Raj Thackeray gets on to social media, tweets in English

He has expressed his hatred for social media for a long time, but finally, Raj Thackeray, president of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) made a debut on Twitter on Tuesday on the occasion of Maharashtra Day.

@RajThackeray greeted people on Maharashtra Day, with the first two tweets being in Marathi, his roots, which also has been his political ideology. However, after those two in his mother tongue, Raj too took to communicating in English. This raised quite a few eyebrows and was then trolled since Thackeray’s politics is all to do with Marathi language and sons-of-the-soil issue. And not just stopping at his choice of English, the grammar Nazis, as nitpickers of language are called on social media, pointed out the mistakes in his Marathi tweets also.

In his first tweet, Thackeray emotionally greeted the people, in Marathi, “Heartiest greetings to all Maharashtrians on Maharashtra Day.” He spoke of his visit to Hutatma Chowk, to pay his respects to the martyrs who laid down their lives for a unified Maharashtra. Thackeray in his second tweet, which was again in Marathi, went on to state that on this day the Marathi people got a state of their own and in a way it is a recognition of Marathi language. “Many...

many sacrificed their lives and suffered great hardships. Today is the day to remember all of them and a day to remember our responsibility. Jai Maharashtra!” he posted.

That was not all, Thackeray then posted a Maharashtra Day message in English! Thackeray after repeating his greetings, this time in English, went on to share a short film on the Maharashtra Foundation Day, May 1, 1960.

Meanwhile, in a statement issued on his behalf, the Everymedia PR agency announced the arrival of the MNS chief on Twitter. This media outfit will be handling his Twitter account.