Shouty Saamana takes cautious stance
MUMBAI: At the Prabhadevi office of the Shiv Sena mouthpiece, the bustle that usually marks a newsroom is missing. Saamana’s shouty pages, too, are rather muted. “Dainik Navhe Sainik” (the paper is not a daily but in itself a sainik) is the credo that has long guided its news and views pages. But what happens when the Shiv Sainiks themselves are muted and confused?
Unlike in the past, when the paper went all out to tar previous defectors such as Chhagan Bhujbal and Narayan Rane — few can forget the outrageous cartoons that Raj Thackeray drew for the paper — in the ongoing crisis the newspaper has refrained from attacking Eknath Shinde head-on. In its editorial on Thursday, for instance, the paper had a placatory stance towards the rebels asking them to return to the party fold rather than
mounting an attack on them.
Shinde, say staffers not wanting to be quoted, has not yet burnt his bridges with the party, and Uddhav Thackeray has repeatedly requested MLAs to return from Guwahati where they are holed up in a hotel. As the mouthpiece of the Shiv Sena, the newspaper reflects this ambivalence and wariness of the party towards the dissidents.
The paper’s editor and Member of Parliament, Sanjay Raut,
cuts a far more aggressive figure on TV channels than he does in the newsroom these days. Though Rashmi Thackeray’s name now goes as editor in the printline after Uddhav Thackeray became chief minister , it’s Sanjay Raut who runs the show at the paper.
Old-timers at the paper recall that when Chhagan Bhujbal, a front-ranking leader of the Shiv Sena, suddenly quit the party in 1991, Raj’s cartoons deriding
Bhujbal as a turncoat were displayed on notice boards outside Shiv Sena shakhas in Mumbai and Thane. Similarly, other party rebels like Ganesh Naik and Narayan Rane were also at the receiving end of Saamana’s aggression. After his rebellion against the party leadership, Rane, a veteran streetfighter, who is now with the BJP and a Union minister, had held a rally outside the Saamana office when both Uddhav and Raj were inside the newsroom to protest the daily jibes being directed at him by the paper. For political reporters in Mumbai, the paper’s editorials signal the official position of the party on a range of issues.
However, the whole Shinde episode and the rebellion has exposed the deep fault lines in the party.
While warning the rebels that the Shiv Sainiks could divest them of their positions, Thursday’s editorial desisted from attacking Shinde or his any of the MLAs with him, personally.