Bal Thackeray's Fractured Legacy

Image: Reuters

Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray

{Note: We have received an overwhelming response to this article. A few readers have taken offence to the reference to the CKP community in the article.
Mr Ketkar has sent us a letter, clarifying the context and reason for his reference to the community. Please read it on next page at the end of this article.}

Balasaheb Thackeray was a celebrity par excellence. He loved the limelight. He enjoyed the controversies. He manipulated the media with ease and often took positions to provoke the elite. He attacked the powerful and privileged. He ridiculed the government and ministers. He made fun of the high and mighty. He looked at the world, not as a politician but as a wild, wayward kid. He used a cartoonist’s brush to lambast as well as laugh. He wore unconventional clothing, just as he used unconventional language.

Yet he was adored by the masses as well as the privileged. Dhirubhai Ambani to Rahul Bajaj, Dilip Vengsarkar to Javed Miandad, Amitabh Bachchan to Lata Mangeshkar, Lal Krishna Advani to Sharad Pawar and Pritish Nandy to Mahesh Manjrekar—have all sought his company and relished photo-ops with him.

What was the magic or the charisma that attracted people towards him? And how did the Thackeray phenomenon take shape? Surely he did not plan or chalk out his career. He was never a planner or a strategist. He was not well read in history or politics. He had very little understanding of economics. He was not even a thinker in the classical or non-classical sense of originality. He never addressed seminars, conferences or gave key-keynote speeches. Indeed, he had no ideas or causes to espouse. Yet he had an appeal which is partly inexplicable and partly understandable in the context of Maharashtra's chequered history.

The Shiv Sena was formed in 1966 almost six years after the state of Maharashtra was formed. It was a time of political turmoil in the country. Indira Gandhi had just taken over as prime minster after Shastri’s death. She was finding her feet in uncertain political sands. The Congress was sort of leaderless and even directionless. The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, which had spearheaded the agitation for creation of the Marathi State, had dissolved after achieving its objective. The Indian economy was reeling under stagflation. Unemployment, particularly in the middle class, was rising as there was little investment. The generation born after independence had come of age and was looking for jobs as well as a socio-political identity. It was in this political vacuum, that young Bal Thackeray began his campaign through his weekly magazine Marmik. His main message was that Marathi youth are unemployed because of the influx of "upras", the migrants. The Marathi people have been betrayed, he thundered.  This struck a chord with the unemployed Marathi youth in Mumbai. They had found the enemy!  

Neither the Shiv Sena, nor its reincarnation the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, grew beyond this cause. The philistine urban middle class and frustration of the unemployed created the right atmosphere for anyone willing to take up cudgels. Bal, as he was known then, with no political experience, no ideology and no organization entered the fray. His appeal for direct action `inspired’ disoriented Marathi Mumbaikars. The Shiv Sena was born on the streets and thrived on mindless action. It was a text book case of anarchy leading to fascism. Even Bal Thackeray had no idea of what was happening, neither was he equipped to comprehend the complexity. In this atmosphere of chaos people found a leader who was as clueless as them.

No wonder then, that he never had any political position. Not that he could have achieved it, but the point is he never aspired for any post. He enjoyed holding the remote control, even when the Shiv Sena-BJP government was in power. He enjoyed the aura and halo that was being created around him. He had disdain for trappings of power. Also he never wanted the responsibility that came with it. He never wanted to be accountable to anyone. He wanted to be maverick, irreverent, unencumbered and also irresponsible. That was the kind of freedom he wanted and enjoyed.

It is indeed strange, that a man who prided himself for being Marathi, fought for the Marathi identity, invoked Marathi culture and embraced Maratha history, never really took any interest in promoting historical research or going beyond simple references to Shivaji Maharaj. He never bothered to promote the Marathi language. For him, only politics mattered, not as a theme but as a rabblerousing technique. That Marathi identity touched a chord with the mass in Mumbai, which was getting marginalized. Even in the city that was India’s commercial capital, there were hardly any large Marathi-led corporations, very few celebrated Marathi industrialists with global ambition and even fewer Marathi stock brokers.

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