Shiv Sena Chief Balasaheb Thakre

NATIONAL

Shiv Sena Chief Balasaheb Thakre passes away

Nov 17, 2012

Mumbai : Shiv Sena founder and Chief Balasaheb Thakre passed away on Saturday.Thackeray breathed his last at 3.30 PM, according to his doctor Jaleel Parkar.

Shiv Sena has requested its crores of  supporters to maintain peace and harmony.

Mr Thackeray had been unwell since July this year when he was admitted to Mumbai’s Lilavati Hospital for breathlessness and constipation. He was released after a week in hospital, and was being nursed at his Bandra residence, Matoshree. The Sena chief was under constant medical supervision, with a team of doctors stationed at his home.

He is survived by his wife Mina and sons Jaidev and Uddhav, who is the executive president of the Shiv Sena, which Mr Thackeray founded in 1966.

Born in 1926 to Keshav Thackeray, a social reformer, Bal Thackeray began his career as a cartoonist with the English daily, The Free Press Journal. Mumbai, which he quit in 1960 to launch a cartoon weekly Marmik- which means poignant – in 1960.  His cartoons were also published in the Sunday edition of The Times of India. The journal became a launch pad for his entry into politics in 1966, when on Dussehra, Mr Thackeray announced his party, the Shiv Sena, at a huge rally held at the Shivaji Park in Dadar in central Mumbai.

Thackeray started his politics with anti-South Indian agitation to protect the jobs of locals. Thackeray later embraced Hindutva and tied up with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Thackeray launched Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamna in 1989 where he would target his political opponents and the immigrants to Maharashtra in the most vitriolic language. Shiv Sena joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and won the 1995 Maharashtra State Assembly elections and came to power. For more than four decades, Thackeray ran the Sena with an iron fist. He was a bit like the Godfather of a political party, revered by his supporters and feared by his critics.

For the Shiv Sena, the 1992-93 riots confirmed Thackeray’s status as a charismatic larger than life figure. The Shiv Sena became a partner in power in Maharashtra for the first time in 1995. Typically, Thackeray chose to stay away from the chief minister’s chair, preferring to be the autocratic remote control, an individual feared by Mumbai’s rich and powerful.