Shiv Sena And Its Changing Relationship With Mumbai's Muslims

Shiv Sena office at Temkar Street in south Mumbai’s Nagpada area.

Recently, I happened to pass through Temkar Street in south Mumbai’s Nagpada area and saw something which surprised me and took me twenty-five years back. At the entrance of that narrow street, there was an office of a local Shiv Sena leader. There were pictures of the party’s founder Bal Thackeray and his son Uddhav Thackeray against a saffron backdrop. There was nothing unusual about that office except that Temkar Street was once home to underworld don Chhota Shakeel before he fled to Dubai in the late eighties. He was the same Chhota Shakeel on whose instructions, in 1998, shooters gunned down a Shakhapramukh named Salim Budguzar for daring to open the Shiv Sena’s office in the Muslim-dominated Nagpada. Budguzar was “punished” by Chhota Shakeel for allowing inroads to a party that was seen as anti-Muslim. His shooters also killed many other Shivsainiks because of the party’s anti-Muslim image. But today, twenty-five years later, a Muslim opened the Shiv Sena’s office right next to Chhota Shakeel’s erstwhile residence.

 

In 1998, on the instructions of underworld don Chhota Shakeel, shooters gunned down a Shakhapramukh named Salim Budguzar for daring to open the Shiv Sena’s office at Temkar Street in the Muslim-dominated Nagpada. 

 

The Shiv Sena (UBT)’s office at Nagpada is an example of the party’s relationship with the Muslims of Mumbai. Till a decade back, the Shiv Sena was seen as an anti-Muslim party. The 1984 riots of Bhiwandi first established the party as a militant Hindu organization. In the late 80s during an electoral campaign, Bal Thackeray gave a hateful speech against Muslims at Mumbai’s Vile Parle, for which he had to forfeit his voting rights. The role of the Shiv Sena in fighting Muslims post Babri Masjid demolition riots in 1992-93 was elaborated in the B.N.Srikrishna Commission’s report that was assigned to conduct an inquiry into the riots. Bal Thackeray famously announced that if Shiv Sainiks had demolished the Babri Masjid, he was proud of that. Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana regularly wrote editorials against Muslims and Bal Thackeray’s public speeches were often filled with expletives against the community, although, Thackeray maintained that he was not against all Muslims but only against those who were “pro-Pakistan”. All this had built an anti-Muslim image of the Shiv Sena.

Things began to change when Uddhav Thackeray took over the reins of the party in 2004. Uddhav appeared to be a person with a moderate, accommodative and tolerant mindset. Although Uddhav always claimed that the Shiv Sena wouldn’t compromise with its Hindutva ideology, his idea of Hindutva didn’t have anti-Muslim elements. Unlike his father, he never targeted any community or used derogatory words against them in his speeches. It was this soft approach that led him to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance with secular parties like the Congress and the NCP in 2019. Uddhav surprised everybody when he signed the preamble of the MVA which had the word “secular” mentioned in it twice. It led to a discussion among the political pundits that the erstwhile Hindutvawadi Shiv Sena was now a secular party in “letter and spirit.”

Uddhav’s nephew Raj Thackeray, who runs Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), was quick to fill up the space of an aggressive Hindutvawadi party, left by the Shiv Sena. In 2020, Raj Thackeray, who so far was doing Marathi politics, announced that Hindutva was in his DNA and changed his party’s flag to saffron. His workers started calling him “Hindu Jan Nayak.” In 2022, he launched a campaign against loudspeakers in mosques to strengthen his image as a Hindu leader. A few Muslim office-bearers, who were with Raj Thackeray when he was doing Marathi politics, got upset with his new anti-Muslim stance and quit the party.

Now Uddhav’s Shiv Sena doesn’t seem to be untouchable for Muslims. There are few Muslim office bearers in his party. When Uddhav was the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, a Mulsim from Aurangabad named Abdul Sattar was a member of his council of ministers. He switched to Eknath Shinde’s group after a rebellion in the party in 2022. Even in 1995, when the Shiv Sena came to power for the first time in Maharashtra, a Muslim from Ambernath named Sabir Shaikh was made a minister in Manohar Joshi’s cabinet.

Apart from Uddhav’s soft attitude towards Muslims and his alliance with the secular parties, what brings him closer to the community is the fact that he has proved to be the fiercest nemesis of the BJP. Here I remember what Samajwadi Party’s Maharashtra unit chief Abu Azmi told me in 2019 when his party became part of the MVA. I asked Azmi whether he was comfortable being a partner of the Shiv Sena, which was seen as anti-Muslim and which has attacked him in the past. Azmi replied – “The BJP is a big enemy and the Shiv Sena is a small enemy. There is nothing wrong to join hands with the small enemy to finish the big enemy. Once that is done, we will see what to do with the small enemy.”

(Bombayphile is published every Saturday where Jitendra Dixit writes about the past and present of Mumbai.)

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