Maharashtra: The Limits of Outsider Politics

At a campaign rally ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray referred to BJP leader K Annamalai as “rasmalai” and revived an old Shiv Sena slogan—Hatao lungi, bajao pungi—language once used to target South Indian migrants in the city’s labour markets and municipal offices. It summoned a vocabulary of outsiders that has circulated in Maharashtra politics for over half a century, repackaged for a new electoral cycle. The Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana published an editorial describing Annamalai as a political “beggar” who had come to Maharashtra to seek relevance, portraying him as an interloper surviving on the scraps of another state’s politics. “Whether they are from the DMK or AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, all of them have fought and struggled to maintain their provincial and linguistic identity. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra fought shoulder to shoulder against the mandatory three-language formula order, and ultimately the central government had to withdraw the mandatory three-language formula order… but the BJP sent cheap leaders like Annamalai to Mumbai and made them give anti-Maharashtra statements,” it said.

Annamalai has responded by framing the remarks not as personal mockery but as an insult to Tamils, saying he would not be intimidated and challenging his critics to stop him physically if they could. During his campaign for BJP in the state, he had controversially claimed that “Mumbai is not a city of Maharashtra”. “It is an international city”, he had said, arguing that the city’s scale and strategic importance made it a place that transcended a single state’s ownership. Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has since sought to walk back some of the heat around the row sparked by Annamalai’s remarks, saying the BJP leader “was wrong” and that his comments “should not have been spoken in that manner”. Shinde stressed that the controversy over whether Mumbai is solely a Maharashtrian city should not be taken as reflective of the Shiv Sena’s position on the matter, and that he had conveyed his concerns directly to the BJP leadership. 

The controversy travelled quickly beyond Mumbai’s ward politics, becoming a proxy debate on regional respect. Language and ethnicity remain among the most emotionally portable tools of political mobilisation. But whether such language actually persuades voters or merely performs for already-converted audiences is a more complicated question.

Historically, linguistic and ethnic appeals have shaped Indian electoral outcomes most decisively when they aligned with material or institutional change. In Tamil Nadu, resistance to Hindi imposition was not only rhetorical; it was tied to school curricula, civil service recruitment, and access to public employment. The anti-Hindi agitations of the mid-20th century altered party systems, dismantled Congress dominance in the state, and produced an enduring Dravidian political order. 

By contrast, slogans like Hatao lungi in Maharashtra were never simply about clothing. They functioned as shorthand for competition over urban jobs, housing, and political representation, particularly during periods of industrial contraction and migration. But even at the height of Shiv Sena’s mobilisation politics, electoral success depended less on insults than on ward-level networks, trade union capture, and municipal patronage.

Calling a Tamil leader rasmalai does not reorganise civic policy or restructure labour markets. It signals allegiance to a cultural memory but it does not itself create new political coalitions. In that sense, such language works more as reinforcement than conversion. Northern politicians accused of dismissing southern cultural sensibilities during debates on language education or centralised curricula have rarely suffered electoral penalties in their home states, just as southern leaders who deploy sharp rhetoric about the “north” do not generally lose southern support. The rhetoric circulates, sparks outrage cycles, but largely stays within already polarised ecosystems.

But statements like these sharpen social boundaries and legitimise everyday prejudice. When political leaders ridicule cultural difference, it filters downward into workplace interactions, neighbourhood disputes, and online harassment. It also performs another function: it distracts. In municipal elections dominated by questions of housing regulation, infrastructure breakdowns and urban inequality, cultural antagonism and identity talk is combustible and convenient.

There is also a generational shift underway. Younger urban voters, particularly in large metros, are less responsive to regionalist rhetoric than earlier cohorts shaped by migration and linguistic protectionism. Employment precarity today cuts across state identities, and urban political frustration is increasingly framed around corruption, service delivery, and cost of living rather than cultural intrusion. In this environment, linguistic slurs are all but dated. Yet politicians continue to use them because they remain reliable applause lines.