Unlike any other politician, Bal Thackeray dominated Mumbai for ever so long that he became an emblematic feature of Mumbai. Any imagery of the city was never complete without a share for him. Fact is, his party has been controlling its civic destiny for decades though there is nothing much to show for it. Also, his party unthinkably broke the Congress monopoly to run the state for five years from 1995.
Bal Thackeray was unique among the politicians. He never claimed he was one. He was only a cartoonist, he often claimed, and insisted that he would have preferred to change things by his biting cartoons. Instead, he had to address rallies, and guide his flock to help change things. This flock was forever ready to do his any bidding, including mayhem right from the day the
Shiv Sena was started in 1966. To a cartoonist, symbols mattered most. Even in his two-storeyed Matoshree home, in the small drawing room in which barely half a dozen could squeeze in, his throne-like chair gave him the dimensions of being a huge persona despite his thin, lanky physical frame. The stencilled tiger, the party’s emblem converts his suggestions — I have never seen him raise his voice — into roars.
His speeches on poll campaigns and at his annual Dussehra outings at the Shivaji Park were a series of verbal images he would have excelled in conveying in black ink on paper to be carried either in The Free Press Journal or later, his Marmik. The latter led to the Marathi people rallying around him to get what they felt were denied to them: Jobs. One cannot live on pride in a language alone; one also had to earn a living. It is here that he nicely brought language and livelihoods together into a combustible mixture, which helped the party grow rapidly. Thackeray’s and his party’s initial intent was socio-economic and not political but morphed into a political party whose leader, even to the educated class, was mesmeric. One cannot be an agitator and not be rubbing shoulders with established politicians. It had to happen.
First the communist trade unions across Mumbai used bandhs as their weapon, which were largely confined to industrial establishments, notably textiles. Datta Samant, with his strong-arm tactics reached essentially textiles with a telling but adverse impact.
Thackeray’s turn, he did one better than even George Fernandes whose influence was limited to railways, cabbies and civic workers. Shiv Sena’s use of muscle and threat of its use meant everyone complied with Thackeray to halt the city in its tracks.
This bestowed the party with an image of being lumpen-filled. The manner in which the party was run, the manner in which one person’s wish was everyone’s command, made it dictatorial. He had no qualm in publicly admiring Hitler. But unlike Hitler who ran his Third Reich, Thackeray preferred to be on the sidelines of a formal government but ran it. Those who fell foul, as Manohar Joshi did, had to give up offices.
There never was a pretence to being internally democratic. It is unlikely to be under his successors. The Matheran election of party office bearers, which catapulted Uddhav Thackeray to the second ranking post, was to nominally comply with the Election Commission requirements. There the nephew proposed the supremo’s son whose son now looms large as the subsequent baton-holder. Thackeray was never apologetic since every other political party, notably the Congress have had similar succession plans.
Nephew Raj Thackeray splitting from the party to set up his own outfit was less a political event for Bal Thackeray.
It was like a family split, a division that had to happen because of the differences between the cousins on how to run it. Uddhav’s strength was his father; Raj’s was his uncle – both being the same person. The future holds two possibilities: one, in the absence of the founder, the two could sink their differences since both stand to gain; two, they could compete for the turf much more vehemently since Raj need not be inhibited a whit and knows that Uddhav on his own would have to prove a thing or two.
Capturing power in the state in 1995, retaining the same vote share again in the 1999 elections, did not improve the party’s vision or the depth of thinking; it became much what the ousted government was – corrupt, promises remaining just that. It adhered to its basic Marathi manoos agenda of which they made convenient noises dependent on the mood about migrants, about “nationalistic Muslims”. Hindutva and anti-Pakistan postures, however, are the unchanging commitments. He considered his party’s Hindutva more vibrant than that of even Bajrang Dal post the 1993 riots in which, the party had claimed unabashedly, an active role. That despite a Commission of Inquiry, Thackeray remained untouched is manifestation of his power. When anyone wanted to deal with him — be it a breach of legislative privilege or arrest for a criminal defamation suit, the first thought that occurred to the rulers and even those who would bay for his arrest was: What would happen to Mumbai? That betrayed the weakness of the Congress and later its allies, but that also showed that Shiv Sena, especially Bal Thackeray could be showered with contempt, but fear of the man reigned.
Little wonder it flourished as a political party.

The writer is the former deputy editor of the Hindu