Mumbai, Jan. 15: He is battle-hardened like “Raja Shivaji” and not sad that his party lost Narayan Rane and his nephew Raj Thackeray.

That is the message Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray put through in a serialised interview in his party’s mouthpiece Saamna.

“Raja Shivaji had to face nearly 200 battles from the Marathas, including some of his close relatives,” Thackeray said, alluding to the broken house that his party is now. But he is not saddened by the turn of events last year. “Why should I feel sad? I am strong, and have faced tougher situations in the past,” he said.

Sena insiders, however, said Thackeray’s interview was timed to send out a message to Raj in a last-ditch attempt to woo him back into the party. Thackeray, who turns 80 on January 23, is expected to make an emotional appeal to Raj to return to the Sena in the next part of his interview.

Raj, who has several of his uncle’s traits, including firebrand oratory, radical right-wing ideology and a love of political cartooning, is scheduled to embark on a month-long state-wide tour tomorrow. The tour will be followed by the formation of a new political party.

Raj had quit the Sena in November last year after differences with Uddhav Thackeray, the Sena chief’s son and the party’s executive president. Tomorrow, Uddhav will also begin his tour of the Konkan region where the Sena will fight bypolls against three rebels who followed Narayan Rane into the Congress.

Thackeray’s son is also the root cause of the rebellion by Rane, a former Sena heavyweight.

But Thackeray made a distinction between Raj’s exit and that of Rane in June. “Rane did not leave the party but was expelled?. Raj was not expelled as he was not busy preparing the ground for joining another party.”