MUMBAI: Shiv Sena is facing flak for Aaditya Thackeray’s posters greeting people of Worli in Gujarati. The poster has met with sharp criticism on social media, with some calling it Shiv Sena’s fears of Mumbai going to Gujarat started coming true, while a few others have warned Aaditya of losing votes.
After his decision to break away from family tradition and contest election, the Shiv Sena scion has tried to use similar path-breaking idea in his campaign. As the first part of the campaign, huge outdoor advertisements with Aaditya’s photograph and words greeting people of Worli in different languages were displayed all along the constituency.
While the photograph is the same, the text content of this campaign is in Gujarati, Telugu and Urdu apart from the Marathi language. However, this attempt to reach out to others beyond the party’s traditional voters has not gone down well with party’s traditional voters and many of them have started trolling Aaditya for the campaign.
“Kem Cho Worli?” (How are you Worli?) read one of the posters in the campaign. After the photographs of this poster went viral over social media, Thackeray started getting trolled by party sympathizers.
“Even though I support BJP, this is sick!! Why would u make posters in Gujarati language in Maharashtra?? Do that in Gujarat, not in Mumbai,” said one Ajinkya, while Dattatray Gosavi was more direct. He said, “To get 100 Gujarati votes they have lost 1 lakh Marathi votes.”
Another troll with nickname ‘Mumbaikar’ said, “This is what happens when you don’t believe in Marathi people in Mumbai.”
“Not a paise’s worth... Let's all make sure he loses...,” said another one with account @I_Love_Mumbai_2.
There were several others who raised the issues of Marathi population migrating out of the city towards suburbs and the changing linguistic demographics of the city.
“Chalo Ambarnath,” said Mahesh Kadam in a sarcastic comment indicating the Marathi population migrating towards suburbs, Ramchandra Ambradkar said, “Aaditya appear to tell people a little known fact that there are hardly any Marathi people left in Worli and Gujarati people are now everywhere in Worli.”
There were still others like Bhavesh and Rahul Jadhav, who, in a sarcastic tone, said that the Banner must be from Gujarat and there must be some other Worli in Gujarat, while Ajinkya Guthe took a potshot at the Shiv Sena-BJP relations saying that, “Amit Shah must have taught him Gujarati during his recent visit to Matoshree.”
In another sarcastic comment aimed at Shiv Sena’s mascot Tiger, Shrinivas Bikkad said, “The tiger has not started eating Dhokla.”
“Awake! Here you have the grandfather who started a party to protect the Marathi culture and Marathi people and his grandson is now appealing people in Gujarati language,” said Yuvaraj Kachare.
Mitra Joshi said, “Even Aaditya Thackeray has been Gujaratised. Kem Cho, Worli! By the way, does Worli have too many Gujaratis? I thought the Gujaratification of South Bombay starts from Mumbai Central to Churchgate.”
The Shiv Sena is meekly defending the campaign saying that the posters are not just in Gujarati but, other languages also.