MUMBAI, Nov 17: India’s most polarising rightwing politician Bal Thackeray, whose visceral hatred of Pakistan matched his adulation of Adolf Hitler, died here on Saturday following complications from a lung ailment. He was 86.
Mr Thackeray, who never accepted an official post, founded the Hindu chauvinist Shiv Sena in 1966, projecting a corporate-backed anti-communist street power in Mumbai. His initial flirtation with rightwing elements in the
Congress, during which he attacked and helped dismantle powerful leftists trade unions, evolved into a Muslim-baiting alliance with India’s main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
The middle-caste and predominantly Marathi youth backing him, Mr Thackeray ruled Mumbai with an iron-fist, changing his targets from communists to Brahmins and South Indian migrants in Mumbai.
However, his staple quarries were Indian Muslims and Pakistan whose cricket series with India he disapproved of. More recently he had turned his ire on Hindi-speaking migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, both targets of his unrelenting vitriol, expressed grief at his passing away.
The Mumbai film industry, led by actor Amitabh Bachchan, came out in full force to be with the family. The family’s indulgence or ire made and broke careers.
Agencies add: Mr Thackeray had been ill for some time and was rumoured to have died earlier this week.
He was heralded as a staunch defender of regional heritage by his supporters and despised as a hot-headed bigot by others. He devoted his public life to championing the rights of Mumbai’s “sons of the soil”.
Mr Thackeray, a former political cartoonist, waged a 50-year campaign against immigrants from outside the state. He accused immigrants of taking jobs away from residents of Mumbai, endearing him to large numbers of young working class men.
“Only Marathis have the first right over Mumbai,” Mr Thackeray wrote in his party’s newspaper last year, referring to natives of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is capital. The party newspaper is called Saamna, which means “confrontation” in the Marathi language.
Mr Thackeray often referred to Indian Muslims as “anti-nationals” and called for Hindu suicide squads to counter what he saw as a rise in ‘Islamic terrorism’.
“Having peace talks with Pakistan which is behind the blasts in India is a farce,” he alleged in Saamna in July, referring to bomb attacks in Mumbai in 2008.