Raj’s Modi-bashing toon creates ripples in political circles

MUMBAI: Raj Thackeray's cartoon lampooning Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah following the BJP's drubbing in the Delhi assembly elections created a flutter in political circles on Thursday.
The cartoon, which comes close on the heels of Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray's trenchant criticism of Modi and Shah, shows the PM and the BJP national president as twin towers which Arvind Kejriwal has demolished with impunity.The AAP chief is depicted as a tiny aircraft, appropriately named 'Air Jhadoo'.
An inset shows US president Barak Obama, saying, "It's once again the twin towers, and the aircraft is safe," as he watches the Delhi election bulletin on a television news channel. Both Modi and Shah look flustered, even as Kejriwal, with his Gandhi cap on, waltzes through the truncated twin towers to safety.
"The cartoonist in me was eager to say something more on the Delhi polls," said MNS chief Raj Thackeray. On Wednesday, the expert cartoonist pulled out the drawing board and dipped his Winson and Newton sabre into the black ink pot and got down to doodling.
"It took nearly two and a half hour to finish it," he said. Raj's crooked lines were immediately posted on the MNS' authorised website. Several city dailies published it on Thursday, much to the BJP's consternation.

Stating that media reports that the BJP would draw electoral mileage out of US president's recent India visit "ignited" his imagination, Thackeray said the cartoon should be seen from Obama's prism. "Once Obama entered the scene, Modi and Shah appeared to me as the twin towers of New York and Kejriwal became the aircraft."
Asked if he had transformed his views on Modi who he admired till last year, Thackeray said, "One has to change one's views as circumstances change. I had backed Modi in 2012, much before the BJP propped him up as the Prime Ministerial candidate. However, the man seems egotistical. You can't have your name woven in the pin stripes of your coat. The Delhi voters expressed their anger through the electronic voting machine last week... In fact, Modi's expensive coat prompted me to lampoon him and Shah."
Although Raj said the cartoon was not the MNS' endorsement of the Shiv Sena's tirade against Modi and Shah, many in his party and the Sena as well are of the view that opposition to the Modi-Shah duo could well be the Sena-MNS' common plank.
"We think Rajsaheb and Uddhavsaheb are on the same page on the Delhi poll issue. Should the two cousins come together, the Sena and the MNS can annex the Mumbai and Thane civic elections," said a senior MNS functionary. However, Saamna, the Sena mouthpiece, ignored the cartoon.
While none of the state BJP functionaries was willing to go on record on Raj's cartoon, a senior party functionary said the MNS president had done "great damage" to the BJP.
"Raj Thackeray has added salt to our wound. There was no need for him to pour ridicule on Modi-ji and Amit-ji," he said on condition of anonymity, and admitted that the party workers' mood was "sombre" following the BJP's fiasco in the Delhi state assembly elections.
Pointing out that Raj was once an ardent Modi admirer, the BJP functionary said, "However, he began to target the PM after the Lok Sabha elections. Raj's cartoon will provide ammunition to the Shiv Sena which has been abundantly delighted by our debacle in the Delhi polls."
Yet, a section in the state BJP thinks that irrespective of Uddhav's statement that Modi is responsible for the BJP's poll defeat in Delhi, the Sena may not go to the extent of destabilising the saffron government in the state.
The well-orchestrated demand of the Sena's ministers of state for more powers could be part of Matoshree's gameplan to extract its pound of flesh from a badly mauled BJP, sources said.