The Tiger who Roared from his Den!!

This post cannot be termed as tribute to Bal Thackeray as I cannot pay respect to him like others I mentioned in my blog. My personal feeling is that the celebrities who were present there were not for the respect but performing their duty or having some personal interest. I have some mixed feeling about him and by writing so I may hurt my Maharashtrian friends but I cannot hide my feeling for the sake of it.  The main reason why I never regarded him to fit for due regards because his lack of respect towards women. We can forget some of his ridiculous and derogatory remarks against prominent women like Mrinal Gore, Sonia Gandhi and others. Then because they way he and his clans always behaved as if they are the ruler of Mumbai. For me nobody is bigger than the country we live in and the integrity of our motherland is more important than the vested interest. Barring twice, when he have to travel to Lucknow for some legal dispute, Bal Thackeray never set his foot out of Maharashtra and the reason for it best known to him only. He mainly voiced his sermon from his home Bandra, Dadar Shiv Sena Bhavan and Shivaji Park. Very often he travelled to others part of Maharashtra and those were too during various election campaigns. However, there is no doubt that he was a good cartoonist, equally good orator and having great sense of humour. Once during the facilitation ceremony of Lata Mangeshkar he mentioned himself as ‘Asur’ while comparing himself to Lata. ‘Asur’, can be termed as a person who lack musical sense but also have other meaning too, ‘a monster’. Therefore, I agree with former chief justice of India Mr. Katju that “He lived with the anti-national ‘sons of the soil’ (bhumiputra) theory to create a vote bank for himself.

Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray

Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray born in 23 January 1926 in Pune. Thackeray began his professional career as a cartoonist with the English language daily the The Free Press Journal in Mumbai, but left it in 1960 to form his own political weekly Marmik. His political philosophy was largely shaped by his father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a leading figure in the United Maharashtra movement, which advocated the creation of a separate linguistic state of Maharashtra. Through Marmik, he campaigned against the growing influence of Gujaratis, Marwaris, and southern Indians in Mumbai. In 1966, Thackeray formed the Shiv Sena party to advocate more strongly the place of Maharashtrians in Mumbai's political and professional landscape. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thackeray built the party by forming temporary alliances with nearly all of Maharashtra's political parties.

The posterboy of rightwing Hindu and Marathi chauvinism, he never plunged into electoral politics and never contested any polls. Thackeray was also the founder of the Marathi-language newspaper Samana. Thackeray's famous comment to Time magazine after the demolition of the Babri Masjid was a vituperative "Kick'em out!".  The anti-Muslim stance fuelled by the demolition led to Mumbai's worst-ever riots in December 1992-January 1993. It continued for another two months in some small pockets, followed by the retaliatory March 12, 1993, serial bomb blasts in the city. These incidents were largely responsible for catapulting the Shiv Sena to power in Maharashtra in the 1995 assembly elections.

In 2002, Thackeray issued a call to form Hindu suicide bomber squads to in response to Islamist suicide bombers and other violence. In response, the Maharashtra government registered a case against him for inciting enmity between different groups. Thackeray has attracted controversy for his praise of Adolf Hitler. Thackeray harped on emotive issues like "Mumbai for Marathis" and "jobs for sons of soil"

On various reason I cannot write a tribute to Bal Thackeray and I am happy that I am no longer stay in Mumbai. At least, I can express my thought freely without being arrested. I wondered what happened to the Maharashtra Police, sad to see that once highly regarded police force acting so amateurish like a personal body guard.

!!!Legacy cannot bought or left by an external force, only remain by leaving unaccounted goodness!!!