Biography of Balasaheb Thackeray

Biography of Balasaheb Thackeray

At the right side, there is one great man who stands for the common Marathi People. This is one of my Ideal person who deserved to be great man & also he got on his own steps & own ways.
I know that no one will tell me that I don't know this man. This is my favourite Mr. Balasaheb Thackeray.
*बाळ केशव ठाकरे*
बाळ केशव ठाकरे popularly known as Balasaheb Thackeray, is the founder and chief of the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist, Marathi ethnocentric and populist party active in the state of Maharashtra.
A Story of Great Hindu nationalist
Bal Thackeray was born to Keshav Sitaram Thackeray who is also known as Prabodhankar Thackeray, because of his articles in his fortnightly magazine named Prabodhan or "Enlightenment" in a lower-middle class family. Keshav Thackeray was a progressive social activist and writer who was against caste biases and played a key role in the Samyukta Maharashtra Chalwal that is United Maharashtra Movement in the 1950 to form the Marathi-speaking state of Maharashtra along with Mumbai as its capital.
Bal Thackeray started his career as a cartoonist in the Free Press Journal in Mumbai in the 1950s. His cartoons were also published in the Sunday edition of The Times of India. In 1960, he launched a cartoon weekly Marmik with his brother. He used it to campaign against the growing influence of non-Marathi people in Mumbai targeting Gujaratis and South Indian labor workers.
He formed the Shiv Sena on June 19th, 1966 with the intent of fighting for the rights of the Maharashtrians. The early objective of the Shiv Sena was to ensure job security for Maharashtrians against immigrants from southern India, Gujaratis and Marwaris.
Politically, the Shiv Sena was anti-Communist, and wrested control of major trade unions in Mumbai from the Communist Party of India and demanded protection money from mainly gujarati and marwari business leaders. It later allied itself with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP-Shiv Sena combine won the 1995 Maharashtra State Assembly elections and came to power. During the tenure of the government from 1995 to 1999, Bal Thackeray was nicknamed "remote control" since he played a major role in government policies and decisions from behind-the-scenes.
Thackeray has claimed that the Shiv Sena has helped the Marathi commoner in Mumbai, especially in the public sector. Opposition leftist parties allege that the Shiv Sena has done little to solve the problem of unemployment facing a large proportion of Maharashtrian youth during its tenure, in contradiction to its ideological foundation of 'sons of the soil.
Controversies
Thackeray is very vocal in his opposition to people who migrate to Mumbai, to non-Hindus and to illegal Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh. In the late 1970s, as part of his "Maharashtra is for Maharashtrians" campaign, Thackeray threatened migrants from South India with harm unless they left Mumbai.
In 2002, Thackeray issued a call to form Hindu suicide squads to counter alleged Muslim violence:
If such suicide squads are formed only then can we take on perpetrators of mindless violence.
In reaction to Thackeray’s call, Maharashtra government registered a case against him for inciting enmity between different groups.
Asia Times further reported on Thackeray’s rhetoric:
"to take the Muslims head on". "Trouble-making Muslims should be wiped out from the country ... kick out the four crore Bangladeshi Muslims and then the country will be secure," the Shiv Sena leader said. Urging Hindus to start calling India "Hindu rashtra", he maintained that only "our religion is to be honored here" and then "we will look after other religions".
At least two organizations founded and managed by the retired Indian Army officers namely Lt Col (retired) Jayant Rao Chitale and Lt Ge. P.N. Hoon (former commander-in-chief of the Western Command), answered Bal Thackeray’s call to set up the suicide squads in India. Lt Gen. Hoon claimed, Thackeray instructed him to set up the training camps.
Thackeray continues to publish inflammatory editorials in his party's newsletter, Saamana.
Views on Muslims
Thackeray's views have typically been highly anti-Muslim, usually attacking them and occasionally sympathizing with them. He has declared that he is not against every Muslim, but only those who reside in this country but do not obey the laws of the land. "I consider such people traitors". His party is viewed as being anti-Muslim, though Shiv Sainiks officially reject this accusation. When explaining his views on Hindutva, he has conflated Islam with violence and has called for Hindus to "fight terrorism and fight Islam". In an interview in Suketu Mehta's book 'Maximum City', he advocates the hanging of Indian Muslims and mass expulsion of Muslim migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.
In the 1980s he had stated that:
"Muslims were spreading like a cancer and should be operated on like a cancer. The country should be saved from the Muslims and the police should support Hindu Maha Sangh in their struggle just like the police in Punjab were sympathetic to the Khalistanis."
Bal Thackeray criticized and challenged Indian Muslims through his party newspaper, Sāmna, around the time the 16th century Babri Masjid was demolished by members of the Shiv Sena and the BJP in the northern town of Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992. Orthodox Hindus believe that the Babri Mosque was built on the demolished ruins of a Hindu temple in the 16th century, and consider it to be the Ram Janmabhoomi.
The Justice Srikrishna Commission of Enquiry, which investigated the ensuing communal riots in Mumbai, indicted Thackeray for sparking anti-Muslim violence, which led to more than 1,000 deaths in several ensuing riots, many by having kerosene poured on their bodies while alive and then being burned to death. The death toll during the actual act of the demolition of the Mosque was zero. The Srikrishna Commission found that Thackeray was personally responsible, not only for inciting the mobs through his incendiary speeches, but also directly coordinating the movement of the rioters. At the time, Thackeray made allegations that the Commission was "biased" and "anti-Hindu".
In a deposition before the Srikrishna Commission a witness alleged Thackeray coordinated much of the January 1993 Mumbai carnage. Yuvraj Mohite claimed, "Balasaheb was sitting and he was getting calls from various places. He would ask what was happening at that particular place from where he got the call and then he would say, 'Kill them. Send them to Allah.'" Mohite additionally told the commission that "Thackeray –Ordered that not one Muslim be left alive to stand in the witness box Asked his men to send the additional police commissioner, A A Khan, to his Allah.
Ordered his men to retaliate to the Hindu killings in Jogeshwari."
Later, in February 1993 Thackeray said, "I am proud of what my boys have done. We had to retaliate and we did. If it was not for us, no one would have controlled the Muslims."
However, in an interview in 1998, he claims to have tempered his stance on many issues that the Shiv Sena had with Muslims, particularly regarding the Babri Mosque or Ram Janmabhoomi issue, saying:
"We must look after the Muslims and treat them as part of us."
He has since made more inflammatory statements regarding Muslims, and reiterated his desire for Hindus to unite across linguistic barriers and to see "a Hindustan for Hindus" and to "bring Islam to this country down to its knees".
However, he has also expressed admiration for Muslims in Mumbai in the wake of the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings. In response to threats made by the leader of the Samajwadi Party that accusations of terrorism directed at Indian Muslims would bring about communal strife, Thackeray said that the unity of Mumbaikars in the wake of the terrorist attacks was "a slap to fanatics of Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi" and that Thackeray "salute those Muslims who participated in the two minutes' silence on July 18 to mourn the blast victims".

In 2008, Thackeray wrote "Islamic terrorism is growing and Hindu terrorism is the only way to counter it. We need suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus,". "If they kill one Hindu, we'll kill hundreds of them," he once said. Is he threatening the muslims? by his statement,which reads, "If Muslims behave this way, they won't be able to celebrate their festivals," he said. "Islamic terrorism is growing and Hindu terrorism is the only way to counter it. We need suicide bomb squads to protect India and Hindus," Thackeray wrote in 2008.
Views on People from North Indian
On March 6, 2008, Bal Thackeray issued an editorial titled Ek Bihari, Sau Bimari in Saamna, saying Biharis were "an unwanted lot" in the Maharashtra. In what was termed as an apparent bid to recapture his party's Marathi sons of soil plank, which was being hijacked by the MNS leader Raj Thackeray, Bal Thackeray wrote about Biharis,
"They are not wanted in southern India, Assam and also Punjab and Chandigarh. The Biharis have antagonised local population wherever they had settled. The UP-Bihari MPs have shown their ingratitude towards Mumbai and Maharashtra with an anti-Marathi tirade in Parliament."
He also denounced Bihari MPs, saying they were "spitting in the same plate from which they ate" by criticising Mumbaikars and Maharashtrians. He also wrote, "They are trying to add fuel to the fire that has been extinguished, by saying that Mumbaikars have rotten brains." Additionally, he criticized a major holiday celebrated by people from Bihar, UP, and MP which happens sometimes after the Hindu New Year known as Chath Pooja. He said that it wasn't a real holiday. The outburst was apparently in response to MPs from Bihar who had disrupted the proceedings of the Lok Sabha in protest against the attacks on North Indians.
Views against Abdul Kalam, President of India
Thackeray has been a vocal critic of the former President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam. Thackeray said Kalam was a leading scientist of the country but had "lost the dignity of the post" after he became President. He has criticized Kalam's indecisiveness regarding the conviction of Mohammad Afzal, who has been sentenced to death following his conviction for the 2001 Indian Parliament attack. Thackeray criticizes the fact that a convicted terrorist's appeal for clemency is even being considered by Kalam.
"Afzal was sentenced to death by the highest court in this country in October and yet the file has been sitting on the President's table for the past few years. I have not said anything wrong about Kalam. We all have supported him to become President. Afzal's clemency letter is still lying with the President. Give me another example where the President has not taken decision on a clemency petition for four months."
Admiration of Hitler
Thackeray has attracted controversy for his praise of Adolf Hitler.
"I am a great admirer of Hitler, and I am not ashamed to say so! I do not say that I agree with all the methods he employed, but he was a wonderful organizer and orator, and I feel that he and I have several things in common. What India really needs is a dictator who will rule benevolently, but with an iron hand."
In an interview with the Indian Express that was printed on January 29, 2007, Thackeray remarked,
"Hitler did very cruel and ugly things. But he was an artist, I love him for that. He had the power to carry the whole nation, the mob with him. You have to think what magic he had. He was a miracle ... The killing of Jews was wrong. But the good part about Hitler was that he was an artist. He was a daredevil. He had good qualities and bad. I may also have good qualities and bad ones."
In an article appearing in Newindpress.com on August 20, 2007, Thackeray is quoted as wanting to be a dictator and the Hitler of the whole of India:
He is on record as having told the Navakal: "Yes, I am a dictator. It is a Hitler that is needed in India today." He was once asked in a television programme whether he wanted to be the Hitler of Mumbai. "Do not underestimate me," he is reported to have retorted. "I am (the Hitler) of the whole of Maharashtra and want to be of whole of India." The Hitler question was put to him in September 1996 by Outlook magazine as well during an interview. "Once you’d expressed admiration for certain facets of Hitler." "Comparison was inevitable," the interviewer prompted. Thackaray said: "I have not sent anybody to the gas chamber. If I’d been like that, you wouldn't have dared to come and interview me."
Pro-Tamil Tiger Views
Thackeray has admitted that he is pro-Tamil Tiger. He says, "I am proud of the Tigers for the gallant manner in which they are fighting."
He also wanted a ban on the LTTE lifted by the center-wing government.
Latest Shivsena Party Situations
Bal Thackeray's son Uddhav Thackeray, and nephew Raj Thackeray led to divisions within the Shiv Sena. In addition to this, several old hands such as hard-line leader Narayan Rane were left the Sena.
On December 18, 2005, Raj Thackeray announced his resignation as a primary member of the Shiv Sena. On March 19, 2006, Raj announced the formation of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS).
Valentine's Day protests
Boycotting shops and restaurants that allow young people to celebrate the "western" holiday of Valentine's Day, interpreted as bestial, indecent andun-Indian by Thackeray, is one of his recent actions. On February 14, 2006, Bal Thackeray condemned and apologized for the violent attacks of Shiv Sena members upon a private Valentine's Day celebration in Mumbai. "It is said that women were beaten up in the Nallasopara incident. If that really happened, then it is a symbol of cowardice," Thackeray said, "I have always instructed Shiv Sainiks that in any situation women should not be humiliated and harassed." Thackeray and the Shiv Sena remain opposed to Valentine's Day celebrations, although they may support an "Indian alternative".
Conclusion of my article
I just want to show the positive approach of Bal Thackeray. Controversies was happened, are happening & will happen again but approach of this man, Indian politics cannot be ignored....