Mumbai, May 11: The Raj- Uddhav pow wow continues to provide good sound bytes. Both had different ideas regarding how to celebrate the golden jubilee of Maharashtra and both consider own their idea the best.
Raj organised a Maharashtrian food festival while Uddhav held a blood donation camp collecting over 25000 units of blood in a day. He also organised a musical extravaganza where Lata Mangeshkar sang after almost a decade.
While Uddhav’s functions received wide publicity, Raj somehow failed to attract as many eyeballs. Buoyed by his success, Uddhav fired the first salvo at his estranged cousin: “ Some people have forgot that a true Maharashtrian is a warrior, not a foodie.” Raj doesn’t allow one to pass especially if it’s from Uddhav. “ Distributing notebooks, fruits, holding blood donation camps… these are not the functions a political party should hold. Parties must attend to bigger issues like water scarcity and water theft,” he said taking a potshot at Sena’s blood donation camp. But by that logic, how does he justify the food fest then? But you can’t ask such questions to the Thackerays.
One man who was left amused by Sena and MNS’s attempts to appropriate the state’s golden jubilee is Communist Party of India’s state council secretary Prakash Reddy, whose parents Tara and GL Reddy were in the forefront of the struggle for Maharashtra’s statehood.
“ Both are behaving as if they fought against the Congress back in the 50s. The truth is that the movement for Maharashtra was entirely run by the Left and socialist leaders in the state. Sena was born six years after Maharashtra was carved out of the bilingual state and Bal Thackeray, by his own admission, was drawing cartoons back then,” says Reddy.
A clip from Uddhav’s Sena’s musical extravaganza was telling- the Thackerays felicitating the Mangeshkars. It had three generations of both the Thackeray and the Mangeshkar families. It also showed how both families valued dynasty even though publicly they might have criticised it.
—Agencies