Marathi’s in particular and Indians in general will miss a very strong leader the Bal Thakrey

Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray was born on 23 January 1926 in Pune, Maharashtra, India, popularly known as Balasaheb Thackeray, is an Indian politician, founder and chief of the Shiv Sena.

Balasaheb Thackeray was born to Keshav Sitaram Thackeray in a lower-middle class, marathi family. Keshav Thackeray was a progressive social activist and writer who was against caste biases and played a key role in the Samyukta Maharashtra Chalwal in the 1950s to form the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra with Mumbai as its capital.

Balasaheb Thackeray started his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal in Mumbai in the 1950s. His cartoons were also published in the Sunday edition of The Times of India. In 1960, he launched a cartoon weekly Marmik with his brother. He used it to campaign against the growing influence of non-Marathi people in Mumbai targeting Gujaratis and South Indian labor workers.

Bal Thackeray formed the Shiv Sena on 19 June 1966 with the intent of fighting for the rights of the natives of the state of Maharashtra. The early objective of the Shiv Sena was to ensure job security for Maharashtrians against immigrants from southern India, Gujaratis and Marwaris. In those years many jobs were going to migrants from south India and the anti-Communist Sena picked up this issue. Its slogan -- 'lungi hatao pungi bajao' -- caught the imagination of Maharashtrian youth who flocked to its flag in huge numbers.  Thackeray was also very vocal in his controversial opposition to people who migrate to Mumbai, to non-Hindus (especially Muslims), and to illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. In the late 1960s to mid-1970s, as part of his ‘Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians’ campaign, Thackeray threatened migrants from South India with harm unless they left Mumbai.

The defeat of the Communists before the Sena rose to power in Mumbai; the Communist Party of India had a strong presence among textile workers in the city. Its popular leader Krishna Desai, a member of the Maharashtra assembly, was murdered and the Sena was blamed for it. The Communists alleged the Congress government supported the incident because it wanted the Communists to be driven out of Mumbai. After Desai's death, the Communists began losing their clout in the city. Now they hardly have any presence. The Sena wrested control of major trade unions in Mumbai from the Communist Party of India and demanded protection money (extortion) from mainly Gujarati and marwari business leaders. It later allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the common issue of Hindu Nationalism which both parties believed in. The BJP-Shiv Sena combine won the 1995 Maharashtra State Assembly elections and came to power.

The Sena derives its clout from its local shakhas (party offices). Most of the local issues are decided at theshakhas, which are spread across Maharashtra. The Sena maintains its Hindutva ideology and is a right-wing political party. It dumped its anti-South Indian stand in 1970 and drifted to Hindutva after a long spell in the wilderness in the 1970s. It has been accused of instigating many riots in the state, including the Mumbai riots of the late 1960s, the Bhiwandi riots in 1984 and the Mumbai riots of 1992-93. The Sena says it is a nationalistic party and does not discriminate against any religion, caste and creed. 'We believe in nationalism and will go to any extent to eliminate the traitors and enemies of India,' the Sena chief has often said.

On July 28, 1999 Bal Thackeray was banned from voting and contesting in any election for six years from December 11, 1995 on the recommendations of the Election Commission. After the six-year voting ban on Bal Thackeray was lifted in 2005, he voted for the first time in the 2006 BMC elections. Thackeray was claimed that the Shiv Sena has helped the Marathi manoos (the Marathi commoner) in Mumbai and also fought for the rights of Hindu people, Thackeray was a staunch Hindu and believed that Hindus must be organised to struggle against those who oppose our identity and religion, especially in the public sector. Opposition leftist parties allege that the Shiv Sena has done little to solve the problem of unemployment facing a large proportion of Maharashtrian youth during its tenure, in contradiction to its ideological foundation of ‘sons of the soil.’

During the 'insider-outsider' controversy  against migrants in the Mumbai city,  Prof Hari Narke has claimed  Bal Thackeray was a refugee from Madhya Pradesh:  Like every other person in Mumbai, the Thackerays too came to Mumbai for jobs two generations ago and as such have no right to assault those coming to the financial capital in search of livelihood, said Hari Narke, professor at Mahatma Phule chair in Pune University, in an article published in Rashtravadi, the mouthpiece of the Nationalist Congress Party. Known for being politically savvy, Mr Narke was flayed Raj Thackeray over attacks on migrants in Mumbai. The professor's 'research' on Thackeray's origin was incidentally based on the writings of another Thackeray. “Raj should read the autobiography of his grandfather Prabodhankar Thackeray,” Mr Narke said. Prabodhankar, Bal's father and his younger brother Srikant Thackeray, who is Raj's father, studied in Madhya Pradesh. He has written about how he travelled to other states for livelihood.“This proves that the Thackerays, who are not original inhabitants of Mumbai, came to the Mumbai city in search of a livelihood,” the scholar says. The article recalls how Mr Narke was instrumental in getting Prabodhankar's writings published in 1995 by the Maharashtra government. Mr Narke questioned that Thakreys who came to Mumbai two generations ago to earn their livelihood, the right to beat up others who also come Mumbai in search of jobs.

During the tenure of the Shiv Sena-BJP government from 1995 to 1999, Thackeray was nicknamed ‘remote control’ since he played a major role in government policies and decisions from behind the scenes. Now the party is run by his youngest son Uddhav.  Due to the controversy over the real successor of the Shiv Sena and Bal Thakreys support to Udhav and after being allegedly 'sidelined' by the Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav the Raj Thakrey, On 9 March 2006, formed the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS). Shiv Sainiks (Shiv Sena members) who supported Raj’s leadership, in contrast to his cousin Uddhav (Bal Thackeray's son), joined the MNS. The party was founded on the pseudo ideology of being the benefactor of the local Marathi population (Marathi Manoos). Since its inception, the party has been attacking the north Indians in Maharashtra politically as well as physically.

Raj openly criticized new urban developments on Pune's various hillocks in support of environment.In 2003, Raj pledged to plant 76 lakh trees across Maharashtra, a project that started, but was never completed. In 2009, elections, his party ate into the substantial marathi votes of Shiv sena, bringing congress-NCP ally to power. 

Let us see how the Bal Thakrey’s vision will be taken forward by both the brothers Udhav and Raj through their ideologically same but different parties of Shiv Sena and MNS in the absence of the connecting link and motivational force of Bal Thakrey. But one thing is very clear that all the Marathi’s in particular and we Indians in general will miss a very strong leader and the void created by the Bal Thakrey in political circle will be almost impossible to be fulfilled.