Bloodline

The coming together of the Thackeray cousins - Raj Thackeray, chief of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray — on 5 July, two decades after they had fallen out, could not have happened at a more opportune time.

- 

The BJP-Shiv Sena government had to eat dust over its bid to include Hindi asa third language in school curriculum. It had to abandon the scheme altogether. It is not only on the backfoot, but has given the MNS and Shiv Sena (UBT) a golden opportunity to bury their differences and close ranks to redraw the contours of Maharashtra politics. Maratha pride is a potent political weapon that the two cousins have been handed over afresh following what is widely perceived as the imposition of Hindi in Maharashtra after the southern states, especially Tamil Nadu, fumed recently over a similar move on it but ina different form, by the Centre. The rollback on the Hindi imposition by the BJP-led Mahayuti government has brought Raj and Uddhav together when both are facing an existential crisis following the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) debacle in the Assembly elections last year.