He’s sailing, ageing and inaccessible to partymen, but for all intents and purposes, Bal Thackeray is the Shiv Sena and the Shiv Sena is Bal Thackeray. The threat ‘‘Sahebana saanga’’ (tell Thackeray) arouses as much fear as it did 30-odd years ago, and is as effective in dousing dissent today as it was when ‘‘Saheb’’ was the hands-on leader. The coronation of Uddhav Thackeray as the party’s executive president hasn’t changed that; even party leaders are hard pressed to say what will.Originally from Pali village in Bhor taluka, the Sena chief’s father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, popularly known as Prabhodankar, shifted the family to Dadar in 1910. Though extremely poor, Prabhodankar’s grandmother was actively involved in the upliftment of Kolis, Christians and Muslims in areas around Dadar, like Matunga, Mahim and Worli. It was Bai who popularised the Thackeray name in these areas and laid the foundation for the Sena pocketborough that Dadar is today. Thackeray’s father, who continued the family’s reformist tradition, is said to be the Sena leader’s greatest inspiration.The birth of the Sena proper was preceded by the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement in the early 1950s. Their main demand was statehood for Maharashtra, separate from the Bombay province the region was part of then. With statehood in 1960, though, came an influx of South Indians, who were willing to do any kind of work. This triggered widespread dissatisfaction among Maharashtrians, who were anyway disadvantaged by the South Indians’ superior knowledge of English.The launch of Thackeray’s Marathi magazine Marmik coincided with this unrest. Its virulent attacks on South Indians — and his dictum Lungi uthao, pungi bajao — won Thackeray his first followers. In 1966, Thackeray held his first rally in Shivaji Park; it was the first indicator of the crowds his name could gather. The Sena was formally founded a year later, in October 1967.Widely regarded even then as a ‘stone-throwers’ party’, the Sena gained legitimacy with a little help from S K Patil, then president of the Mumbai Pradesh Congress Committee, who enlisted Thackeray’s support to defeat Krishna Menon in the 1967 Lok Sabha elections. In the process, Thackeray’s anti-South Indian stance found a political platform. Udipi restaurants and other South Indian establishments bore the brunt of the aftermath, but the Congress government was too much in its debt to consider banning the Sena.The Sena’s anti-Communist stand, in fact, found favour with the state’s subsequent Congress governments, which used it to stem the rising Communist tide in Maharashtra. Sainiks disrupted every Communist rally and destroyed its offices. In 1968, the Sena aligned with the Praja Socialist Party, contested the BMC elections and won 42 seats.In 1969, virulent Sena protests for the inclusion of Belgaum as a part of Maharashtra triggered communal violence. During Emergency, the offices of the Marmik were sealed and the then Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee chief Rajni Patel called for a ban on the Sena. Thackeray avoided the ban — and his own arrest — by conveying his support to Sanjay Gandhi. After Emergency, the party switched loyalty to the Congress, a move that saw senior Sena leaders Hemachandra Gupte and Datta Pradhan — a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader who set up the Sena shakhas on the RSS model — quit the party, join the Janata Party and accuse Thackeray of corruption. Despite this, Thackeray continued to support the Congress.Over the years, though, the Sena has shifted its stand depending on the opportunities available. And over the years, it has solidified its image as a one-man party. Will Uddhav Thackeray be able to change that? Let’s wait and watch.
