‘In this country, cows are safe but women are not’
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday refused to call ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a friend and said he was not obliged to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“I am fighting for the common man’s dream, not for (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s dream,” Thackeray said in an interview published in the party’s mouthpiece Saamana. The interview was published after BJP president Amit Shah asked his party leaders in Maharashtra to be prepared to contest Lok Sabha and state polls alone.
“I will hunt but don’t need to shoot from anyone else’s shoulder. Nor will I need a gun for the hunt,” Thackeray said. “We don’t have only one friend. We are friends of the public.”
The Shiv Sena made a series of flip-flops over the no-confidence motion against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government last week. Its MP Chandrakant Khaire, chief whip in the Lok Sabha, in a three-line whip on July 18 asked party MLAs to support the NDA government during the Opposition’s no-trust motion on Friday.
However, Sena MPs walked out at the time of the vote and didn’t support the government.
Thackeray, in the 50-minute interview, spoke about a range of issues: from calling the BJP’s idea of Hindutva as “fake” to criticising the party over incidents of mob lynching in the name of cow to women’s safety issues.
“In this country, cows are safe but women are not,” he said, asserting that “you can’t target people for their eating preferences”. In the name of saving the cow, if you are shifting focus on
MUMBAI:Shiv
whether someone is eating beef or not, then it is a sham. This is not Hindutva. I don’t accept the Hindutva that is being adhered to in the country for the last three-four years. Our women are unsafe and you are protecting cows,” Thackeray said.
“We (Shiv Sena) never said cows should be slaughtered. But while protecting cows, India has become the most unsafe country for women. One should be ashamed of it. You want to save ‘gau-mata’ (cow) but what about ‘mata’ (mother),” he said.
Thackeray was asked what made Sena continue with the BJP government in Maharashtra. “If their (BJP’s) Chanakyaneeti is acceptable, why not my style of politics,” he replied.
Targeting the BJP over the debate on nationalism, Thackeray said the BJP had no right to decide who was a nationalist and anti-national.
“Anyone criticising the government does not become antinational. Members of Parliament are representatives of people and have the right to raise questions,” he said.
BJP chief met his party leaders in Mumbai Sunday and is believed to have told them to prepare for elections without waiting for a decision on whether the saffron alliance will continue.