On Sunday, June 18, Shiv Sena (Uddhav camp) chief and former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray launched a fresh attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. While addressing a conclave of his party leadership a day before Shiv Sena foundation day, Thackeray criticised the PM and HM. However, during his speech, Thackeray also backed Western propaganda and equated the Nazi Hakenkreuz to the Hindu Swastika.
Thackeray equated PM Modi to Hitler and claimed that his rule pushed the country towards dictatorship in the same way Adolf Hitler pushed Germany in the 1930s. Equating BJP to Hitler’s Nazi party, Thackeray said, “Our ruling party is acting in the same way as Hitler’s party [the Nazi party]… It is silencing all Opposition, unleashing Central agencies on them, seizing control of the media. Remember, Hitler’s symbol too was the Swastika.” He claimed that the “authoritarian” rule of the PM and the BJP was threatening to “split the country into pieces”.
He criticised the PM and HM over Manipur violence and attacked the scheduled US visit of the PM while violence is still persistent in Manipur; he said, “If you [PM Modi] want to show your strength, then first go to Manipur and try and get things under control… No one even cares about Amit Shah there, such is the fury of the locals at the moment. PM Modi is willing to go to America and advise but cannot visit Manipur. He brags about allegedly stopping the Russia-Ukraine war, but I want to see if he can calm Manipur down.”
Pointing out his intentions to attend the opposition parties’ meeting on June 23, he said, “We are not merely Opposition parties who are getting together just to oust the BJP at the Centre. We are patriots who seek to protect our country’s freedom and save democracy.”
Hakenkreuz is not Swastika
Thackeray, who claims to be a devout Hindu and speaks volumes on Hindutva, followed the same template that the West followed by claiming Swastika was the symbol used by Nazis. However, in reality, it was Hakenkreuz, or the Hooked Cross, that the Nazis used, which is a Christian symbol. It is worth mentioning that this is the tactic used by Hindumisic propagandists who intentionally link ‘Swastika’ to the Nazi Hakenkreuz (hooked cross) in order to indicate that Hindus draw their inspiration from Nazis.
In fact, it has been debunked several times that Hakenkreuz and Swastikas are very different. Hindus and Hindu leaders worldwide are working hard to change the perception people have created towards Swastika. Interestingly, there is documented evidence that Adolf Hitler never used the word Swastika in his autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’ but used Hakenkreuz. However, when it was translated from German to English, the translator used Swastika, which has been propagated ever since.
Uddhav Thackeray’s history of using Gaumutra jibes
This is not the first time that the CM of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray, has used anti-Hindu jibes while attacking his political opponents of BJP and RSS. He habitually uses Gaumutra jibes to attack both BJP and RSS. In April 2023, he said, “Every time I am accused of going with the Congress and leaving Hindutva, is there no Hindu in the Congress? There (RSS-BJP) Hindutva is Gaumutradhari Hindutva.” Irked by the reports that Gaumutra was sprinkled in Sambhajinagar, where MVA conducted a public meeting, he said, “They recently sprinkled cow urine at the place in Sambhajinagar where we conducted our public meeting. They should have drunk some cow urine; they would have become wiser; our Hindutva is about nationalism.”
In March 2023, Thackeray said, “Did our country get freedom by sprinkling cow urine? Did it happen that cow urine was sprinkled, and we got freedom? It was not so. The freedom fighters had made sacrifices, and then we got freedom.”
The cow urine jibe
Cow urine jibe is one of the most popular to abuse Hindus and Indians. Sadly, this was not the first time Uddhav used the cow urine jibe. In October 2020, he attacked BJP with crass, Hinduphobic references to Gaumutra (cow urine) and gobar (cow dung). The Shiv Sena supremo made derogatory remarks while addressing the annual Shiv Sena Dusshera Mela.
Not to forget, in 2019, a Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist in a suicide attack, killed as many as 40 CRPF soldiers in Pulwama, Kashmir. Following the attack, a video was released in which the terrorist could be heard saying he wanted to punish and kill the ‘cow urine drinkers’ in the name of Allah. The terrorist, identified as Adil Ahmed Dar alias Waqas was seen admitting that he had joined the Jaish-e-Mohammad a year ago. In the video, he referred to Indians as “Gae ka Peshab Peene Wale” (People who drink cow urine).
