark is a major departure from the Sena’s hardcore Hindutva politics, political analysts see it as Thackeray’s attempt to signal that the Sena and its coalition partners, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress, have put their ideological differences aside and found a common wavelength for their ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ government in the state. It only helped that NCP president Sharad Pawar welcomed the chief minister’s comments, saying that the state government appeared to be “on the right track”.