In a First for Thackeray Family, Aaditya to Contest Maharashtra Assembly Elections

Shiv Sena’s founder, Bal Thackeray. was opposed to the family’s direct participation in electoral politics.

Mumbai: On September 30, Aaditya Thackeray, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray’s son, announced on social media that he will finally take the plunge and contest in Maharashtra’s assembly election. “To strive for public welfare and accepting the people’s mandate, I have decided to contest in assembly polls, this year,” he wrote on his Twitter account. “Getting rid of every kind of discrimination, this is the time to create a new Maharashtra,” he wrote.

For an active politician, this announcement would have been the natural course of action. But not for someone from the Thackeray family, which has stayed away from direct participation in elections since Bal Thackeray founded Shiv Sena in the 1960s. He believed that a Thackeray should not stand for elections when it could wield power from behind the throne. The 29-year-old Aaditya Thackeray has become the first from his family to enter the electoral fray.

Aaditya Thackeray, who has been active in public life in other ways, adding his voice and heft to public issues on and off social media, has chosen to contest from a rather safe seat in Mumbai’s Worli constituency, largely consisting Marathi working-class voters. Experts say the Sena’s ‘son of the soil’ rhetoric will resonate best in this constituency.

His path has been made easier, as his uncle Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena is unlikely to contest the Worli seat and the sitting MLA, the National Congress Party (NCP)’s Sachin Ahir, has defected to the Sena. The NCP, meanwhile, has allotted the seat to its less influential ally Bahujan Republic and Socialist Party (BRSP), where the party’s chief Dr Suresh Mane is likely to contest.

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Thackeray was still a college student at the prestigious St Xavier’s when he launched the party’s youth wing – the Yuva Sena – and became its chief. His first intervention was to demand the banning of Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, which was being taught at the university. The University was quick to do so. Ever since, Thackeray has been present at party activities, crucial alliance meetings and his father’s public appearances. He is also visible in social and glamour circles, hobnobbing with film stars and celebrities and was recently part of an NDTV campaign to raise funds for ‘Banega Swasth India’.

The Sena had protracted rounds of discussions – and bickering – with its ally, the BJP, before agreeing to join hands for the elections. While the Sena was forced on to the backfoot and compromise on its original demand of an equal number of seats (it will contest 124 of the 288 seats), the party has not shied away from projecting the youngest family member as the next deputy chief minister. The BJP, which is now the ‘big brother’ of the alliance, a far cry from the early days when it took second place to the local party, has cut down the Sena’s seat allotments in Navi Mumbai and Pune, its traditional strongholds.

Although Aaditya Thackeray has stuck to the core party ideology of Hindutva and ‘son of the soil’ politics, he has tried to also talk about civic issues, sometimes even speaking out against the government. He criticised the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited’s (MMRCL) plans to construct a car shed in Mumbai’s Aarey forest. MMRCL’s decision has been backed and vocally promoted by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Similarly, in the past, Thackeray along with his Yuva Sena campaigned against Fadnavis’ pet oil refinery project in Nanar village of Ratnagiri district on the Konkan coast. He said the Sena would not oppose the refinery if it is established at a place where it would not damage the environment and is welcomed by locals. “The Sena is for development, but not at the cost of citizens. We are against the Nanar project as ‘sons of the soil’ are opposed to it,” he had said. The project had to be withdrawn and the state has been scouting for another suitable place to house the Rs 3 lakh crore project, touted to be Asia’s biggest “green oil refinery”.

Bal Thackeray and electoral politics

At a recent public rally, while addressing his supporters, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said he had taken a vow before his late father Bal Thackeray that Maharashtra would one day see a chief minister from his party. Old-timers and analysts say that the Sena founder was completely opposed to standing for elections. “He had ridiculed those participating in electoral politics,” points out senior journalist and political analyst Hemant Desai.

Desai says the senior Thackeray was a maverick personality, who while mobilising a party to influence state politics, did not approve of his family contesting polls. “Bal Thackeray had in several of his writings and speeches eulogised Hitler and ridiculed the democratic process of governance,” Desai adds.

Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray. Photo: PTI

Sena and Worli

A majority of Worli’s working class are from Bahujan castes. In the 1970s, when the Sena already had a strong footing in Mumbai, the Dalit Panther movement was also taking shape in the city. Mane recalls that among other struggles, the Panthers had mobilised the Bahujan masses in the city against the Sena and its “anti-Dalit stand”. The Sena, in turn, accused the Dalit Panthers of damaging the “Maharashtrian asmita” by raising the issue of caste. The confrontation between the two outfits took an ugly turn and in early 1974, several Dalit youths were killed and injured in a riot.

Mane says, although the Panther movement has long been dissolved, the anti-caste, Ambedkarite movement is still strong. “In most chawls and slums of Worli, the residents are Buddhists and Ambedkarites. The Sena will find it hard to reach out to the voters here,” Mane claims.

Desai, however, says the voting pattern has shifted over the years. With Republican Party of India (RPI-A) chief Ramdas Athawale – a former Panther leader – joining hands with the BJP, the Dalit-Sena conflict has long been forgotten.