Mumbai: The Rane family in Maharashtra’s politics has been no stranger to controversies, stirred by their aggression and brash statements.
The patriarch, Narayan Rane, has spoken of slapping a chief minister, was facing a case for allegedly abducting a Congress MLA, and just last week, spoke about entering the houses of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) workers and killing them during an altercation over the collapse of a statue of Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at Malvan in Sindhudurg. His older son, Nilesh Rane, has often used foul language while speaking about political opponents, and his younger son, Nitesh Rane, has in a fit of rage flung a fish at one government official and thrown mud at another.
Pugnacity from any member of the Rane clan is a routine event in Maharashtra’s politics. It hardly stumps political watchers or makes big news. However, a purported statement by Nitesh Rane about ‘entering mosques and hunting Muslims’ has become the centre of a major political row. While bellicosity has been the hallmark of the Rane brand of politics, senior Rane was hardly associated with communally sensitive statements.
The purported statement by Nitesh, a Bharatiya Janata Party (MLA), has drawn criticism not just from opposition parties, but also from members of the BJP itself and the ruling Mahayuti alliance of which it is a part.
BJP’s Haji Arfat Shaikh Wednesday released a video statement to reporters saying that he plans to take up the matter with Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar, and ask them to warn Nitesh Rane against making such statements.
Narayan Rane, meanwhile, told reporters that he had reprimanded his son, saying there is no reason to make remarks against an entire community.
This, however, is not the first time that Nitesh made ‘anti-Muslim’ remarks. The leader has been sustaining an anti-Muslim diatribe for at least over a year now. Multiple BJP sources told ThePrint it is by design.
“Unofficially, everybody has been given a specific role in the party. His role is to keep up a strong pro-Hindutva dialogue, and he is doing that. It serves a purpose, but the party can distance itself when it wants to, saying it is an individual’s statement,” said a senior Maharashtra BJP functionary.
Also Read: In Ajit Pawar-led NCP’s protests against own govt over Shivaji statue collapse, a Shiv Sena flashback
Why Ranes are important for BJP
Before entering politics, in the 1960s, Narayan Rane, a former Maharashtra chief minister and Union minister, was said to be part of the ‘Harya Narya’ gang—a local street gang in Mumbai’s northeastern suburb of Chembur, where he lived and ran a poultry shop.
Rane senior started his political career as an aggressive, street-thumping Shiv Sainik in the 1970s and became a shakha pramukh, the head of one of the party’s local administrative units. In the 1980s, he became a corporator, and in the 1990s an MLA. Narayan Rane was said to be Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray’s blue-eyed boy, and made the journey from a local functionary to chief minister in 1999, though for a brief period of eight months.
He quit the Shiv Sena in 2005 over differences with Uddhav Thackeray, the Shiv Sena founder’s son. Since then, Rane has kept up his volley of criticism against Uddhav and his son Aaditya, and the Shiv Sena led by them, first as a leader of the Congress, and then with the BJP.
Maharashtra BJP leaders say there are two major political advantages that the Rane family brings to the party. One, the members of the Rane clan have potential as nuisance creators for the Thackerays, given the long-standing enmity between the two sides. Secondly, their presence in the BJP helped the party gain a foothold in the Konkan region, a bastion of the Shiv Sena that the BJP had otherwise been unable to cultivate.
Rane hails from Kudal in the Sindhudurg district in the Konkan region. His clout there first benefitted the Congress in developing a strong presence in Konkan. His elder son Nilesh became MP of the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg constituency in 2009 on a Congress ticket and younger son Nitesh became a Congress MLA from Kankavli in the Sindhudurg district in 2014 and now represents the BJP from the same constituency. Narayan Rane quit the Congress in 2017 to float his own party, which he later merged with the BJP.
This time, as a BJP candidate, Narayan Rane wrested the Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg Lok Sabha seat from Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)’s Vinayak Raut, who had represented the constituency for two terms.
Around the time when the MVA government, comprising the undivided Shiv Sena, undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress, was formed under Uddhav Thackeray in 2019, Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha MP and a confidante of Thackeray, started a routine of addressing daily press conferences in the morning from his residence. Raut would make allegations against the BJP and talk up the Thackeray government’s work.
By noon, the television cameras would shift to Nitesh Rane, who would make light of Raut’s words in his usual bellicose manner. The MLA always refers to Raut using his full name, “Sanjay Rajaram Raut,” in what has become his signature style while trading barbs with the Rajya Sabha MP.
“Within the party, Nitesh Rane was unofficially told to respond to everything Sanjay Raut says and step up criticism against Uddhav and Aaditya Thackeray. Similarly, the party now has a different role in mind for Nitesh Rane,” said a senior BJP leader and former MLA who did not wish to be named.
Members of the undivided Shiv Sena used to speak about Muslims in the same language Nitesh Rane has been using, when Bal Thackeray was alive, said the former MLA. “All of that stopped when the Shiv Sena’s politics changed under Uddhav Thackeray. That kind of staunch Hindutva posturing too has an audience, and the party could be thinking about how they can fill this void in the state’s politics, but not very obviously so.”
“At the same time, letting a leader like Nitesh Rane fill that space makes logical sense. It sends a message from the BJP to its target audience, but at the same time, it is not taken too seriously as Nitish Rane is known to make bold statements, and the party can distance itself from the comments when required,” he added.
‘Boss sits in Sagar bungalow’
Nitesh Rane made the purported statement about ‘entering mosques and hitting those inside, on 1 September at a public meeting in the Ahmednagar district in support of Hindu seer Ramgiri Maharaj, who himself raked up a controversy last month with his allegedly objectionable remarks about Islam and Prophet Muhammad. Three FIRs were registered against Nitesh Rane for his statement, two in Ahmednagar district’s Shrirampur and Topkhana and a third in Thane district.
On criticism from within the BJP and outside, Nitesh, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said his statement was in response to calls for ‘sar tan se juda’ (beheading) against Ramagiri Maharaj. “My job is to pursue the Hindutva agenda, calling out what is wrong. We have not attacked anyone first. We are simply responding to those who tried to attack us. Now if some people from within my party have a different opinion about this, our senior party leaders and state president will look into it,” Rane said.
Between 2023 and now, Nitesh Rane attended several ‘Hindu Jan Aakrosh’ rallies organised by the Sakal Hindu Samaj, an umbrella organisation of Hindutva outfits, making objectionable statements about Muslims, and egging Hindus to take the law into their own hands.
He has also faced FIRs for some of these comments.
In January this year, speaking at such a rally in Solapur Nitesh Rane told those gathered that they should not fear the police since “his boss stays in Sagar bungalow”. This was a reference to the official residence of Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
Similarly, in August last year, speaking at a Jan Aakrosh rally in Ahmednagar, Nitesh Rane attempted to intimidate a senior woman police officer accusing her of foisting cases in an alleged incident of ‘love jihad,’ a term used by Hindutva activists to refer to an alleged conspiracy hatched by Muslim men to convert Hindu women by marrying them.
At another such rally at Mumbai’s Mira Road in March 2023, Nitesh Rane had supported calls for an economic boycott of Muslims.
On Wednesday, speaking to reporters, Nitesh simply shrugged off all criticism. “My department (job) is to protect Hindutva and the Hindu community. That is my responsibility. And before being a member of any party, I am a Hindu first. I am not going to stop talking about my religion fearing police cases,” he said.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Lok Sabha jolt to strategies that backfired, what’s giving BJP the jitters in poll-bound Maharashtra