R.I.P Balasaheb Thackaray

Balasahab Thackaray shares his surname with a famous English novelist (William M Thackeray) who in turn shares his first name with the world’s most famous playwright (William Shakespeare). I firmly believe that Balasaheb’s life is an interesting mixture of half a dozen Shakespearan plays and “Vanity Fair” written by the original Thackaray. He commanded a following that shames the twitter following of Dalai Lama or the facebook friends of Mark Zuckerberg and definitely commands more silent followership than the likes of Puttaparthi Sai Baba or any film celebrity. He has achieved a cult status that’s colossal and unassailable in many many years for now - because of his nationalistic fervor, unrivalled outspokenness and a Zionist love for India that’s at once messianic and heart-warming. Balasaheb was the final authority when it comes to anything that concerns Indian pride and self-respect and carefully used pulse-points that created euphoric waves of opprobrium whenever India’s masses were vulnerable to mass hysteria to do his bidding – whether it was playing a cricket series with Pakistan, Sania marrying a Pakistani, Sanjay Dutt’bail or Salman Khan’s behavior, Amitabh’s exit from politics after Bofors, or whether national security laws kept a vigil on terrorists. What Balasaheb bade was final, and woe betide anybody who went against. Balasaheb had achieved all this with a hysterical mass following outside the reaches of Sadgurus and Superstars and led an interesting life that had enough contradictions that can trigger a few hundred Bollywood films (infact many were inspired by him). There will be lot of questions that intrigued biographers and journalists always – Was he really a catnip? Were all the finest femme fatales deflowered at his bidding? Why did he favor Telugus over Tamils in the famous tirade against non-Marathas? Why was he such a mad fan of Hitler and how much of Zionism influenced his “anti-immigration policy”? What led to the parting of his nephew and the death of his son? If he was so strong, how did so many Satraps shoot up even at the peak of Shiv Sena’s meteoric rise like Sharad Pawar and Pramod Mahajan? Has Mumbai moved on during the last five years or so because of anachronistic anti-immigration stance adopted by the Shivsena? All said and done, it was a life more colorful than the most larger-than-life figures seldom seen in world history. Bal Thackeray commanded a premium right till his end and had he stuck to his calling of a caricaturist like RK Laxman who shared his desk at Free Press Journal or confined to writing “Burning Words” like Babu Rao Patel, Bal Thackaray wouldn’t have been a phenomenon as the world knows him today. We all aspire to live interesting lives. Bal Thackaray had a cracker of a life from the time he was out of the womb. Balasaheb has been the only voice outside of Congress who lent credence and vitality to every world view that mattered on foreign affairs, diginitaries visiting India across the fields, whether we should encourage multi-culturalism and what is good for our security. We should be thankful for Balasaheb that but for him and Sushma Swaraj, we would have had a foreign citizen Sonia Gandhi as a Prime Minister. History always had a place of honor for fierce patriots like Savarkar and Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Prithviraj Chauhan – Balasaheb built a business and political empire out of nationalist fervor and zeal that sometime bordered on the theatre of the absurd. May his soul R.I.P.