Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena chief were political rivals but friends

Bal Thackeray, a political contemporary of Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, had always shared a love-hate relationship with him. The two, who launched their careers within a year of one another, shared a political relationship for over 45 years. While Thackeray founded the Shiv Sena in 1966, Pawar fought his first assembly election on a Congress ticket the following year.

Often, in those days, Pawar and Thackeray — along with socialist leader George Fernandes who was another one of their contemporaries — shared the dais over various issues.

In September 1982, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray had, in a roaring speech delivered at Kamgar Maidan in Parel, declared that Sharad Pawar would be the next chief minister of Maharashtra. Thackeray’s prediction did ring true. Six years after that declaration, the Maratha strongman was sworn in as chief minister.

Like with Pawar, Thackeray shared just as cordial a relationship with the Congress party.

In 1975, Thackeray supported the Emergency imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi and also campaigned for the Congress in 1977. Thackeray also went on to lend support to the then chief minister, AR Antulay, in 1980. It was in 1982, that the Sena changed its stance when Antulay was replaced by Babasaheb Bhosale.

It was the cordial equation and the bonhomie that the Congress  party shared with the Shiv Sena and its hobnobbing with the party that did not go down too very well with the saffron party’s cadre. Many a question was often raised over the Sena’s existence.

Things started to change after 1986 when the Shiv Sena was gradually perceived as a strong opposition party.

By then, Pawar, who had moved out of the Congress party had been accommodated back into the party. And this worked well to the Sena’s advantage.

“For the Shiv Sena, it was a bad patch between 1975 and 1985 due to its stand of supporting the Congress, but things changed after 1985. Infighting within the Congress party only worked to the Shiv Sena’s advantage,” says senior journalist Prakash Akolkar who has written a book on the saffron party.

While Thackeray enjoyed a stronghold in Mumbai, the rest of Maharashtra was Pawar’s fiefdom.

In fact, hushed whispers within political circles have it that a tacit understanding existed between Thackeray and Pawar that the two parties would not step onto one another’s toes.

The you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours compromise between the two parties, it is said, was such that the Sena would help Congress rule the state and the Congress would pay back by allowing the Sena to rule the civic body in Mumbai.

In fact, a slugfest between the Congress party’s Mumbai unit and its state unit was spawned due to Congress leaders playing along with the Sena and helping the saffron party sweep the municipal elections.

Before the 2007 civic polls, Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party kept out of a pre-poll tie-up with the Congress — a strategic move to ensure that the Shiv Sena continues to retain power in the civic body.

In 2006, Thackeray had extended support to Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule who was then contesting the Rajya Sabha election. The Sena did not field any candidate against her.
“She’s like my daughter... When I heard of her foray into politics, I called up Pawar and told him there would be no candidate against her,” Thackeray had announced.

Thackeray had given Pawar the sobriquet ‘Baramaticha mamadya’ (naïve man from Baramati).