Son rises for the Sena: Aaditya Thackeray wins from Worli Assembly seat

Aaditya Thackeray has been given charge of the Yuva Sena and is tussling with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad

Election news: Few parties manage to stay relevant through a generational change. Shiv Sena is the exception. When it was formed, its founder Bal Thackeray saw it as forum to arouse the Maharashtrian-ness of those who lived in the state, making the Mangalorean, the North Indian, the Tamil, Telugu, and the Malayali the ‘other’.

The Communists and the Congress were also targets of Marmik, a cartoon magazine Thackeray founded that poked fun at the outsiders and the meek Maharashtrians. It also gave an ideological cover for breaking the Communist-dominated trade unions in and around Mumbai's textile mills. But he soon found that the ‘Maharashtra for Maharashtrians’ slogan had limited appeal outside Mumbai where non-Maharashtrians were seen as performing an economic service and not necessarily as a threat. A change of track followed with Sena supporters becoming the vanguard of the Hindu movement, speeding ahead of the BJP.

Later, owing to the efforts of BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, an agreement was reached between the BJP and the Shiv Sena in...read more