COME night and Raj Thackeray gets down to business. Of watching Disney cartoons on the laser disk with an intensity that would do the late Walt Disney very proud. Each film has been played at least 20 times. Along with other classics in Hollywood's animation repertoire. Raj Thackeray may have spent his time exhorting crowds to vote saffron, or reducing Sharad Pawar to a many-chinned caricature, but he would rather be in Hollywood poring over story-boards and charting Donald Duck's fortune.
His ideas are more often zanier than his sketches that turn Prime Minister Narasimha Rao into a laughing Buddha. Like the recent letter he wrote to Steven Spielberg suggesting he make a film on what would happen if the earth were to lose its gravity for five minutes. "It's an idea with endless possibilities, both comic and tragic. Spielberg is a filmmaker who can do something with it, but I don't know if my letter will get past his secretaries," he says. He also harbours ambitions of making an Amitabh Bachchan starrer after the elections. "If I was not in politics, I would make an animation film. Now I can't, it's too costly." Andso he is content to watch repeats of Lion King and Snow White.
However, Shiv Sena cadres hardly know him as the man addicted to cartoon classics and dreams of making animation films. Instead, they see Swaraj Srikant Thackeray, 28, best known as Raj, as their chief Bal Thackeray's abrasive nephew, who could well be the Sena supremo's mirror-image, from his bullet-shaped cuff-links to his distinct mannerisms. And the influence of the founder of Maharashtra's militant Shiv Sena on Raj is unmistakable. Unlike Thackeray's sons Bindu Madhav, Jaidev and Uddhav, nephew Raj, bears an uncanny resemblance to the ageing tiger, draws similar cartoons and hasthe same style and flair for fiery oratory.
But it isn't so much the clone in him that bothers the Sena leadership as does the controversies Raj keeps getting embroiled in from time to time and his 'five-star' approach to politics. With the Shiv Sena chief recovering from a recent coronary bypass, Raj and Uddhav have taken it upon themselves to hit the campaign trail. The initiative came from Raj, who chalked out the election programme. "I don't know about the others, but I have started from my side. He (Bal Thackeray) has done what he could. Now we should show what we can do," he says.
It is at times like these that the Sena cadre and leadership are forced to sit up and take notice of the junior edition of their chief. Raj and Uddhav were politically baptised in the '80s. Raj took over as chief of the Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Sena (BVS) in 1988, while his cousin Uddhavtook charge of Saamna, theparty mouthpiece, in 1989. Both have played key roles in party functioning. And now with elections approaching they are busy selecting candidates, organising resources and campaigning.
In February, Raj flagged off the Shiv Sena's Lok Sabha poll effort in Ahmed-nagar, the sugar bowl of Maharashtra and a part of the Congress fiefdom, with a fancy campaign organised by his friend, industrialist Parvez Damania. The convoy of sleek cars with outriders on motorcycles, and the omnipresent Sena saffron, was reminiscent of the poll campaignsorganised by his uncle in the pre-Seshan days of 1990, when the supremo's biscuit-coloured Mercedes, stengun-wielding security, and saffron-flagged convoy had cut an orange swathe through the lush green Konkan region. The Sena had seen victory in the crowds that Bal Thackeray drew then, but similar applause is not forthcoming for his nephew's campaign. Said a veteran Sena leader: "He is a five-star kind of person as his campaign shows." Suggests a BJP leader: "His campaign may have a negative effect."
But Raj remains unfazed by such criticism and says he will campaign again in Ahmednagar after the elections are announced. "I will have a meeting in Ahmednagar in the thick of the polls. The atmosphere is important. But even this time, the response was better than what I got during the Vidhan Sabha election tour," he says confidently. The Congress had won three seats in Ahmednagar, while the BJP, Sena and an independent candidate won a single seat each.
It is the indications of what they—Raj and Uddhav—can do together that has worried the Sena leadership for a long time. The fear within the party cadres, especially among veterans associated with the Sena since its inception in 1966, was that in a monolithic set up, dynastic suc-cession was all too real. That fear of gha ranashahi (dynastic rule) somewhat dissipated with Manohar Joshi and others getting positions of power. But now, when Raj and Uddhav have got together, another doubt has surfaced—whether they will be able to work together or will drift apart. They still remember the blood-spattered fight between the BVS and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad a few years ago, and Raj Thackeray's clash with the Sena trade union leader Dattaji Salvi in 1994, among other incidents.
One of Raj's supporters, however, tries to dismiss the rumours of the cousins moving apart. Says he: "They would be incomplete without each other. Uddhav is polite and reasonable, he has a better rapport with the Sena leaders and ministers while Raj is a mover and he is able to deal with the workers. Together they can lead the party after Balasaheb."
And finally, for all those who are worried, it may be small consolation to note that despite the fawning cadres and gun-toting men who constantly throw security rings around him, the one dream closest to Thackeray junior's heart belongs in another world, far removed from Sena politics. "I would have liked to work in Walt Disney's studios. It is a dream, and I can only dream. I don't know how I have fallen into all this," says the man who could be the next Bal Thackeray.
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