Trail of the Tiger: Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray: A Journey

By Radheshyam Jadhav

Trail of the Tiger tracks the personal and political journey of Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray against the backdrop of the changing narrative of Hindutva, and new connotations to Hindutva's subnational plot, with the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a new Hindu Hriday Samrat.

The trail of Uddhav Thackeray from a professional advertising photographer to Maharashtra's Chief Minister is not just his story. It is the story of saffron 'tiger' Balasaheb Thackeray's own family Mahabharata for political power and legacy that left the patriarch helpless during his sunset years. It is the story of one of the biggest upheavals in Indian politics where breaking a 30-year-old alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena joined Sonia Gandhi's camp, holding Sharad Pawar's finger. It is also the story of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) dilemma to deal with the tug of war in the Hindutva camp.

Based on news analysis, Trail of the Tiger unpacks media content and explores intertextuality to bring readers the authentic account of the Shiv Sena's saffron to secular trajectory under the leadership of Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9789389867367

Book preview

TRAIL OF THE TIGER

TRAIL OF THE TIGER

Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray

Radheshyam Jadhav

BLOOMSBURY INDIA

Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd

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are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in India 2021

This edition published 2021

Copyright © Radheshyam Jadhav, 2021

Pictures Courtesy @ Ajit Jayakar, 2021

Other Pictures Courtesy @ Fotocorp News Photo Agency, 2021

Radheshyam Jadhav has asserted his right under the Indian Copyright Act to be identified as the Author of this work

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

IThe Cub Who Earned His Stripes

The Saffron Sainiks

Balasaheb’s Dinga

The Entrepreneur

In Love

Camaraderie and Camera

Corridors of Power

II Uddhav, the ‘Arjuna’ in the Thackeray Mahabharata

‘Stood like a Rock’

Rival Raj

The Warring Brother

The Ambitious Sister-in-law

Rashmi—The Charioteer

Did Balasaheb Play Dhritarashtra?

III The Buccaneer-Scholar

Starting Is What Matters!

Mumbai Mantra

New Hue

The Sena’s Conversion

Yes, Boss!

IV Modi Vs Thackeray

Who Is India’s ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’?

The Tiger-Lion Tussle

Maharashtra’s Modi

Sena Sans Shiv

The Battle for Hindutva

Prelude to the Break-up

VChief Minister Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray

The Narendra-Devendra Formula

Uddhav Dares the BJP

Saffron Separation

The Predicament of the RSS

Uddhav Steps out of the Citadel

BJP’s Midnight Strike

Pawar Play

Thackeray Sarkar

VI Saffron Is Secular!

Uddhav’s Sena in the ‘Secular’ Camp

The Future Trail

The COVID-19 Crisis

The Political Test

Back to Balasaheb?

References

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It was Bloomsbury’s Praveen Tiwari’s idea that Uddhav Thackeray’s trail in politics be documented. The support I had from him and Nitin Valecha helped me complete the task. Data collection and archival access were vital for the book. I’m grateful to Mahesh Patil for giving me access to his personal collection of Saamana archives. I could analyse stories in the old issues of The Times of India with the help of the library archives at the Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts. I thank the school director Dr Anita Patankar, lecturer Ananya Dutta and librarian Smita Kadam for their assistance.

My young friends Angad Taur, Shekhar Paigude and Snehal Warekar helped me collect data. Journalists Dr Vijay Chormare, Soumitra Pote and Arun Nigavekar extended all the help during the process.

Discussions on current and political issues with my friend Prashant Prakash Pawar and colleagues at The Hindu Business Line, Poornima Joshi, Allan Lasrado and A Srinivas helped me in the process. The support and encouragement of my editor at The Business Line, R Srinivasan, helped me explore field reporting extensively and this gave me a grassroots-level insight into the current political developments.

Thought-provoking discussions with the Times Insight Group head Shankar Raghuraman helped me analyse political complexities. My former colleagues Rema Nagarajan and Atul Thakur helped me keep going during tough times. Atul also helped me analyse the data for the book.

My former editors at The Times of India Jaideep Bose, Derick D’sa and Joy Purkayastha encouraged and supported me all these years and gave me the opportunity to crisscross the state for field reporting. Without the journalistic writings of Sanjay Raut, S Balakrishnan, Ambarish Mishra and Prakash Akolkar, it would have been impossible for me to analyse the Shiv Sena’s as well as Uddhav Thackeray’s rise in politics.

The book could not have been completed without the valuable inputs of my gifted editor, Malini Nair.

Introduction

Ihad a specific research framework in mind when I was discussing a book on Uddhav Thackeray’s political journey with Bloomsbury. I decided to use more than one research methodology to build the narrative.

Though Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray dominated Maharashtra’s media for decades, there is very little written material available on Uddhav until the 1990s. But this changed after the Shiv Sena-BJP government came to power in 1995 and Uddhav became more active in the party’s affairs. As a professional journalist with over two decades of experience, I have written thousands of stories but never needed to visit newspaper archives to analyse my work. This is likely the case with other journalists too.

Several journalists in Maharashtra have covered Shiv Sena as a beat. In the first few decades of its existence, Shiv Sena and its politics were largely limited to Mumbai. But after 1995, the party spread across the state and the number of reporters covering it multiplied. Revisiting stories written by these journalists and some that I wrote was an exciting experience—looking back helped solve many riddles.

The rise of Uddhav Thackeray—from a professional photographer in an advertising firm to Maharashtra’s chief minister—is not just his story. It is also the story of the saffron ‘tiger’, Balasaheb Thackeray, who was left helpless in his last years by the family’s Mahabharata over political power and legacy. It is a story of the changing narrative of Hindutva politics and the new sub-national narrative ushered in by the rise of Narendra Modi as the new Hindu Hriday Samrat. It is also the story of the biggest upheaval in Maharashtra’s politics where saffron turned secular, placing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in a predicament. Against this backdrop, connecting dots with the news stories helped explain Uddhav Thackeray’s journey in greater detail.

But there are stories behind stories and news to be found between the lines. Along with news analyses, I have relied on books, YouTube videos and personal interviews with various stakeholders to understand Uddhav Thackeray’s personal and political journey. Reporters who have written on Shiv Sena for decades have stories to share about him and the people in Uddhav’s circle have their own version of these stories. Considering the huge volume of data, it was not possible to do a content or semiotic analysis but I have tried to unpack news stories and understand their intertextuality against the backdrop of contemporary political developments.

I decided to stick to media content and its creators for this study. Uddhav Thackeray, in various interviews, has expressed his opinions on various issues and I have used these as part of my research.

I have analysed news, features and interviews in The Times of India and the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana to comprehend Uddhav’s rise in politics. I have also accessed various other newspapers including The Hindu, The Hindu Business Line, The Indian Express and Marathi dailies Loksatta and Lokmat. YouTube channels of various news organisations including ABP Maza, News18 Lokmat, Zee 24 Taas, BloombergQuint and India Today have facilitated my research. Saamana’s executive editor Sanjay Raut’s writings in Saamana and his collection of interviews with Balasaheb Thackeray published by Mehta Publishing House proved valuable.

The book is a journalistic analysis largely based on media content. As a journalist and communication researcher, I have tried my best to put together an objective analysis of Uddhav Thackeray’s personality.

I am confident that readers who are curious about Uddhav Thackeray, Balasaheb’s Hindutva politics and how Prime Minister Modi’s rise in politics changed the Hindutva narrative would find the book interesting.

I

The Cub Who Earned His Stripes

The Saffron Sainiks

As fireworks lit up Mumbai’s evening sky, Shiv Sainiks (literally, Shiv Sena’s ‘soldiers’) chanted ‘Jai Bhavani, Jai Shivaji’ and ‘Kon aala re, kon aala? Shiv Senecha wagh aala (Who’s come, who’s come? Shiv Sena’s tiger has come)’.

Sitting amidst the sea of people at the iconic Shivaji Park in Dadar, Mahesh Patil looked charged. Teary-eyed by the crowd’s fervour, he raised his fist and added his voice to the slogans. As he looked around, memories came flooding back. There was the small memorial where his ‘God’, Balasaheb Thackeray, had been cremated in 2012. His party, Shiv Sena, was bouncing back to power almost after two decades. The party had fought an existential battle after Balasaheb’s death and today, it had been proved that his Shiv Sena was here to stay. Patil had first heard Balasaheb at a public rally in Pune in 1997. Since then, he had followed him almost everywhere till the day the leader’s mortal remains had been consigned to flames.

Shivaji Park had come into existence in 1925, but it had opened for use only in 1927, the year Balasaheb was born. For 45 years, he had roared from this ground every year, addressing the Dussehra rally and reeling in the crowds¹. Shivaji Park became ‘Shiv Tirtha’—the place of pilgrimage for Shiv Sainiks. On 19 June 1966, with the blessings of his Hindu reformist father, Keshav Thackeray, Balasaheb had launched Shiv Sena (the army of Chhatrapati Shivaji, the warrior Marathi king). The name of the organisation had been suggested by his father and the objective at the time was not to become a major political player but to fight for the rights of Marathis. On 30 October 1966, Balasaheb had addressed the party’s first public meeting on this ground and since then Shivaji Park had become synonymous with the party and its leader. The park had seen his rise and rise.

Now Mahesh was watching Balasaheb’s son, Uddhav Thackeray, clad in a dark saffron kurta stepping on to the gigantic dais at Shivaji Park. As the crowd cheered him, fireworks lit the sky and Marathi folk songs rang out over the PA system. The stage was set for the oath-taking of Maharashtra’s new chief minister. Mahesh had seen Uddhav the first time in 1997 at a street-corner rally in Rethre Budruk village in Karad taluka. The anxious young leader was finding it difficult to articulate his thoughts and it was making the crowd anxious. But for Mahesh, Uddhav was the son of ‘God’ and it was his duty to stand by him at all times.

Mahesh, who had studied till the tenth standard and works as a ladies’ tailor, came from a family of small labourers in Virawade, a tiny village in Karad. He now lives and works in a rented, tin-shed tailoring shop in Umbraj town in Karad. His wife and children live with her parents in Pune. In his 50s, Mahesh still struggles to earn a living but never misses Uddhav’s calls for political movements and rallies, and attends every single party programme. He spends almost everything he earns on the party.

For 20 years, Mahesh has preserved every word spoken or written by Balasaheb. He even has issues of Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana going back 15 years, for example. ‘This paper is sacred. See here,’ he says, putting a finger just above the paper’s masthead on a line that says—‘Founder-editor Bal Thackeray’.

When Balasaheb had been hospitalised, Mahesh had run to Mumbai only to hear that the leader was fine. He was returning to Karad by train but around the time he reached home, Balasaheb had breathed his last. Mahesh had dashed back to Mumbai to see his leader one last time. He had sobbed like a child and swore never to abandon the party.

After Balasaheb’s demise when political analysts, media and even Shiv Sena leaders were unsure of the organisation’s future, Mahesh had been confident of its survival. From Mumbai to Ayodhya, Mahesh has followed Uddhav Thackeray everywhere.

‘After all, he is not only my leader, but also Shiv Sena pramukh’s (chief’s) son,’ says Mahesh who wears a rudraksha strung on a thread around his neck. This was one of the rudrakshas used to weigh Balasaheb on his 85th birthday in Mumbai. Mahesh had lined up along with other fans to bag one rudraksha in his leader’s memory. He has even laminated the STD phone bill from the time he had called Matoshree, the Thackeray home in Mumbai’s Bandra East area, from a landline. ‘I spoke to him and wished him a happy birthday. That was the best day of my life. I got to speak with my Daivat (God),’ says Mahesh.

When Uddhav read the first line of the oath as a chief minister—‘I, Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray…’—the crowds thronging Shivaji Park were electrified by the reference to Balasaheb. For them, the man taking the oath was not just Uddhav Thackeray, he was Uddhav ‘Balasaheb’ Thackeray.

On 28 November 2019, when Uddhav took oath as the chief minister, it had been 53 years since his father founded Shiv Sena. As a mark of gratitude to the party and its followers, Uddhav went down on his knees on the stage. He knew that the Sena stood on the shoulders of men and women like