Bal Thackeray

Who was Bal Thackeray?

Bal Keshav Thackeray was an Indian politician who founded the Shiv Sena, a right-wing Marathi ethnocentric party active mainly in the western India's Maharashtra. His followers called him the Hindu Hriday Samraat.

Thackeray began his professional career as a cartoonist with the English language daily The Free Press Journal in Mumbai, but left it in 1960 to form his own political weekly Marmik. His political philosophy was largely shaped by his father Keshav Sitaram Thackeray, a leading figure in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, which advocated the creation of a separate linguistic state of Maharashtra. Through Marmik, he campaigned against the growing influence of non-Marathis in Mumbai. In 1966, Thackeray formed the Shiv Sena party to advocate the place of Maharashtrians in Mumbai's political and professional landscape. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Thackeray built the party by forming temporary alliances with nearly all of Maharashtra's political parties. Thackeray was also the founder of the Marathi-language newspaper Saamana and the Hindi-language newspaper Dopahar ka saamana. He was the subject of numerous controversies. Upon his death, he was accorded a state funeral with a large number of mourners present.