New Delhi: Breaking his silence two days after rebellion by his nephew Raj Thackeray, which has plunged the Shiv Sena into its worst-ever crisis, party supremo Bal Thackeray said the party may be down but not out.
Raj Thackeray quit all Sena posts on Sunday to protest his marginalisation in the party by "the coterie surrounding Sena's Executive President and his cousin Uddhav Thackeray."
Declining to meet media these past two days, Thackeray on Tuesday instead chose to reveal his mind on the revolt by Raj through the party newspaper Saamna.
In his long editorial, the supremo reminded that the Sena achieved its successes over the years because of the unstinted loyalty of the party workers.
He warned those standing in the shadow of this achievement that they should not think that they are bigger than the party.
Pointing out that the Shiv Sena was formed with the sole objective of fighting for the rights of Marathi-speaking people, he said that anybody thinking of stabbing the party in the back should realize gravity of what he is doing.
"Where would we have been if there was no Shiv Sena. Even I, Bal Keshav Thackeray, who has got national and International fame, it is because of the power of Shiv Sena," he said.
Taking a dig at his critics, the Shiv Sena supremo said Raj's resignation was like an "earthquake" but still life goes on.
He asserted that "the dream of opposition parties of a vertical split in Shiv Sena would never become a reality."
"I have never accepted a defeat and never ever will," Thackerey asserted in the editorial.
The Shiv Sena chief strongly criticised those who damaged 'Saamna's executive editor Sanjay Raut's car and wondered as to why they did not show the same zeal in Malvan, where recently the party met its nemesis at the hands of Narayan Rane, an erstwhile follower of Bal Thackeray.
Rane, who joined the Congress and is a Cabinet Minister in the Vilasrao Deshmukh government, handed a crushing defeat to the Sena candidate who lost his deposit.
He had been earlier expelled from the Sena for raising a similar banner of revolt against Uddhav Thackeray.
It now remains to be seen if Raj Thackeray will meet Rane's fate.
Thackeray said Shiv Sena is not anybody's personal property, not even of his family. "The party belongs to Marathi manus and those who believe in the ideology of Hindutva. It belongs to each and very Shiv Sena activist, who has shed his blood and sweat for the the party," he added.
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