Who was the real Bal ThackerayIJ Sujata Anandan’s book gives a glimpse of the man beyond the self-created persona and the news headlines. There is enough to give the reader a good picture of the complex man with simplistic ideas at one level and a propensity for cunning and opportunistic deal-making at another, says Sidharth Bhatia
It is interesting to speculate what Bal Thackeray, supreme leader of the Maharashtra-based nativist organisation Shiv Sena, would have thought of the political situation today. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is a partner of the Sena in the State and Centre, stormed to power in the last elections. The Sena won a handsome 18 seats in Maharashtra and got an important portfolio in the Cabinet. And now, after 15 long years, it is impatiently knocking at the door of Mantralaya in Mumbai, ready to take over the reins of power from the Congress-NCP combine.
Yet, it is fair to say that Thackeray would not have been a happy man. The prospect of power would have cheered him, but he would have understood the implications of the current political scenario — Narendra Modi stands as the tallest leader around and threatens to decimate all opposition, not just outside but within the party too. He treats the Sena will barely concealed disdain. During the election campaign, he held a rally in Mumbai where his body language made it apparent he considered Uddhav Thackeray as the junior partner. Thackeray Senior never cared for Modi and had openly suggested that Sushma Swaraj would make a better Prime Minister, but he wasn’t around to see how quickly things changed in 2012-13. Not surprisingly, relations between Modi and the Sena have been fraught.
But it is also interesting to speculate how the senior Thackeray would have handled the changed circumstances. Would he have been firmer with the BJP than his son isIJ Would Modi pay more respect to the Sena than he does nowIJ Going by Sujata Anandan’s very readable assessment of Bal Thackeray in her book, Hindu Hriday Samrat: How The Shiv Sena Changed Mumbai Forever, it is not easy to predict how things would have turned out, because while Thackeray senior was big on getting respect he thought was due to him from people in general, he was also pragmatic and adjustable. He would have found a modus vivendi with Modi if he thought it would help him capture power. At the same time, he would have periodically let it be known that he was in charge, at least in Mumbai if not in the State.
Changing positions is hardly unusual for a politician — it is their daily bread and butter. Thackeray was not a typical politician and had created a persona of being a plain-speaking, no-nonsense tough guy — what you saw was what you got. He would lash out at minorities (and not just Muslims; at various times, he was against Gujaratis and South Indians) in filthy language; no euphemisms for him. But he too was not beyond some astounding flip-flops. Anandan lists two major ones — capitulating on the Emergency and supporting Indira Gandhi wholeheartedly, and an alliance with the Dalit Panthers in the 1990s after spurning them for years and objecting to the renaming of Marathwada University after Dr BR Ambedkar, a major demand of Dalit groups. In the first instance, he began by opposing the Emergency but switched, and Anandan claims it was because he had been threatened with arrest as well as the shutting down of his magazine Marmik. Thackeray was petrified of being jailed and even more of being killed, a mortal fear that went back to his early political days when he had taken on the powerful Communists of the city. An earlier stint in prison in 1969 confirmed his worst fears and when the Emergency administration let it be known that the same experience awaited him, he came out in fulsome praise of Mrs Gandhi. That did not stop the magazine from being shut down anyway.
The alliance with the Dalits, at a time when they were a spent force, was garden-variety opportunism; there have been occasions when Thackeray even worked out deals with Muslim parties and of course the Congress, supporting them on occasion. It is with the Congress that Thackeray has had the most complex relationship, gladly taking their shadowy support while attacking them in public all the time.
Anandan convincingly shows by offering several examples of how the Congress not only backed but also saved the Sena on many occasions, especially at those times when the nativist party looked weakening and almost withering away. A loaded statement by a former Chief Minister just before local elections gave the Sena just the cause to take up and win. Indeed, in its early days, the Sena was called Vasant Sena, after the long reigning Congress Chief Minister Vasantrao Naik who allowed the Sena to grow, offering it not just benign encouragement but also protection.
Though the Sena was started as a way to take up the cause of the “sons of the soil”, Marathi speakers who felt alienated in their own State Capital after Bombay city became part of Maharashtra in 1960, the Congress soon realised it was a perfect vehicle to do things they couldn’t. Many Congressmen too were upset at what they saw as stepmotherly treatment to Marathis in the city, with jobs going to “outsiders”. But given the Congress’s own inclusivist ideology, they couldn’t openly come out in support of the cause — the Sena came in handy. Thackeray had originally set out to set up a cultural organisation — one of several — for this purpose and initially did little more than argue the case of the natives and print the names of outsiders holding plum jobs in Marmik.
Being a journalist and a cartoonist (and the son of a social reformist preacher), Thackeray knew about effective communication and his sardonic writing hit the spot with many, including mill workers, who were in the grip of the left parties. This suited mill owners and Bombay capitalists perfectly — frightened by what was happening in Calcutta, which was experiencing militant anti-capital leftism, they were desperate to ensure it was not repeated in Bombay. Two impulses came together and the Sena’s anti-communist programme got a big boost and, undoubtedly, funds from Bombay’s capitalist class. Anandan unfortunately does not explore this aspect of the Sena’s earlier rise, without which the party would not have got the foundation on which it built its edifice over the years. Thackeray was rabidly anti-communist and his stormtroopers never missed out an opportunity to get into a scrape with Unionists. One CPI MlA Krishna Desai was murdered by alleged Sena workers; they were defended by Ram Jethmalani. But was he ideologically against them or was doing the bidding of others, including the mill ownersIJ
The end result was a gradual decline in the left trade union movement corresponding with the rise of the Sena, which positioned itself as the saviour of the Marathi speakers, thus appealing to the insecurity complex of Maharashtrians — not just from the working class but also from the bourgeoisie, which too simmered at what they saw was injustice. Anandan shows how his earlier supporters included even the middle-class intelligentsia which was anti-Congress but had nowhere to go; the Socialists remained niche players, the Communists were frightening and the Jan Sangh was a laughably small entity.
Gradually middle-class support moved away and in its place stepped in the lumpen, unemployed and often unemployable youths, who found an anchor and a purpose and most of all, a free outlet for their goondaism. It soon became a party of extortionists and petty gangsters, making a tiny dent now and then in the political sphere, but was not able to achieve that critical mass support that could catapult it to State power.
But the greatest strength of Bal Thackeray was to slowly build up a citywide organisation, a network of local men who not just wielded power in their neighbourhoods but also, in time, became dispensers of justice and solvers of problems. A Sainik could be relied upon to help people get their documentation issues and even a much coveted school admission sorted out. Where the State failed, the Sena man stepped in. This paid off handsomely in municipal elections.
Yet, it had no traction at the State, leave alone the national level. This changed primarily for three reasons — a shift to Hindutva as the key plank of the party (hints were available earlier, but by the 1980s the move was decisive) and the concomitant heightened anti-Muslim rhetoric of Thackeray’s speeches; the alignment between the BJP and Shiv Sena; and the riots in Bombay in 1992-93 after the fall of the Babri Masjid. (Thackeray boasted that “his boys” had done it, but soon toned down the claim.)
The turmoil in the Congress after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated helped too. In 1995, the BJP-Sena combine came to power and immediately after that Thackeray called for a big all-party meet to discuss the Government’s priorities. It was a big moment in the party’s history and could set the way for bigger things to come, but it was not so easy to do away with the violent ways built into its DNA. The reign came to be known as a time of rampant extortion and harassment of businessmen, small and big, as well as professionals. The next time round, the combine was voted out and has remained in the Opposition since.
Subsequently, things have not been good for the Sena. Senior leaders have walked out, fed up of the party’s ways and unable to deal with lack of growth. Thackeray’s own nephew Raj Thackeray left his home and party to form his own. Pundits predicted that after the senior Thackeray was no more, his mild-mannered son Uddhav would find it difficult to run the family firm.
But it has not turned out that way. Uddhav has held his own and posted a victory in the elections to the Municipal Corporation, the richest in the country. The Sena has 18 MPs, the highest in its existence, and even if some victories were because of the Modi wave, some credit must go to Thackeray. And now it is gearing up to get back into power in the State. It is noteworthy that Uddhav has come close to declaring himself as the possible Chief Minister — it is a way of sending a message to the BJP and Modi that he should be taken seriously. The organisational structure built by Bal Thackeray has held strong, even if incidents like the one in Maharashtra Sadan where an MP force-fed a chapati to a fasting Muslim manager show it retains its old culture.
Anandan’s book is less a biography and more a political study and an analysis of the person whose writ ran in Bombay for years. As such it is a valuable source to anyone interested in Maharashtra politics and to understand Bombay, though it goes into too much detailed description of local level political developments, a style better suited to a news analysis rather than a book. Yet, there is enough to give the reader a good picture of the complex man with simplistic ideas at one level and a propensity for cunning and opportunistic deal-making at another. It also unravels the contradictions in his personality — was he really anti-Muslim or was it just a posture, given that his own doctor was a Muslim; he called himself a man completely free of casteist prejudices but bitterly opposed the Dalit parties; his activists went on the rampage against Valentine’s Day while he was thrilled when Michael Jackson visited his home, showing even the toilet where the singer went. Who was the real Bal ThackerayIJ Anandan’s book gives us a glimpse of the man beyond the self-created persona and the news headlines.
Soon after Thackeray died, journalists on national television ruminated about him, most going down memory lane with their personal encounters with the man. Going by those descriptions, the picture that emerged was one of a jolly good fellow, given to gossip over a warm beer whose greatest crime was to use colourful language. The Thackeray they had seen and remembered was not someone accessible to the rest of the city, and certainly not to the victims of riots and mayhem let loose by his workers.
Anandan, who had many meetings with him — and on occasion had to chide him for what he said — doesn’t fall into that trap. She is not starry-eyed and does not mince words. The reader thus gets a more honest picture of the Tiger. At a time when writing about politicians in India is either hagiographic or insider gossip, just this virtue of the writer makes the book worth picking up.
The writer, a senior journalist, is the author of Cinema Modern: The Navketan Story (2011), Amar Akbar Anthony: Masala, Madness and Manmohan Desai (2013) and India Psychedelic: The Story of a Rocking Generation (2014)