India has more than its share of ultra-provincial political organisations, such as Amra Bangali in West Bengal and the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam. But the one that taught them the ropes is Maharashtra’s Shiv Sena, whose founder and supremo Balasaheb Thackeray is the country’s most dictatorial demagogue and an unabashed admirer of Adolf Hitler. The man was once a political cartoonist – but nothing survives of his ironic or satirical avatar. That he is dead serious about the nature of his xenophobia is evident from his favourite backdrop when he is being photographed or holding durbar – a tiger skin.

The Shiv Sena was formed on Dussehra in October 1966 in Shivaji Park, a sprawling Central Mumbai neighbour-hood and still the sanctum of the Sena. The Shiv Sena’s idols are the goddess Tulja Bhavani and Chhatrapati Shivaji, both close to Maharashtrian hearts. Thackeray chose the two as the Sena’s battle cry, “Jai Bhavani, Jai Shivaji”, which is the Sena’s rallying cry even today.

At that time, few paid attention to a bunch of raucous provincialists and disaffected lower-class Maharashtrians. They should have. Soon enough, the Sena’s slogan, “Amchi Mumbai” (My Mumbai) and “Mumbai-for Maha-rashtrians” spread like wildfire. Initially, it was directed against Tamils who had come to Mumbai for a better life; then, it turned its baleful glare on the Malabar Muslims, who had taken over the profitable coastal smuggling franchise. The Shiv Sena managed to eat into the network, and then forayed into the protection racket. In the past two decades, with unemployment spreading like the plague, has its paranoia that non-Maharashtrians were “stealing” jobs from the sons-of-the-soil found a popular echo. Using this leverage, the Sena won a dozen seats in the Mumbai civic elections.

For decades, Thackeray has had the decisive say over most state government decisions (whatever the party in power). But legitimising it took time: only in 1985, when he entered the democratic mainstream, could he embed his people in the Maharashtra State Assembly and then in the Lok Sabha. For better or for worse, it has remained in the mainstream: the Speaker in the 13th Lok Sabha, which was dissolved this February, was a Sainik, Manohar Joshi.

Today, 38 years after the Sena’s birth, and 77-years-old, Thackeray has more permanence in his pocket than many more legit politicos: he has flourished despite never having held civil office in any capacity. He has weathered court cases, police custody, and even murder allegations. He has bulled his way through desertions (archenemy Chhagan Bhujbal, who recently resigned over allegations of involvement in the Telgi scandal, was once a valued protégé). He has lived through political train wrecks that have destroyed entire gove

Thackeray’s Bollywood When megastar Amitabh Bachchan’s name was linked with a major political scandal, a Mumbai youth organisation threatened to block his films. Bachchan met Thackeray, who announced that Shiv Sainiks would guard cinema houses. With Sanjay Dutt in custody in connection with the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts which killed 550 people, his father, Sunil Dutt, genuflected to Thackeray, who announced that Sanjay would be released on bail if the Sena came to power. In 1995, Sanjay was out. Sunil Dutt showed his gratitude by opting out, in the 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha elections, of his Northwest Mumbai constituency. The seat was won by the Sena’s Madhukar Sarpotdar. When Dutt re-entered the contest, it returned to the Congress. On January 22-23 this year, still grateful, Sanjay Dutt attended a mahayagna on the occasion of Thackeray’s birthday. Thackeray’s controversial daughter-in-law Smita produced a Hindi movie. She was elected unopposed to the presidentship of the film trade body, the Indian Motion Pictures Association (IMPA). Sena and the underworld The unlamented Chhagan Bhujbal was an ace mobiliser of muscle-power for his boss. Also, at one of his press conferences, Thackeray remarked, “If they have Dawood Ibrahim, we have Arun Gawli.” “They” was the Congress, as allegations flew thick and fast that Dawood Ibrahim had been killing Sena-BJP politicians to suit the Congress. When his statement was headlined by newspapers, Thackeray tried to wriggle out of the controversy by claiming that he was being facetious. But did anyone believe him?

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Since 1986, the Sena’s ideology has been of a militant Hindutva, more truculent than Hindu fundamentalist organisations linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But it hasn’t been inflexible. When it was formed, communists held sway among Maharashtra’s teeming and desperately poor working class. The Naxalites were turning West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh into their personal battlefield. Maha-rashtrian labour unions built up the most potent labour clout in the country, turning many powerful industrialists into plaintive messes.

Thackeray and his cohort, willing to march at his call, came as a boon for these industrialists He wanted political recognition; they wanted the unions kneecapped. Mumbai’s powerful textile lobby had been begging the Congress to rein in the communists, but the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, found herself stymied.

Then, cleverly utilising Thackeray, the Congress dealt the state’s communists a fatal blow. Union leader Krishna Desai was knifed to death in 1968. The police suspected that Thackeray had engineered the assault. The charge was never proved in court but the event became a watershed in Sena history. Its strength was established. In due course, Thackeray set up his own Bharatiya Kamgar Sena. The Sena now championed Maharashtra in its border dispute with Karnataka (a matter still smouldering), and Thackeray began his journey to becoming Maha-rashtra’s top hatchetman.

But it wasn’t a smooth odyssey. Thackeray’s verbal incontinence got him into jail in 1969, and Shiv Sainiks stopped the car of the then deputy prime minister, Morarji Desai, outside the airport. With Mumbai burning, the government had to bury its pride and ask Thackeray to issue a written appeal for peace from inside jail. The missive was bawled out in the troubled areas from loudspeakers in moving police vans. It took mere minutes for normalcy to return. Thackeray came out of jail with his power intact, if not multiplied. (This was the time that gave rise to rabble-rousers like Chhagan Bhujbal, who went on to metamorphose into Thackeray’s biggest pain in the neck, and who resigned recently from the Maharashtra government after being implicated in the Telgi scandal.).

Then, Thackeray committed one of his biggest indiscretions in a career full of them: he openly supported Indira Gandhi’s draconian 1975 Emergency. (Admiring Hitler, he could hardly have done differently – but critics didn’t make such allowances.). Thackeray said, “If government employees work diligently and if trains run on time, what is wrong with the Emergency?” After the Janata Party came to power two years later, Thackeray could have been prosecuted and straitjacketed. Luckily for him, the Congress, which continued to head Maharashtra, spared him.

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