'Raj'niti - Correct or Wrong ?

Ever since Raj Thackeray has uttered those famous words, it has become a compulsory practice of Raj-bashing by every other leader, newspaper, magazine and TV. Is this criticism warranted ? I don't think so. First of all, whatever Raj said was highly misinterpreted. What the MNS chief said in Marathi was totally twisted and played out as some people wanted. So, what exactly did Raj say ? Raj just said that if Big B can have such love for his motherland why cant this small man, Raj have the same ? But the words were taken out of context, they were twisted and given a whole new meaning. It was made out that Thackeray attacked Bachchan when that was never the case. Similarly, when he said that, when migrants come into this great Nation, they should respect the culture and not do dadagiri, the media took it totally out of context and then of course, the rioting started. The worst case of irresponsible reporting was to be seen on the bouquet of Hindi news channels [Bhaiyya channels] . I will come to that later, in a forthcoming article. But, there is no doubt that Raj's words were misinterpreted and misrepresented.

Coming to the second point, whatever Raj said was in the minds of Marathi people for quite a long time. It was this simmering discontent {to qoute a reader's words} which boiled on to the streets. The bhaiyyas long seen as innocuous are not so at all. They have come in hordes to Mumbai and they group themselves up and then do dadagiri. I have experienced this so many times. In Mumbai trains, they make groups of taporis, mavalis and then torture the law abiding Marathi citizens. Another facet of their one-upmanship can be seen in the fact that they refuse to speak in Marathi and in our own state we have to speak in Hindi and not in our mother-tongue. I know what some people will say, that Hindi is the rashtra-bhasha and so on.....Well, my answer to that is, "if Hindi is your rashtra-bhasha then Marathi is my Maha rashtra-bhasha !"

But what is happening is quite bad. North Indians are coming in hordes to this state and changing the demographics of this land. And they have a purpose to do that. They want to make this a mini-North India. But until there is a Marathi manus alive, this won't happen !