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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

The Unequal Cousins

Raj Thackeray’s ‘sacrifice’ saved Shiv Sena (UBT) but sank the MNS Mumbai: In the volatile theatre of Maharashtra politics, the long-awaited reunion of the Thackeray cousins on the campaign trail was supposed to be the masterstroke that reclaimed Mumbai. The results of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, however, tell a story of tragic asymmetry. While the alliance has successfully helped the Shiv Sena (UBT) stem the saffron tide and regain lost ground, it has left Raj...

The Unequal Cousins

Raj Thackeray’s ‘sacrifice’ saved Shiv Sena (UBT) but sank the MNS Mumbai: In the volatile theatre of Maharashtra politics, the long-awaited reunion of the Thackeray cousins on the campaign trail was supposed to be the masterstroke that reclaimed Mumbai. The results of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, however, tell a story of tragic asymmetry. While the alliance has successfully helped the Shiv Sena (UBT) stem the saffron tide and regain lost ground, it has left Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) staring at an existential crisis. The final tally reveals a brutal reality for the MNS - Raj Thackeray played the role of the savior for his cousin, but in the process, he may have become the sole loser of the 2026 mandate. The worse part is that the Shiv Sena (UBT) is reluctant to accept this and is blaming Raj for the poor performance of his party leading to the defeat. A granular analysis of the ward-wise voting patterns exposes the fundamental flaw in this tactical alliance. The vote transfer, the holy grail of any coalition, operated strictly on a one-way street. Data suggests that the traditional MNS voter—often young, aggressive, and driven by regional pride—heeded Raj Thackeray’s call and transferred their votes to Shiv Sena (UBT) candidates in wards where the MNS did not contest. This consolidation was critical in helping the UBT hold its fortresses against the BJP's "Infra Man" juggernaut. However, the favor was not returned. In seats allocated to the MNS, the traditional Shiv Sena (UBT) voter appeared hesitant to back the "Engine" (MNS symbol). Whether due to lingering historical bitterness or a lack of instructions from the local UBT leadership, the "Torch" (UBT symbol) voters did not gravitate toward Raj’s candidates. The result? The UBT survived, while the MNS candidates were left stranded. ‘Second Fiddle’ Perhaps the most poignant aspect of this election was the shift in the personal dynamic between the Thackeray brothers. Decades ago, they parted ways over a bitter dispute regarding who would control the party helm. Raj, refusing to work under Uddhav, formed the MNS to chart his own path. Yet, in 2026, the wheel seems to have come full circle. By agreeing to contest a considerably lower number of seats and focusing his energy on the broader alliance narrative, Raj Thackeray tacitly accepted the role of "second fiddle." It was a pragmatic gamble to save the "Thackeray" brand from total erasure by the BJP-Shinde combine. While the brand survived, it is Uddhav who holds the equity, while Raj has been left with the debt. Charisma as a Charity Throughout the campaign, Raj Thackeray’s rallies were, as always, electric. His fiery oratory and charismatic presence drew massive crowds, a sharp contrast to the more somber tone of the UBT leadership. Ironically, this charisma served as a force multiplier not for his own party, but for his cousin’s. Raj acted as the star campaigner who energised the anti-BJP vote bank. He successfully articulated the anger against the "Delhi-centric" politics he accuses the BJP of fostering. But when the dust settled, the seats were won by UBT candidates who rode the wave Raj helped create. The MNS chief provided the wind for the sails, but the ship that docked in the BMC was captained by Uddhav. ‘Marathi Asmita’ Stung by the results and the realisation of the unequal exchange, Raj Thackeray took to social media shortly after the counting concluded. In an emotive post, he avoided blaming the alliance partner but instead pivoted back to his ideological roots. Urging his followers to "stick to the issue of Marathi Manoos and Marathi Asmita (pride)," Raj signaled a retreat to the core identity politics that birthed the MNS. It was a somber appeal, stripped of the bravado of the campaign, hinting at a leader who knows he must now rebuild from the rubble. The 2026 BMC election will be remembered as the moment Raj Thackeray proved he could be a kingmaker, even if it meant crowning the rival he once despised. He provided the timely help that allowed the Shiv Sena (UBT) to live to fight another day. But in the ruthless arithmetic of democracy, where moral victories count for little, the MNS stands isolated—a party that gave everything to the alliance and received nothing in return. Ironically, there are people within the UBT who still don’t want to accept this and on the contrary blame Raj Thackeray for dismal performance of the MNS, which they argue, derailed the UBT arithmetic. They state that had the MNS performed any better, the results would have been much better for the UBT.

The Emperor’s Enduring Mind

Updated: Mar 12, 2025


Roger Penrose
Roger Penrose

I recently picked up ‘The Impossible Man’ - journalist Patchen Barss’ biography of British mathematical physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose with some anticipation but more wariness. Penrose is, after all, one of the greatest living physicists, second only to Einstein in some respects.

A childhood icon - ‘The Emperor’s New Mind’ disrupted my mind when I was 12 - Penrose is a thinker whose insights into black holes, space-time and the deep structure of reality have left even his most brilliant peers racing to keep up.


As I feared, Barss’ book is not what Penrose deserves. It tells us what kind of man he is, but hardly enough about the ideas that make him singular.

This is not surprising. Penrose has always resisted the easy narratives that biographers crave. Unlike Stephen Hawking, whose ‘A Brief History of Time’ became a cultural phenomenon despite being one of the most unread bestsellers of all time, Penrose never sought to popularize for the sake of mass appeal. Unlike Michio Kaku, whose cheerful speculations about parallel universes and time travel have made him a fixture of science documentaries, Penrose has little interest in playing to the crowd.


His classics like ‘The Road to Reality,’ ‘Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe’ - are uncompromising works, brimming with deep mathematics and philosophical rigor. They do not pander. They demand.

That is the core of what makes Penrose different. His work is not about selling physics to the public but about understanding reality. And that reality, to Penrose, has always been geometric.


His early breakthroughs were in mathematical physics, where he developed the Penrose diagram - a way of mapping the twisted fabric of space-time around black holes. In 1965, he demonstrated that singularities (points where gravity becomes infinite) are an inevitable consequence of Einstein’s general relativity. Hawking would later extend this work, but it was Penrose who laid the mathematical foundations.


He devised Penrose tilings, non-repeating patterns that cover an infinite plane without gaps. This idea turned out to have deep implications for quasicrystals, materials whose atomic structures mirror these patterns. He even took a toilet-paper manufacturer to court for using his tiling design without permission, arguing that their quilted patterns could, in theory, be infinitely extended without repetition. (He won)


But it is in cosmology that Penrose has been at his most audacious. His Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), outlined in ‘Cycles of Time,’ suggests that the universe is not a one-time event but an infinite series of “aeons,” where the end of one cosmos seeds the birth of another.

When black holes swallow all the matter in the universe and eventually evaporate, what remains is a sea of photons - particles that do not experience time. It undergoes a conformal transformation, wherein the universe, reduced to massless and timeless photons, is rescaled into a new Big Bang. Penrose claims evidence lies in Cosmic Microwave Background data, recently supported by a team of researchers, though the topic remains controversial.


Mainstream physics leans heavily toward inflationary models, where the early universe underwent a rapid expansion. But Penrose has never been one to follow the pack. His critiques of string theory (beloved by many physicists, including Kaku) are unsparing - dismissing it as a mathematical game, devoid of experimental grounding. Likewise, he has been deeply sceptical of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which postulates every quantum event spawns an infinite number of parallel universes. To Penrose, this is fantasy, not physics.


It is precisely this independence of thought that makes Penrose indispensable. In a scientific landscape increasingly dominated by theories that prioritize mathematical beauty over empirical testability, he remains a bulwark against intellectual complacency.


(The author is a U.S.-based data scientist)

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