NARENDRA SASTRY | India Tomorrow
MUMBAI, AUGUST 30— Yuva Sena chief Aditya Thackeray is being watched closely in Maharashtra politics, as he prepares to take a plunge into the electoral politics in the State Assembly polls to be held in October this year.
Twenty nine-year-old Aditya is the first Thackeray in the four generations of Thackerays that Maharashtra has seen in public life, to contest an election. In effect, he is breaking out of the mould of Thackerays, as the state has seen them over the past one century.
His great grandfather Keshav Sitaram Thackeray – better known as Prabodhankar Thackeray – was one of the key figures in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement who campaigned successfully for a linguistic state of Maharashtra, while most popular grandfather Bal Thackeray – as the founder chief of the Shiv Sena – carved a place for himself in Maharashtra politics. A reluctant beginner in public life, his father Uddhav Thackeray – a wildlife photographer-turned-politician – took over the mantle of the Shiv Sena even when his father was alive.
Unlike Aditya, the earlier Thackerays have steadfastly stayed away from electoral politics. While his great grandfather was more of a writer, a social reformer and campaigner for linguistic state of Maharashtra, his legendary grandfather Bal Thackeray – as a cartoonist-turned-politician – chose to remain more of a kingmaker than a king. His father Uddhav, whom late father Bal Thackeray had anointed as the Shiv Sena’s national executive president way back in January 2002, has also never contested an election, despite having established his firm hold over the party set-up during the past 17 years. Nor has his uncle and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray.
Interestingly enough, it was Bal Thackeray who launched the Shiv Sena’s youth wing “Yuva Sena” and anointed his grandson Aditya Thackeray as its head in October 2010, two years before he passed away on November 12, 2012.
A Bachelor of Arts in History from Mumbai’s elite St. Xavier’s College, Aditya has come a long way since he was in college. As a third-year Arts student, Aditya hit headlines ahead of his anointment as the Yuv Sena chief in 2010, when he forced the Bombay University withdraw Rohinton Mistry’s novel Such A Long Journey, prescribed for the second year Bachelor of Arts (English) as an optional text book, from the syllabus. Aditya’s grouse against Mistry’s book was that it contained foul language and derogatory references to the Shiv Sena.
In the same year of 2010, the Aditya Thackeray-led Yuv Sena for the first time swept the Mumbai University (MU) Senate polls from the Graduates’ constituency. Eight years later – in March 2018, the Yuv Sena once again swept the MU senate by decimating the RSS’s student outfit Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Congress-backed NSUI and winning all the 10 seats.
Between 2010 and 2019, Aditya has not only established a following of his own among the youth in various parts of the state, but he has also learned the ropes of party politics by working in tandem with his father and party president Uddhav. During the period, he has also endeared the student community by taking up issues like the leakage of question papers and delay in examination and the extension of the cut-off dates for admission to various post-graduate courses.
If his father Uddhav has agreed to let Aditya take a plunge into electoral politics, it is because of the changed mindset within the Thackeray family recently. So much so that the Shiv Sena has been promoting Aditya in a big way during the two to three years. Having sensed that it might return to power in alliance with the BJP in the October 2019 elections, the Sena has been promoting Aditya as a chief ministerial candidate.
Though both the saffron alliance partners intend to contest 135 seats each out of the total 288 seats in the State Assembly polls, the Shiv Sena knows full well that it cannot win more number of seats than the BJP in the Assembly polls and that Aditya cannot become the chief minister at a time when current chief minister Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP leads the ruling saffron alliance in the forthcoming polls.
Fadnavis has himself gone on record saying that with him in the chief minister’s saddle, the question of offering the number one post to the Shiv Sena does not arise. He has indicated that he is not averse to offering the deputy chief minister’s post to the Shiv Sena (read Aditya Thackeray).
But the Shiv Sena has not given up its hopes on seeing Aditya in the chief minister’s post if not in the post-2019 State Assembly poll scenario but in the later years. In a first, Aditya had also embarked on a Jan Ashirwad Yatra in phases and is currently on third phase of his yatra in the state. He has been eliciting fairly good response from the people, particularly the younger generation with whom he connects well, at many places across the state.
On his part, Fadnavis has heaped praise on Aditya whom he described as a “young and promising leader”. “I welcome the response that Aditya is getting at his yatras. Aditya is a young and promising leader. The BJP and Shiv Sena have been together during years of our struggle as well as in power. We will contest the Assembly elections together,” Fadnavis said, while talking to media persons at Jalna in Marathwada on Thursday.
The Shiv Sena is planning to field Aditya as its candidate from Worli Assembly constituency in south-central Mumbai.
Notwithstanding its public posturing to the contrary, the Shiv Sena may settle down for the deputy chief minister’s post in the event of the BJP-Shiv Sena returning to power in the Assembly polls in October this year. If that happens, one can expect Aditya Thackeray in the deputy chief minister’s office.
Aditya, who is seen widely as a politician with very good intentions, has been championing for the revival of Mumbai nightlife – by allowing malls and restaurant to remain open all through the night. He has another side of life. He published his first book of poems ‘My Thoughts in White and Black’ in 2007. He has also come out with a private album ‘Ummed’, for which he wrote all the eight songs. Singers like Suresh Wadkar, Shankar Mahadevan, Kailash Kher and Sunidhi Chauhan have lent their voice for the album. The album was released at the hands of veteran Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, who is Thackerays’ family friend.
After the advent of Uddhav as the party president, the Shiv Sena has turned new leaf from being a party of functionaries used to intimidation tactics to being a party of soft-spoken leaders. And with Aditya at the helm as the deputy chief minister, the Shiv Sena will be more gentle, suave and social media-savvy in its approach.
