For a cinema buff, Raj Thackeray was surprisingly obtuse. The Shiv Sena member ? once the party’s heir-apparent ? clearly missed the message underscored in numerous films produced by Mumbai’s Hindi cinema industry over the years. Blood, said cinema, was thicker than water.

Remember the nephew who does all the hard work to keep the family going, as the son of the house whiles away his time? Then, one day, the parents have to choose between their son and the nephew ? and, yes, they plump for the former. In one of the last scenes ? just before the parents realised the errors of their ways ? the nephew storms out of the house.

Swaraj Srikant Thackeray ? aka Raj ? left his uncle’s allegorical house, the Shiv Sena, late last week. He didn’t quit the party, but resigned from the Sena executive committee and stepped down as the leader of its students’ wing. For a couple of years, Raj has been licking his wounds, upset that Sena supremo Bal Thackeray chose to make his son, Uddhav, the working president of the party instead of him. Last week, the nephew indicated that he had had enough.

Efforts are on in the Sena to effect a patch-up. “But it is unlikely that Raj will return to the party fold after having gone this far,” says former Thackeray favourite, Sanjay Nirupam, now with the Congress.

Nirupam knows what he is talking about, because it was he who brought the rumblings within the Sena out in the open last year by quitting the party. Sena strongman Narayan Rane joined the Congress in July after openly criticising Uddhav. And, ever since, political circles have been abuzz with rumours about Raj’s departure.

For Thackeray senior, the rebellion is bad news. And that’s because 37-year-old Raj, in many ways, is a mirror reflection of Uncle Bal. “He is a younger version of his uncle,” says Vaibhav Purandare, Mumbai-based journalist and the author of The Sena Story ? a book on the rise of the western Indian political outfit. “He looks like his uncle and he talks like him. And even his mannerisms are like Bal Thackeray’s,” says Purandare.

As a child, Raj, whose father was Bal Thackeray’s brother, spent his childhood at his uncle’s house. It is believed that he picked up some of his mannerisms then, and consciously moulded himself in his uncle’s image. “He has his uncle’s oratorial skills and is a good cartoonist,” says Purandare.

Many believe that he is also temperamentally violent ? a trait that usually stands a Sena leader in good stead. Unlike his cousin Uddhav, a soft-spoken and suave 45-year-old, Raj is the quintessential angry young man. In fact, for some years, Raj has been pushing for a more aggressive line in the Shiv Sena. Uddhav, on the contrary, has been seen as seeking to temper down what is often described as the Sena’s hysterical tone. “And that’s another reason why a patch-up between the two cousins can only be a temporary one,” says Nirupam. “They represent two ends of an ideological spectrum,” he says.

Insiders point out that Raj Thackeray has always believed that the Sena can only prosper if it takes up a vitriolic position on issues such as non-Maharashtrians working and living in the state ? a plank that propelled the Sena decades ago. This was the tenor of the party as long as Thackeray headed it. But under Uddhav, who was made the working president three years ago, the party has been something of a damp squib ? both electorally and in its campaigns. Being out of power, in the state and at the Centre, has also robbed the Sena of its sheen.

Raj wants to pull the party out of its state of torpor, but believes he can’t do so as long as Uddhav holds the reins of power. “He is probably looking at starting his own outfit now, and focussing on areas outside Mumbai,” says Purandare. “Pune, Nashik and other cities have a large section of non-Maharashtrians working there, and this can always be an issue,” he says.

Meanwhile, despite the public split, friends of the Thackerays are doing all that they can to keep the Sena intact. Rumour has it that Raj Thackeray wants to be made working president along with Uddhav, or be given an equivalent post. Right now, he is one of the nine second-rung leaders in the Sena who have to report to Uddhav.

Raj wants 70 tickets for his men in the elections to the 229-member Mumbai corporation, expected to be held late next year or early 2007. He is also said to have urged the party high command to give his supporters 50 per cent of all party posts.

“These are demands that are unlikely to be met,” says a Maharashtrian politician. “If these are conceded, then what was the great fight all about?”

For Raj, walking out is not an easy option either. The Congress has not sounded a warm welcome to Raj ? as it did with both Rane and Nirupam.

“By himself, he is not much of an asset,” says a Union minister from Maharashtra. “If he breaks away from the party with a section of Sena MLAs, we may be interested,” he says.

Clearly, these are difficult times for Raj Thackeray. The drop-out from the JJ School of Art probably didn’t read his Wordsworth. If he had, he would have known that the child is the father of the man. The nephew isn’t.