TheCousins Thackeray

Dhaval Kulkarni is a Mumbai-based journalist with over fifteen years of reporting experience across brands like the Times of India, Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, New Indian Express and DNA. He writes on a broad range of subjects like governance and politics, caste, identity and social movements, environment and forests, health, infrastructure, heritage, culture and archaeology. He also reviews books.

They are first cousins twice over, but have had widely divergent political trajectories. One, an abrasive, fire-breathing demagogue, was seen as his uncle's political heir whose behavioural traits he cultivated. The other, an introvert, is at his best when plotting strategies on the drawing board rather than the rough-and-tumble of street-corner politics that his party is known for in India's financial capital.

Starting out as brothers-in-arms, they had a bitter falling out over inheriting the party mantle. The younger cousin branched out on his own, hijacked the populist, ethno-centric plank of his parent party, putting his cousin-turned-political foe on the defensive. A series of miscalculations later, the boot seems to be on the other foot. The elder cousin has managed to keep his flock together and cemented his position as his late father Bal Thackeray's political heir, while the other, one of the most popular crowd-pullers in Maharashtra, is itching for an electoral comeback.

The Cousins Thackeray evaluates the political careers of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray. It also examines questions about identity politics, and the social, cultural and economic matrix that catalysed the formation of the Shiv Sena and the MNS from it. Above all, it is a look at what makes the Thackeray cousins so integral to the politics of India, Maharashtra and Mumbai.

The author focuses on micro politics and why every small move or statement by politicians has led to significant developments. In that sense, it is a behind the scenes look at the Shiv Sena and the MNS - known only to those who follow the humdrum of daily politics and have a keen interest in it... The most important point that emerges from the book is that the Shiv Sena's brand of identity politics has come to stay, despite its ups and downs, and found a warm home in Maharashtra.Kulkarni deftly deconstructs not only the tumultuous relationship between the first cousins who could have jointly inherited a robust political party, but more importantly, contextualises the idea of identity politics in a state such as Maharashtra that led to the creation of Shiv Sena and later the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.The anecdotes from the duo's lives add spice to the book.Kulkarni gives an account of the rise and fall of Raj and the rise and rise of Uddhav... The narrative ... relies on the author's own experience in reporting on Shiv Sena and MNS and the two cousins. He has talked to senior journalists, political analysts, friends of Raj and Uddhav and family members.