Days after Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s “Aurangzeb fan club” remark, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief and former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray labelled the BJP leader as a political scion of the 18th-century Afghan ruler, Ahmad Shah Abdali. He accused Mr. Shah of indulging in “power jihad” by splitting political outfits to form new governments.
“If Muslims are with us after we explain our Hindutva, then we are (as per BJP) the Aurangzeb fan club. In that case, what you are up to is nothing but power jihad,” Mr. Thackeray said.
On July 21, while speaking to BJP workers about the upcoming Assembly elections, Mr. Shah dubbed the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) as the Aurangzeb fan club and said Mr. Thackeray was its leader. He had also claimed that Nationalist Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar was the “godfather of corruption who institutionalised graft in India”.
Mr. Thackeray’s response was an attempt to set a counter-narrative as the Afghan king had defeated Marathas in the third battle of Panipat. The 18th century ruler had made as many as nine attempts to invade India.
Referring to the tension unfolding around caste-based reservation in Maharashtra, he said that this was the kind of Hindutva that must have been taught by Aurangzeb and practised by the BJP. Chhatrapati Shivaji’s Hindutva, however, was different and would be the one to take the State forward, he added.
Equating his former ally BJP to bedbugs, Mr. Thackeray said that bedbugs were supposed to be crushed and not challenged. “Either you will be there or I will...Some people (Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis) thought that I challenged them but I don’t challenge bedbugs. ‘I’ means the cultured Maharashtra and ‘you’ means the political party that loots the State,” he said.
Hitting back at these statements, Mr. Fadnavis said that Mr. Thackeray was a disappointed and frustrated person, whose mind was badly affected and his latest speech only confirmed that he was very much a member of the Aurangzeb fan club.
