Mumbai, April 30: Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray said today that the Congress has been biased against Maharashtra since Motilal Nehru’s time, and that the Samyukta Maharashtra movement was primarily a struggle against the Congress.
In the second part of an interview in Saamna, Thackeray said Motilal Nehru always hated the state and so did Jawaharlal Nehru. “The movement was against the Congress but they called our fight native colonialism. Where was this view when Andhra Pradesh was made a separate state on a linguistic basis?” he said.
In the first part, he had said Motilal Nehru had termed the state a rotten and loose region of the country.
He said the struggle for statehood was fought not by “opposition parties” but by the Marathi people. “We should bury the differences as Marathas, Brahmins, untouchables, Ghatis, Konkanis and unite as Maharashtrians.”
He added the state had given a lot to the country including industrialists like Kirloskars and Garwares. “People come from outside and do business but where are the Marathi people in these ventures?” He named Lata Mangeshkar, Sachin Tendulkar and Sunil Gavaskar as great Maharashtrians and said it is unfortunate such people are not in politics.
–Agencies