Despite the profuse iconography, the overpowering gilt throne, and the cigar, which in this instance is clearly not just a cigar, it’s difficult to surmise that Bal Thackeray was a rather slight man of five feet five inches. Through the play of light and shade, and Thackeray’s hood eyes, Raghu Rai captures his stature with exactitude. The photographer recalls going to Matoshree one morning in 2000 for “the easiest photo-shoot ever of a politician”, and being stopped by an imperious Thackeray at sharp noon saying it was time for his wine and cigar. “Great, I said, more props for me. Would he mind if I shot him with both, and Thackeray said, ‘Go ahead’.”

Not too many Indian politicians would publicly concede to either indulgence. (‘What’s a man without a few vices’, he often said). Let alone be photographed indulging. But Bal Keshav Thackeray was the anti-politician.

(Thackeray launching Saamna, with a young Chaggan Bhujbal (left), and Pramod Navalkar (second from right). Not since independence had there been a politician who used mass media to such compelling advantage as he did)



(With Meenatai, his love and companion)

(Disturbed by the noise of crackers, Thackeray sits down in the middle of his speech at an election rally in Chowpatty, while Gopinath Munde, Pramod Mahajan and LK Advani look on, rather amused)

He never contested an election. He genuinely never aspired to public office be it of the chief minister or the prime minister. He was proudly incorrect, and he had no political ideology. Writer and editor Kumar Ketkar called him a “nirgun, niraakar wonder”. Thackeray coined the designation of remote control for himself when Sonia Gandhi was still the Sphinx of Indian politics. But from 1966 when he founded the Shiv Sena to his dying day, he kept an iron-fisted and rarely velvet-sheathed control of his organization.

(Sharing a joke with his colleague, friend, and rival Sushilkumar Shinde)

Through 46 years in public life he retained sway, relevance and charisma. “There is not a single comparable case in India,” said Ketkar, citing examples of Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu who was successfully challenged by MGR, of NTR in Andhra Pradesh who was called into question by his own sonin-law Chandrababu Naidu, and the various splinters of Janata Party that spawned Deve Gowda, Ramkrishna Hegde, Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh, Nitish Kumar and George Fernandes.

Unlike many other Indian leaders, Thackeray did not have the usual advantages of caste – he was a Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu. The community, largely urban, constitutes a few decimal point percentage of the population, and traditionally serviced the Maratha empire as bureaucrats; he had no dynastic leverage; none of the glamour that their film careers afforded comparable leaders like MGR and NTR; and nor did he have money. At least not to begin with.

(At various corner meetings Bal Thackeray would park, assemble the PA system, jump up on the bonnet of his beat-up Fiat and begin his inimitable rhetoric.)

Thackeray’s early career as a public speaker was fashioned thanks to a beat-up Fiat in which he would drive around Mumbai and Thane with a collapsible public address system. At various corner meetings he would park, assemble the PA system, jump up on the bonnet and begin his inimitable rhetoric.

(Bal Thackeray (middle) with Uddhav (left) and Raj)

Secession, by first Chhagan Bhujbal and then Narayan Rane, though serious blows to the party, made no dent in Thackeray’s supremacy. The severing of ties by Raj Thackeray in 2006 was the first real challenge: it greatly aged the old man and created confusion in the ranks.



(Addressing his last public rally at Shivaji Park with a video-taped speech)

Three years after Balasaheb’s death, Maharashtra government on Tuesday announced plans to turn Mayor’s bungalow into a memorial.

The sea-side bungalow is located across Shivaji Park in Dadar, where Thackeray established the Shiv Sena in 1966 and also addressed the annual Dussehra rallies.

(Photos & text courtesy: Meenal Baghel & Yogesh Naik/Mumbai Mirror)