Thackeray-Pawar ties: Across generations, families have melded political with personal

One evening in October 1966, a round-faced, portly man dressed in white plonked himself on one of the benches that draw a neat ring around Shivaji Park in central Mumbai. He was not out for fresh air, but for a ringside view of a rally organised by Shiv Sena, a new sons-of-the-soil outfit launched by a former cartoonist, Bal Thackeray. As Thackeray launched into a tirade against migrants flocking to Mumbai in his first speech, the man on the bench, Sharad Pawar, a Congress activist from Baramati, listened intently.

Not that Pawar, who started out as a Youth Congress worker and looked up to YB Chavan as his icon, agreed with what Thackeray said. He stuck to his party's stand of "unity in diversity," but knew the ex-cartoonist was not a man to be ignored. Pawar had, in fact, first met Bal Thackeray before the Sena was formed; Thackeray's father, Prabodhankar, was a public figure who routinely attracted visitors at his Dadar residence, and Bal had developed a reputation of his own with his brushstrokes. So an acquaintance was in place.





After the inaugural Sena rally, the two travelled in different directions politically as the Sena-Congress bonhomie of the late 1960s and early 1970s - forged in their shared opposition to Communists in the city's mill heartland - ended. But a personal rapport endured, developing into a familial bond that has now enabled the late Sena founder's son Uddhav to take over the reins of the state with Pawar as mover of a three-party coalition.



Bal Thackeray always referred to Pawar as "Sharad babu" in person, though in a clear separation between the personal and the political, he dubbed him a "maidyacha pota" (a sack of flour) in speeches. Their families dined together and looked after each other. When Pawar's daughter Supriya was barely a year old, the then Congress leader and his wife Pratibha once had dinner at the Thackerays' new home, after which Pawar said he'd drive back to his hometown in Pune district. Thackeray tried to dissuade him: it was late and Supriya was small, so he urged his "dear friend" to stay back and leave in the morning. Pawar however insisted on going, and by Thackeray's own admission, he was anxious and stayed awake until he'd confirmed over phone that the Pawars had reached safely.

When Pawar, as NCP chief, decided to nominate Supriya to the Rajya Sabha in 2006, the Sena chief rang him up and told him he was annoyed because he'd heard the news from someone else. Pawar tried to explain that there was no way he could get Sena-BJP votes for her as they had their own candidates, but Thackeray persuaded BJP not to put up a saffron alliance candidate against her. "I've known Supriya as a child, and she's played with my children since she was six months old. How could I not see to it that she enters the RS unopposed?" Thackeray asked.

Pawar played a key role in getting Sena to back Congress' Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee for President, and at the time of the Sena patriarch's final illness in 2012, it was Pawar who often gave Uddhav strength.

This time, the barrier between personal and political has been breached, and Supriya Sule's tweet on Thursday showed the extent of the warmth. "Maa Saheb and Balasaheb -missing you so much today. Both of you should have been here today. They treated me with so much love and affection more than a daughter! Their role in my life will always be special and memorable!" Supriya wrote.