Bal Thackeray - A Bully

Bal Thackeray is probably the most senior of all active politicians in India today.

Though he has been around for over four decades, Thackeray has never once propounded a progressive agenda for Maharashtra or laid out his vision of how the state can flourish.

All his agenda has always been to rid Bombay of the communities that he claimed were oppressing the Maharashtrian people: South Indians and Gujaratis. Contrary to what he may claim, even Thackeray’s own family is not from Bombay, the Shiv Sena treated them as its natural constituency.

Since those early beginnings, Thackeray’s agenda has hardly wavered. It has been based on telling Maharashtrians that they are being discriminated against and that only the Shiv Sena will fight for their rights. All that changes are the targets of Thackeray’s ire. He forgave Gujaratis fairly early on but till the late-70s was still aggressively anti-South Indian. In the 80s, he sensed the makings of a Hindu backlash and promptly shifted to an anti-Muslim agenda. That drove the Sena closer to the BJP but in recent years as diminishing returns have set in on that agenda, Thackeray has decided to pick on people from UP and Bihar who, he claims, are stealing the jobs meant for Maharashtrians.

It is instructive that at the end of over four decades in existence, all of them with Thackeray as its supreme leader the Shiv Sena still has no positive agenda to inspire Maharashtrians.

Despite 40-plus years of presence, no matter how much Thackeray raves and rants, political power seems far away. Worse still, as his age catches up with him, his legacy (such as it is) also seems in danger of slipping away. When Thackeray does ultimately dies, the Sena will wither and die. Its place will be taken by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, the breakaway organisation founded by Thackeray’s nephew Raj.

One reason why Raj succeeded in making a relatively strong showing at the last election was because he adopted his uncle’s old strategy. He appealed to unemployed Marathi youth and capitalised on the frustrations of the Maharashtrian middle class. Had Maharashtra been left behind? Were Maharashtrians being marginalised in Bombay? Had North Indians taken all the jobs? And so on.

Stung by his nephew’s success and dismayed by the failure of his son and heir apparent, the generally soft-spoken Uddhav, to mobilise the Marathi masses, Thackeray decided that the Shiv Sena needed to return to the intimidation of old.

The question is: can the Congress government in Maharashtra guarantee law and order in Bombay? Can he stand up to the sort of bullying that we have come to know so well over the last 40 years? History shows us that each time Thackeray has found an opponent who fights back, the Sena backs down. The only language Thackeray understands is strength.

Sadly, that is not a language that many speak. And Bombay pays the price.