BAL THACKERAY
Bal Thackeray, the man who could bring Mumbai and the
entire State of Maharashtra to a standstill by a single command, and whose
ethnic and communal rhetoric added a strain of perpetual menace to an already
fraught metropolis, died in Mumbai on Saturday. He was 86.Never one to mince
his words, he once famously described himself as the “remote control” of the
first Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharashtra in 1995. Two
months ago, as the illness to which he eventually succumbed spread, he told Saamna somewhat
mirthfully that he didn’t have the remote control for age in his hands.Ever
since Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena, or ‘Army of Shivaji,’ in June 19, 1966,
it has set the tone for politics in the State. With his brand of rather vicious
humour and fondness for mimicry, he forged a bond with his followers, speaking
to people in a language they could understand. Exhorted by his father
Prabodhankar Thackeray, young Bal formed the Sena as a social organisation. Its
aim: to take care of the Marathi manoos, who were ostensibly slighted in their
own State due to a proliferation of migrants to the prosperous region.
The secret of his early rise lay in the Sena’s trade
unions, which befriended employers and destroyed a once-strong labour movement
in Mumbai. So successful was the Thackeray package that the Sena’s aggressive
brand of regional politics has been adopted by the fledgling Maharashtra
Navnirman Sena (MNS) in toto. Many progressive stalwarts from the State,
including Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Mahatma Phule and Savitri Phule and Shahu
Maharaj, had led pioneering struggles for social equality and justice. The Shiv
Sena reduced all that to simple demands for regional prominence and a
preference given to sons-of-the-soil.It is a politics that has sustained itself
over the years in Mumbai, nourished by issues of increasing migration, poor
civic amenities and lack of jobs for local people. With its avowed distance
from class and caste politics, despite most of its leaders belonging to the
upper castes, the Sena drew its strength from Marathi migrants from the Konkan,
who formed the party’s base.The pipe-smoking, beer-loving, self-styled Hindu hriday
samrat (‘emperor of Hindu hearts’) was born on January 23, 1926
in Pune into a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu (CKP) family. Later, young
Thackeray’s keen interest and skill in drawing got him a job briefly at the
Free Press Journal, where he worked with the likes of R.K. Laxman. In 1960, he
quit and started a weekly, Marmik, even before the Sena
was formed. This he did with his brother, Srikant, father of Raj Thackeray. Marmik is
still published. His column, ‘Vacha ani Thand Basa’ (read and keep
quiet), became a hit, and he later changed the title to Vacha
ani Utha (read and rise).Maharashtra State was carved out from the
Bombay Presidency, and after a bitter struggle Bombay city was included in it.
That was the first major battle which reflected the asmita, or pride, of Marathi-speaking people. Prabodhankar
played a major role and his writings in the fortnightly Prabodhan, which earned him his nickname, were widely read. It was
he who suggested the name Shiv Sena for his son’s new organisation.
The elder Thackeray, who was a socialist and opposed the
caste system, was anti-Communist. He passed on the trait to his son. The Sena’s
launch was not ostentatious. Bal Thackeray broke a coconut and spoke on the
occasion, before a few people. It was a simple start to what would become a
dreaded outfit in later years. The stated rationale of the party was to ensure
justice to the Marathi people, who were feeling sidelined by the large Gujarati
and South Indian population in the city. While Raj Thackeray today vents his
ire against North Indians, it was the migrants from the South that annoyed the
Shiv Sena. South Indian and Udupi hotels became the first targets of hatred,
and the new Shiv Sainiks, many of whom fought in the Samyukta Maharashtra
movement, were a ready force to tackle the next enemy.Thackeray was known more
as a cartoonist and writer than as a politician in the initial stages. He was
an admirer of Adolf Hitler, whom he referred to in one interview as an artist.
After the formation of the party, its first violent initiation led to the army
being called out in 1969 during prolonged riots over the Maharashtra-Karnataka
border dispute. From then on, there was no looking back. The border dispute
continues to fester, and the Sena has vigorously backed the right of the
Marathi-speaking areas in Karnataka to be merged with Maharashtra. Though
Thackeray hated politics and famously referred to it as a “ringworm infection,”
the Sena had willy-nilly become a political party. Studies at that time showed
how Marathi-speaking people were not getting jobs due to migrants, and there
was a genuine grouse which the Sena readily took up. But jobs for locals also
meant the Sena was targeting labour unions from the Left, and breaking them.
The murder of Krishna Desai, a Communist Party worker in Parel, sent a chill of
terror through the city and the party succeeded in setting up Sena unions
everywhere, often supported by employers who were only to glad to have someone
on their side.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Ashok Dhawale,
in an article in the April-June 2002 issue ofThe Marxist, wrote: “In
December 1967, the CPI headquarters of Mumbai at Dalvi Building in Parel, which
is situated in the very midst of the textile area, was savagely attacked by SS
hoodlums and almost destroyed. Organised attempts were made to break up
Communist public meetings and several leaders and activists of both the CPI and
the CPI(M) were physically assaulted. The climax was reached on June 6, 1970,
when armed goondas of the SS murdered the sitting MLA of the CPI, Krishna
Desai. Krishna Desai was a popular and militant mass leader in the textile belt
and had been elected municipal corporator four times before he was elected to
the State assembly in 1967. This was the first major political assassination in
Mumbai since Independence, and it sent shock waves through the city and State.
The leadership of the entire opposition along with thousands of incensed
workers marched in Krishna Desai’s funeral procession. Opposition leaders
directly accused the Shiv Sena and the Congress State government in general,
and Bal Thackeray and Vasantrao Naik in particular, of being hand in glove in
the perpetration of this heinous crime.”
Apart from taking up the cause of the Marathi youth, the
Sena constituted a self-appointed culture police later in its history. However,
in a much-publicised event, pop icon Michael Jackson did a concert to raise
funds for the Shiv Udyog Sena in 1996 and visited the Thackeray residence. He
even used the toilet there — much to the family’s delight.The growth of the
Sena could not have been possible without the tacit support of the Congress,
its ally for some years. The State’s first Chief Minister, Vasantrao Naik, and
later Vasantdada Patil, allowed the Sena to run amok in order to derive for
themselves political advantage. Both had good relations with the Sena and used
it as a tool to scotch the growth of the Communist Party in the city. The
Sena’s Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti was formed in 1972 to generate jobs. The
trade union wing, the Bharatiya Kamgar Sena, was a rival to the unions in
public sector undertakings and banks, and in the service industry. Its main
plank was to fight for jobs for the local people. The Sena established a
network ofshakhas in the city on the lines of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh.
Later, Thackeray supported the Emergency and Indira
Gandhi and her son Sanjay in a bid to ensure that he would not be jailed. His
support for the Congress continued at various times, with the party breaking
ranks with the National Democratic Alliance and backing Pratibha Patil for
President. In 2012, Pranab Mukherji visited Thackeray to seek his support —
which was given with alacrity. Married with three sons, Thackeray mourned the
death of his eldest, Bindumadhav, in a car crash in 1996. His wife Meenatai
passed away in 1995. His son Jaidev remained estranged from him.Thackeray’s
stand against the Mandal Commission report led to one of his closest
lieutenants, Chhagan Bhujbal, parting ways in 1991. He took with him several
MLAs from the rural areas of the State. This was only a precursor. Thackeray’s
preference for his son Uddhav to lead the party led to others like Narayan Rane
and later his nephew Raj Thackeray breaking away. The MNS, formed by Raj in
2006, decisively cut into the Marathi vote and helped the Congress in the 2009
Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the State.Thackeray endeared himself to his
millions of supporters. They looked up to him as a messiah. Here was a man who
articulated their deepest frustrations, who protected them against “outsiders,”
and whose army was willing to take to the streets for them. There was an
emotional bonding between him and the crowds, who loudly appreciated his
broadsides full of innuendo, and his mimicking of popular politicians. People
looked forward to his annual Dussehra rallies at Shivaji Park. When in 2008,
ill-health prevented him from holding forth in his usual style, the large crowd
held its breath as Thackeray rambled on on his favourite topics, prompted
occasionally by his son Uddhav and Manohar Joshi.
Thackeray’s Hindutva politics began at the Durgadi
temple/mosque dispute in the late-1960s. It was manifested in the communal
riots of Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in 1970. The Justice Madan Commission
blamed the Sena and other saffron outfits for the riots. The victory of Ramesh
Prabhoo in the Vile Parle byelection in 1987 on a Hindutva plank, was a first
for the party. It was a political line that would lead to Thackeray being
debarred from voting for six years, but he continued to defend it saying it was
in his blood.Hindutva would take the Sena to victory in the 1995 Assembly polls
for the first time, a feat it has not managed to repeat. Flush with its triumph
after the post-Babri Masjid demolition communal riots, Bal Thackeray and his
party even rejected the grave findings of the Justice Srikrishna Commission
inquiry report into the communal carnage in Mumbai in December 1992 and January
1993. Using Saamna, a daily it launched in
1990, the Sena unleashed mayhem in the city for two months and nearly a
thousand people lost their lives. Justice Srikrishna minced no words when he
spoke of the second phase of the riots: “From 8 January 1993, at least there is
no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing
attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders
of the Shiv Sena from the level of the shakha pramukh to
the Shiv Sena pramukh Bal Thackeray who, like
[a] veteran general, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised
attacks against Muslims.”The eight or nine cases against Thackeray and his
newspaper for inflammatory writings were not pursued. He was acquitted in one
case. Thackeray said in a TV interview that he was not a riot master, and added
that he had only defended Hindus.
In a party which never had internal elections and in
which only one man’s word was law, things were bound to deteriorate. Thackeray
now leaves behind a crisis-ridden outfit that will find it difficult to replace
his larger-than-life persona. His reticent son Uddhav, the heir, is cast in a
very different mould. He is not authoritarian though he cleverly led the Sena
to victory in the Mumbai civic polls for the fourth time in 2012.The worst blow
to Thackeray perhaps was the departure of his nephew Raj in 2006, and his
success in dividing the Marathi vote in the 15th Lok Sabha elections in Mumbai
and Thane, helping the Congress and the Nationalist Congress party win. Before
the 2012 polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Thackeray in a TV
interview wished for his son and nephew to be re-united. On July 16, 2012,
Uddhav, who went for a test to Lilavati Hospital, had an unexpected visitor in
the form of Raj, who was summoned by his uncle. In a further show of
camaraderie, Raj drove his cousin back home and visited him again after an
angioplasty was performed a few days later.There was much debate, fed by the
media, on the possible re-unification of the two Senas. Just before his death,
Thackeray orchestrated a reunion in the family, even if it was not a political
one. And that must have given him some solace. He leaves behind a time-tested
formula for electoral gains in Mumbai and the State, but one his nephew Raj and
the MNS may profit from even more than his own party.
Prof.
John Kurakar
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