As Thackerays come full circle with socialist ‘friends’, a look at political compulsions then & now

The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) Sunday forged an alliance with 21 socialist parties in Maharashtra. While the party had already shaken hands with socialist parties as part of the national INDIA alliance, on Sunday, they took the relationship a step forward. 

All 21 socialist parties — including Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular), Rashtriya Seva Dal and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), among others — agreed to come together under the umbrella of ‘socialist parties’ and fight elections in Maharashtra under the leadership of Shiv Sena (UBT). 

And with that, the Thackeray-led outfit came full circle, with many bittersweet memories with socialist leaders and some severe rivalry along the way.

Ajinkya Gaikwad, assistant professor of politics and civics at Mumbai’s SIES College, told ThePrint, “I see Sunday’s alliance as one born more out of a political compulsion. In 1968 too, it was a political compulsion, but it was a bit more natural. It was feeding into the social rhetoric of migrants vs natives at the time. Socialist parties also stood for the rights of working-class Maharashtrians.”

A lot has changed since then, said Gaikwad, especially in the 1980s and 1990s when Shiv Sena acquired a dominant Hindu, and even an anti-Dalit rhetoric.

“Today’s alliance is a battle for survival,” he added.

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Thackerays and socialists

Much before the Shiv Sena was formed, Bal Thackeray’s father, Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, better known as Prabodhankar Thackeray — a rationalist — used to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Leftist leaders, such as Shreedhar Mahadev Joshi, Shripad Dange, Narayan Gore, Annabhau Sathe and Prahlad Keshav Atre as part of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti. 

The Samiti steered the agitation for statehood for Maharashtra with Bombay as its capital, with the core of the movement being the mill workers and labourers. Maharashtra gained statehood with Bombay as its capital on 1 May, 1960.

Speaking at a meeting of representatives of the 21 socialist parties with the Shiv Sena (UBT) Sunday, Uddhav Thackeray reminisced about some of the stories that his grandfather used to tell him from the time of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. 

“My grandfather used to tell me that however late it was at night, he used to stay up waiting, wondering why ‘Baburao’ (how he addressed Atre) had not called. This is all before I was born,” he said.

Uddhav was born in 1960 after Maharashtra got statehood. There was relative stability and the appeal and purpose of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti were on the wane in the years to follow. And gradually, the relationship between Thackerays and leftists took a turn.

Speaking on Sunday, Thackeray said, he was born in the “Thackeray-Atre era,” referring to a time of nasty political slugfests between Bal Thackeray and Atre — a prominent writer, educationist and socialist, and the founder editor of Marathi language newspaper Maratha. He was popularly known as Acharya Atre.

“The time period that I saw was — Balasaheb used to draw caricatures in Marmik (a weekly started by Bal Thackeray in 1960), my grandfather used to write articles, on the other side Acharya Atre used to write in Maratha. This argument was going on. But, still, in the house when we children were around, there was never anything bad said against Acharya Atre or anyone else,” said Thackeray. 

Atre used to allege that the Shiv Sena — which often clashed with communist parties on Mumbai’s roads with the then Congress government preferring to turn a blind eye — was indirectly helping the Congress to weaken the appeal of leftist parties in Mumbai. He even coined the term ‘Vasant Sena’ for Shiv Sena allegedly pushing the agenda of the then Congress chief minister Vasantrao Naik.

The Shiv Sena was officially formed in 1966. In the 1967 Lok Sabha elections, Bal Thackeray opposed the candidature of George Fernandes — then a Samyukta Socialist Party candidate — and supported his rival Congress’s S.K. Patil instead. 

Leftist leaders found it ironic as Patil had favoured the separation of the then Bombay city from Maharashtra during the Samyukta Maharashtra movement with which the Shiv Sena likes to associate citing Prabodhankar Thackeray’s contribution, analysts said.

Fernandes eventually triumphed over Patil.

But, over the years, Fernandes and Bal Thackeray shared a good personal equation. In the 1980s, the two leaders even joined hands to address a joint rally with Sharad Pawar, who had formed his Congress (S), in the backdrop of the debilitating strike of the textile mill workers.

Similarly, socialist leader Mrinal Gore had been at odds with the Shiv Sena ever since its inception and Bal Thackeray would save the worst of his criticism for leftist women leaders like Gore. 

But, in 2016, the BMC, helmed then by the Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena, named a Mumbai flyover after Gore, a Janata Dal (Secular) leader, who died in 2012. 

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The alliance, then and now

With the weakening of the Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, Shiv Sena, a new outfit founded in 1966 attempted to fill the empty space and cater to the sentiment of ‘Marathi asmita’ (Marathi pride).

Its coveted prize was the Mumbai civic body, and in 1968 it tied up with the Praja Socialist Party, formed after the merger of the Socialist Party and the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party.

Gaikwad said, socialists wanted to revive the strength they had created through the 1940s to 1960s, and tying up with the Shiv Sena was a way of getting there. 

“We have to look at Shiv Sena then as a party that stood for native rights. Its core has been and is still very capitalist. Its pro-labour agitations then and even now are always with focus for patronage rather than being welfarist. But, the Congress was a party not rooted in Maharashtra, it was Delhi centric. Socialists of the then Bombay thrived on these identity matters too, so the alliance was more natural then,” he said.

The alliance, however, did not last. 

Speaking to ThePrint, political commentator Hemant Desai said, “The Shiv Sena was nothing at the time. It was seen less as a political party and more as an organisation. Eventually, socialists were put off by Shiv Sena’s hooliganism on the streets.”

Over the last year, the Shiv Sena (UBT), recovering from the split in June 2022, allied with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and the Sambhaji Brigade — outfits with which it has traditionally not seen eye to eye. 

“Shiv Sena (UBT) tied up with the two outfits which have been vociferous critics of the BJP, and now socialist parties. They don’t have any strength as such. But with these alliances, the Shiv Sena (UBT) wants to send a message,” added Desai.

Desai said the Shiv Sena (UBT) is carving its political future and ideology the way it wants to, according to its political strategy. “And they smartly do it all in Balasaheb Thackeray’s name, saying it is about furthering his legacy,” he added.

On Sunday, justifying the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s alliance with socialist parties, both Sanjay Raut, the party’s MP in the Rajya Sabha, and Uddhav Thackeray touched upon the times of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement and the respect that Thackerays held for socialist leaders.

Raut went to the extent of saying there was no cause for ideological differences between the two. “But the differences still came up. We sometimes came together, sometimes fought, sometimes fought on the streets. But, all of us have come together now for Maharashtra’s welfare,” Raut said. 

“It makes me happy that the socialist friends, who back then could not understand Balasaheb, are now understanding Uddhavsaheb,” he added.

(Edited by Richa Mishra)

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