NAGPUR: Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, who died in Mumbai on Saturday, spent a few years of his early childhood in Achalpur in Amravati district. Perhaps that was the reason why he vehemently opposed the creation of Vidarbha state.
Though he was born in Pune, Thackeray stayed in a two-room house as his father Keshav (Prabodhankar) was a bailiff in the Achalpur court. Thackeray's mother hailed from Paratwada and the marriage of his parents was arranged there.
Thackeray was immensely popular in Vidarbha. Two years after the Shiv Sena was formed in 1966, former Congress MLA Satish Chaturvedi, who was a student leader then, recollects Thackeray's first public rally in Nagpur. There was firing at the airport itself due to political unrest.
His political rallies in Vidarbha during the 90s were huge crowd pullers. No wonder the region contributed to the first saffron government coming to power in the state in 1995 by electing a large number of MLAs. At one time, there were five Sena MPs in the Lok Sabha from Vidarbha.
Thackeray's rallies in Katol and Ramtek would always be remembered not just for his oratory skills but for the comic side as he mimicked Vidarbha leaders like Nasikrao Tirpude with aplomb.
The Sena chief had at that time made a promise that if the Sena-BJP came to power they would bring all-round development in Vidarbha within a span of two years. At the Ramtek rally in 1998 they also published a saffron paper - blueprint for development of this region. Thackeray had said if he could not achieve this, he would himself lead a movement to create the separate state of Vidarbha. This was one promise neither he nor his party could fulfill.
He was a man whose political thinking evolved over the years since 1966 when he donned the political cap leaving the cartoonist's pen. For him Marathi pride came close to his nationalist outlook, issues on which he never compromised.
That was the reason despite decades of alliance with the BJP, he never retracted on his chosen stand of opposing statehood for Vidarbha to which the BJP was committed. He was firm on avoiding any division of the Marathi-speaking Maharashtra and even the BJP could never persuade him to change that stance. This was because he thought the demand for a separate Vidarbha came more from migrant non-Marathis settled here rather than the natives.