Aurangabad vs Sambhajinagar: Name change politics comes back to bite Shiv Sena

One would think that after having dominated the Aurangabad municipal corporation elections for the past decade-and-a-half, the Shiv Sena would have, by now, renamed the city as “Sambhajinagar.” It was, after all, the 33-year-old dream of party founder late Balasaheb Thackeray.

In a politically provoking tweet intended to double down on his father’s promise — and serve as a political gambit to establish the Sena as a heavyweight among its more secular coalition partners, the NCP and Congress — Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray courted controversy last January when he referred to Aurangabad as “Sambhajinagar,” after the Maratha king who was also Shivaji’s son.

To make matters worse among the MVA coalition at the time, the Twitter post in question, posted from the chief minister’s official Twitter handle, displayed a prominent image of state Congress leader Amit Deshmukh, son of former chief minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh.

मुख्यमंत्री उद्धव बाळासाहेब ठाकरे यांच्या अध्यक्षतेखाली झालेल्या मंत्रिमंडळाच्या बैठकीत आज पुढीलप्रमाणे निर्णय घेण्यात आले.#मंत्रिमंडळनिर्णय @AmitV_Deshmukh pic.twitter.com/LqkMo2uXgi

— CMO Maharashtra (@CMOMaharashtra) January 6, 2021

The move was considered political sacrilege since historically, the Congress has always opposed the Sena’s demand of renaming Aurangabad after Chattrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, who was tortured and killed here by Aurangzeb.

However, the Sena’s gambit didn’t pay off. On the contrary, it has now come back to haunt the party in the form of its breakaway faction, the MNS, led by Uddhav’s estranged cousin Raj Thackeray.

Aurangabad is new ammo for MNS

The Aurangabad rural police on Tuesday heightened security and deployed policemen at the site of Aurangzeb’s grave in Khuldabad village of Aurangabad district after MNS spokesperson Gajanan Kale tweeted demanding that the tomb be demolished “so that no separatists will come to bow down before it.”

शिवरायांच्या भूमीत औरंगजेबाच्या थडग्याची गरज काय ?
जमीनदोस्त करा हे थडग … म्हणजे या अवलादी तिथे माथा टेकायला येणार नाहीत …

माननीय बाळासाहेब ही हेच म्हणाले होते,बाळासाहेबांचे काहीच ऐकायचे नाही आहे का?
नाही तरी औरंगाबादच्या नामांतरावरून सरळ सरळ पलटी मारली आहेच #मामू

— Gajanan Kale (@GajananKaleMNS) May 17, 2022

Kale was taking a not-so-cryptic dig at AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, who had visited Aurangabad last Thursday along with former MLA Waris Pathan and AIMIM MP from Aurangabad, Imtiaz Jaleel, to pay respects at the tomb of the Mughal emperor.

Quoting a Saamana interview given by Bal Thackeray from the year 2000, in which Thackeray had said that the tomb should be destroyed and never rebuilt, Kale launched a scathing attack on the Sena, questioning whether it would, once again, not fulfill Balasaheb’s demands (of demolishing the tomb), just as it had failed to rename the city.

Owaisi’s visit drew sharp criticism from both the Sena and the BJP, with the latter accusing it him trying to disturb the peace in the state. The Telangana MLA’s visit to Aurangzeb’s tomb and several other dargahs in the district has kicked up a political slugfest in Maharashtra at a time when the “illegal loudspeaker” issue has barely been eclipsed.

Also read: MNS chief dares mosques to use loudspeakers, tweets old video of Bal Thackeray

The age-old debate of “Sambhaji vs Aurangzeb” is back on the table for grabs to be used as a party hack.

Renaming Aurangabad as Sambhajinagar would win the Sena brownie points at a crucial time when its Hindutva character has been called into question by the BJP and MNS. It would also give the tiger an opportunity to bare its saffron fangs once again.

But in what could be deemed as a U-turn — one that could further lead to a perceived softening of the Sena’s stance on Hindutva — Uddhav, while addressing a mega rally in Mumbai on Saturday, questioned the need to officially rename Aurangabad when the Sena has anyway been referring to it as “Sambhajinagar” in popular parlance ever since the 1990s.

By publicly calling out the Sena over its failure to fulfill Balasaheb’s demand, as well as the party’s stance of defending Aurangzeb’s tomb (by deploying extra security personnel at the site) when the Sena founder had wanted it demolished, the MNS seems to be paying the Sena in the same coin that the latter had used in the 1990s to leverage votes from its political rival in the state at the time — the Congress.

Also read: Shiv Sena abandoned Hindutva, acting on directions from 10 Janpath: Navneet Rana

It was the Congress that had blocked Sena’s early plans to rename Aurangabad.

Seven years after Balasaheb first made the proposal to rename the district as Sambhajinagar during the victory rally held after the first Aurangabad civic polls in 1988, the Aurangabad municipal corporation, ruled jointly by the BJP and the Shiv Sena at the time, passed a formal resolution on the same during its general body meeting in June. Chief minister Murli Manohar Joshi, who headed the Sena-BJP coalition in the state back then, even issued a notification renaming the city.

The proposal could not be implemented because a Congress councilor moved the Bombay High Court and later, the Supreme Court, where the matter is still pending and waiting to be challenged.

Also read: Loudspeaker rules not violated in Maha, no one should teach us Hindutva: Shiv Sena

In 2011, a fresh resolution was passed for the renaming. But the Congress, which was the ruling party in the state at the time, put a plug on the proposal once again.

None of this seems to have deterred the Sena. The party remains unsuccessful — yet adamant — on renaming the city. Or at least parts of it.

Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai, who is also the guardian minister of Aurangabad district, met with Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in the national capital on Tuesday. Desai urged him to expedite the process of renaming Aurangabad airport after Chattrapati Sambhaji Maharaj and even asked for clearance to install a statue of the Maratha king within the airport premises.

However, the reality of the matter remains that the multiple unsuccessful attempts by the Sena to rename the city — after having doubled down on it in Uddhav’s controversial tweet last year — have done more harm than good for the saffron party.

What started off as an ace-in-the-hole for the Shiv Sena has now come back to bite it. And the fact that it is Uddhav’s cousin leading the charge against him, makes the situation only more (politically) poetic.