In Sena split, a tiger’s tale and some canine digs: How Shinde and Uddhav’s parties are feuding with biting metaphors
When Maharashtra deputy CM Eknath Shinde stood before his Shiv Sena’s workers on the original party’s 60th foundation day and called himself a tiger, he was drawing on a deep strand of imagery in Maharashtra politics. Bal Thackeray, himself a cartoonist, was often portrayed as a roaring tiger — the cherished logo of the Shiv Sena he founded. This was Shinde’s latest claim to Bal Thackeray’s iron-fist legacy. Eknath Shinde has called himself a tiger, while Team Uddhav’s Sanjay Raut has used dogs and disloyalty as metaphors for the rebellion within the party. (Photos: HT File, PTI) And it came in the middle of his not-so-veiled bid to further split the Sena of his mentor’s son Uddhav Thackeray, four years after he took away most of the party’s MLAs, the name and symbol. The roaring tiger was synonymous with the undivided party from its earliest years, as it grew from a social outfit seeking jobs for the Marathi manoos (common person) in the 1960s and ’70s into a regional political force from the 1980s onwards. …
