Thackeray Cousins' Reunion: A Political Move Beyond Maharashtra's Marathi Asmita?
“If we fail to reunite, future generations will not forgive us,” went a line in the editorial of Saamna, the official newspaper of the Shiv Sena for decades now with Uddhav Thackeray. The line was capping a lengthy lament for Maharashtra, Maharashtrians and Marathi but embedded in it was the signal for us to make sense of the noise around the Thackeray cousins, Uddhav and Raj, reuniting personally and politically. Given the long decades of acrimony between them, nearly 20 years after Raj left the party that he assumed he would lead one day, the rapprochement is easier in thought than in realpolitik.
It will be difficult for both the Thackerays to let bygones be bygones, for one to accept the leadership and idiosyncrasies of the other, for both to convince their second-rung leadership and cadre to reunite, and for their camaraderie of the 1980-90s to return, but if they manage to reach that level of sanguinity, it is unlikely to be for Maharashtra or the Marathi manoos alone. They would be driven by the love of their sons too—Aaditya, now a two-time MLA and a former minister in his father Uddhav’s cabinet, and Amit, who lost the 2024 Assembly election from Mahim, one of the old Sena strongholds in Mumbai.
Raj’s olive branch came in a podcast with his friend and filmmaker Mahesh Manjrekar last week, to which Uddhav responded with alacrity and positivity, but second-rung leaders did not display the same willingness for the reunion. Twenty years have made a significant, even tectonic, difference to both the men and their politics, approach, political frenemies and rivals. The baggage is heavy and messy on both sides.
Back in the early 1990s, Raj’s star was on the ascent. He not only resembled his uncle, Shiv Sena founder and chief Bal Thackeray, but also walked like him, gave speeches like him, drew cartoons like he did and was considered the right fit to lead the party. In India Today, where I worked then, Raj was headlined as ‘The Doppelganger’ to Thackeray Senior. Raj was less at home with his musician father, Shrikant Thackeray, and spent more hours in Matoshree, the Thackeray household in Bandra. Both Thackeray Senior and wife Meenatai doted on him. The dual relationship—nephew for them both, as he is also Meenatai’s sister’s son—only cemented his ties; he was virtually the fourth son to the more famous Thackeray couple. And got along fairly well with Uddhav, or so it seemed.
His future role was set until the Ramesh Kini murder case tripped his record, and Uddhav developed a taste for politics beyond photographing his father. The early 2000s saw tensions between the cousins; the 2002 elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations showed the fractures; and the 2003 elevation of Uddhav in the party and the Sena embracing an inclusive ‘Mee Mumbaikar’ campaign was the knife’s edge. From there, the drift became a rift till Raj exited the Shiv Sena in November 2006 and set up Maharashtra Navnirman Sena the following year. After initial success, he floundered.
Uddhav, ever the outsider to the party and politics, had to fall back on what he knew best: backroom strategising. A singular strategic mistake in a party that his father had built on personal charisma. Somehow, he managed to retain the Sena’s share of power even after Thackeray Senior passed on in November 2012 and the Sena was ditched by long-time ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party. He had the sympathy till 2019, when he joined the coalition of the two Congress parties to form the Mahayuti. The hadacha Shiv Sainik (core party worker) did not forgive him for this. Prominent among them was Eknath Shinde, who walked away with the party, the symbol, and Thackeray’s legacy—with considerable help from the BJP.
In 2025, what the cousins stand for and how much of the Thackeray legacy they can invoke remain tantalising questions. Does Mumbai or Maharashtra need a party to articulate sub-national regionalism? Indeed, yes. One Chhava film cannot speak for a state with a rich, multi-dimensional and complex fabric. Nor can ruling politicians be content to take instructions from the centre at the expense of Maharashtra’s growth and future.
The question is whether the Thackeray cousins can genuinely join forces to occupy this space for the state. I am not holding my breath on this, given the flip-flops Raj has had with his now-on, now-off love of Prime Minister Modi and Uddhav’s deep wounds of what the BJP did to him in 2014 and again in 2022. In the new politics, what is the role, adversarial or in power, they see for a combined Sena is unclear. They will be forced to confront issues, such as what Marathi Asmita means and how to represent it in a fast-transforming top-down model of development in Mumbai, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, and Pune.
However harsh it may sound, it’s a fact that the Thackeray cousins have presided over de-Marathisation in the juggernaut of neo-liberal and crony-led development. Their reunion will neither turn the clock back nor, on its own, ensure that a cogent Marathi sub-regionalism will re-emerge, hopefully without its love for violence. Their motivation, then, is to seek political relevance for themselves in the changed terrain and to ensure that their sons have a political home in the future. The reunion, if it happens, and the path to it are more about the Thackerays themselves.
Smruti Koppikar, senior journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and the media. She is the Founder Editor of the award-winning online journal ‘Question of Cities’ and won the Laadli Media Award 2024 for her writing in this column
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