Some words are not adequately translatable. Their meaning is determined – and often expanded and sharpened – by who used it, when, in what context, and against whom. The Marathi word ‘Mee Panaa’ is one of them. In direct translation, it means ‘egoism’. But when an angry Uddhav Thackeray used it in his first joint press conference with Sharad Pawar in Mumbai on 22 November, on the eve of the Governor-aided midnight coup in Maharashtra, as an accusation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, ‘Mee Panaa – ‘arrogance’, ‘humiliation of alliance partners’, ‘brazen misuse of power against opponents’, and ‘we alone have the right to rule, by hook or by crook’.
Thus, with one word, mundane in any ordinary situation, but inflammable in the context in which it was spoken, Thackeray explained his main reason for burning his party’s 30-year-old alliance with the BJP. With that single word, he also drew a personality sketch of the two top men running the government at the Centre.
That the top leaders had ‘contempt’ for alliance partners who sought dignity and equality, and showed a proclivity to misuse the coercive instruments of state power against political rivals, had a consequence beyond Maharashtra.