Strap: Freezing of name more of a setback for Shiv Sena than symbol as the party, named by Bal Thackeray’s father in 1966, has contested on multiple election symbols in the past
In 1959, as a 32-year-old cartoonist, Bal Thackeray quit the Free Press Journal (FPJ) after a running battle with his bosses and the management. He was later part of a team that launched an English periodical called ‘News Day,’ but left due to growing disagreements with his colleagues.
In August 1960, Thackeray and his younger brother Shrikant, also a cartoonist and a film critic, launched a cartoon weekly in Marathi named ‘Marmik’. In 1963, some Maharashtrians approached Bal Thackeray complaining of discrimination in job opportunities in favour of those from outside the state. Soon, Marmik started publishing pages from the telephone directory which revealed how a large number of non-Maharashtrians occupied top positions in various companies under the column ‘Vacha aani thanda basa’ (read and stay silent). This was soon renamed ‘Vacha aani utha’ (read and rise) in a direct call to action. This campaign struck a chord. Many Marathi youngsters flocked to Thackeray’s house at Ranade Road in Dadar, which also served as the Marmik office, complaining about such discrimination.
On July 19, 1966, Thackeray’s father ‘Prabodhankar’ Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a social reformer and journalist, suggested that an organization be launched to articulate this cause. Bal Thackeray agreed. With 19 people in attendance, including Diwakar Raote, who later became one of the party’s front-ranking leaders, a coconut was broken by Sahdev Naik before a bust of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. As senior Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi writes in his official biography of the party ‘Shiv Sena Kaal-Aaj-Udya,’ it was then that Prabodhankar suggested the name ‘Shiv Sena.’ Thus, the Shiv Sena of today was born.
But, almost six decades later, this name has been frozen by the Election Commission of India (ECI) along with the ‘bow-and-arrow’ symbol of the party. As Shiv Sena sources admit, the decision to freeze the name is more of a jolt than the symbol. The Shiv Sena has traditionally fielded candidates on a variety of symbols ranging from the rising sun, a railway engine, a sword-and-shield and two palm trees.
Senior Shiv Sena leader and former minister Subhash Desai recounts an anecdote from the 1978 assembly elections. Shiv Sena candidates at the time were fighting on a range of symbols like the sword-and-shield for Manohar Joshi in Dadar and the rising sun for Wamanrao Mahadik in Naigaon. Desai, who was contesting from Goregaon, had the railway engine.
“Balasaheb came for a rally during my campaign. He called on people to vote for me, looked back and saw the railway engine on my backdrop and asked them to stamp the railway engine symbol (there were no EVMs then),” said Desai.
Desai claimed that the Sena was unfazed at the symbol being frozen. “In 1967, we came to power in Thane when we had no election symbol reserved for us. For 22 years till 1989, when we were allotted this symbol, we have fought elections and won,” he noted.
In 1985, when the Shiv Sena surged to power in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), its candidates had again contested on a range of symbols. In 1970, when Wamanrao Mahadik became the first Shiv Sena MLA to be elected by trouncing the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Parel, his symbol was the rising sun, Desai explained.
In 1989, the ECI asked parties to register themselves afresh and also frame or revise their constitution. Desai was given this task with Advocate Balkrishna Joshi, who was also a corporator and Vijay Nadkarni, with this work being overseen by Manohar Joshi. The ECI registered the Shiv Sena as a political party under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 with effect from 12 October 1989. It was then that the bow-and-arrow symbol was allocated to it.
This symbol has proved to be lucky for the party. In the Lok Sabha elections that year, four of its candidates were elected—Vidyadhar Gokhale (Mumbai North Central), Wamanrao Mahadik (Mumbai South Central), Ashok Deshmukh (Parbhani) and Moreshwar Save (Aurangabad). In the Maharashtra assembly elections held in 1990, the Shiv Sena secured a major political opening with its numbers in the assembly rising from just two to 52. These elections launched the gradual dismantling of the stranglehold of the Congress over the state’s politics and saw the Shiv Sena- BJP alliance come to power in 1995.
However, Desai and other Shiv Sena leaders claimed that despite the setback caused by the ECI’s decision to deprive them of the bow-and-arrow symbol, they were confident of taking the new emblem to the masses. “Now, it is easier than before to take the symbol across. We have social media, the traditional and electronic media to take the new symbol to the masses,” Desai explained.