Seeds of rift between Uddhav, Raj Thackeray may have been sown in early 1990s

In 2005, Raj Thackeray quit the Shiv Sena to form his own outfit, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) the next year. However, the seeds for this political estrangement between Raj and his estranged elder brother, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, may have been sown in the early 1990s.

'The Cousins Thackeray: Uddhav, Raj and the Shadow of Their Senas' (Penguin Random House), the first political biography of the warring Thackeray cousins penned by journalist Dhaval Kulkarni, mentions how the competition and internecine political war between the two may have sparked off during a campaign by Raj for unemployed youth.

Raj was appointed as the chief of the Sena's student wing, Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (BVS) in 1988. "Though it is believed that Uddhav entered politics much later than Raj, Shiv Sena and MNS insiders said he began working behind the scenes at almost the same time as his younger cousin but took a more active role post-1995," the book states, mentioning how on 11 April 1990, Uddhav attended his first public function at the Shiv Sena shakha in Mumbai's eastern suburb of Mulund. In the program organized by Shishir Shinde, who later became a Sena MLC and the shifted to the MNS to rejoin the Sena in 2017, Uddhav inaugurated water taps in slums as his formal initiation into politics.

In December 1993, Raj had organized a morcha of the unemployed before the Maharashtra legislature building during its winter session in the state's second capital at Nagpur. "A then close associate and personal friend of Raj Thackeray claimed it was the rousing response of the youth to this campaign that may have sparked off the competition and internecine war between the two cousins," the book says.

"...It was evident that the Nagpur morcha would be huge. A night before the morcha, Raj got a call from Matoshree asking him to ensure that Uddhav too got to speak at the public meeting. Raj, who was staying in Hotel Centre Point, was disturbed as he felt Uddhav wanted a share of his credit,' the former associate said.

The next day, when Uddhav was sitting on a makeshift dais on a truck, Manohar Joshi (who became the Shiv Sena's first chief minister of Maharashtra) announced that Uddhav would make a speech. Raj too addressed the around 50,000-strong morcha.

The book quotes one of Raj's friends saying that after quitting the Shiv Sena, he was undecided on forming his own political party. 'When the plan was finalized, names like Lok Sena were being considered. But, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena was decided upon as Raj said he wanted the party to be restricted to Maharashtra and have the term 'Sena' in the name. He chose Navnirman because of Jayaprakash Narayan's Navnirman movement, which he wanted to recreate in Maharashtra,' he said. The party's tricolour flag with the saffron green and blue colours, and strips of white in between, was drawn by his childhood friend and schoolmate Jay Kowli, who is also an artist, it adds.