Bal Thackeray and Shiv Sena's launch pad, Marmik, is on a new strip

Khincho na kaman ko,

na talwar nikalo,

Jab toph mukabil ho,

to akhbar nikalo

(Don’t pull the bowstring, or draw a sword

A newspaper works, where a cannon fails)

Marmik, the first cartoon weekly in Marathi started by Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, has been relaunched in a new avatar. The magazine, which is in its diamond jubilee year, unveiled a collector’s issue on November 17, ending its hiatus from the stands during the lockdown. Regular printing is expected to resume next month.

Apart from being among the few cartoon magazines in India, Marmik is the only such publication to catalyse the formation of a nativist movement and its political expression, the Shiv Sena, thus living up to its punchline quoted above.

However, when he launched Marmik, Thackeray, then a 33-year old unemployed political cartoonist, did not have such lofty motives. As he admitted in his first editorial, he was driven by the need to earn a livelihood. He had quit the Free Press Journal (FPJ) a year earlier after differences with the management.

Later, he was part of a six-member team that launched a newspaper called News Day. But his position against the powerful Congressman, S K Patil, caused a rift with his partners and he left the publication within months.

Faced with uncertainty, Thackeray planned a new cartoon weekly on the lines of the prestigious Shankar’s Weekly of K Shankar Pillai, which had published his works earlier.

Initially, he planned an English weekly titled Cartoonist, but his father, the social reformer-journalist ‘Prabodhankar’ Keshav Sitaram Thackeray suggested it should be in Marathi. Names like Tirandaz (archer) and Anjan (eye-opener) were considered, but Prabodhankar suggested Marmik (witty).

Marmik was born on August 13, 1960. The launch issue carried congratulatory messages from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Vice President S Radhakrishnan. It tapped into the hunger for a weekend read that went beyond the run-of-the-mill writing that Sunday supplements of Marathi newspapers carried.

Marmik’s stinging editorials, front-page and centre-spread cartoons by Bal Thackeray and film reviews by younger brother Shrikant, an accomplished cartoonist and music composer (he was the first to get Mohammed Rafi to sing in Marathi), struck a chord.

Though the state of Maharashtra had been inaugurated in May 1960, Marathi-speakers in Mumbai, who were not in a majority but constituted the largest linguistic minority, felt besieged. The Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti, which led the charge for Maharashtra’s statehood, with Prabhodhankar as one of the leading lights, had collapsed, causing a socio-political vacuum. Though literacy rates and office jobs had grown exponentially, Marathi-speakers had to compete with “outsiders”, largely from South India who were accused of nepotism, for white-collar positions.

Marmik picked up cudgels for Marathi job-seekers and Thackeray began publishing a list of non-Maharashtrians in senior government and private sector positions. Like former FPJ colleague R K Laxman’s “Common Man”, Thackeray’s “Kakaji” embodied the struggle of the “Marathi manoos (people)” in Mumbai.

This talk of injustice against the Maharashtrians and call to direct action resonated with the Marathi youth, who wrote to Marmik and flocked to the modest Thackeray family residence in the Maharashtrian enclave of Dadar with their grievances.

Prabodhankar suggested that this campaign be given an organised form. Thus, on June 19, 1966, was born the Shiv Sena, which mirrored similar anti-outsider movements in states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The Shiv Sena’s first public meeting on October 30, 1966 was announced in Marmik — one line printed under the centre-spread cartoon “Ravivarchi Jatra” by Thackeray. The lakhs, including later-day Maratha strongman Sharad Pawar, who turned out at the Shivaji Park in Dadar were a testimony to Marmik tapping into the latent discontent among the sons of the soil.

Described as the original “angry young man” by author-historian Gyan Prakash, Thackeray’s caustic editorials and cartoons spoke to the man on the street using his colloquialisms. These cartoons were pasted on boards across Mumbai by Shiv Sainiks to amplify the message. The rise in the Shiv Sena’s popularity reflected in the cartoon weekly’s circulation. The Sena gradually gained the popular support and muscle to control the country’s financial capital.

An eveninger, Saanj Marmik, was launched for the Shiv Sena’s canvassing during the 1967 and 1972 municipal polls in Mumbai. Thackeray remained Marmik’s editor till his demise in 2012.

60 years of political cartooning

• Like most Marathi weeklies, Marmik hits the stands on Friday, but is dated for Sunday
• The diamond jubilee issue has a print run of around 30,000. The next issue will be published in the first week of December
• Plans include republishing some of Bal Thackeray’s cartoons as centrespreads, digitisation of the archives, events and cartoon appreciation workshops and tapping into the global Marathi diaspora
• Around 50 per cent content will be cartoons
• An eminent cartoonist will be roped in as “cartoonist of the month” on lines of a guest editor
• The earlier focus was on stall sales, but now a subscription campaign has been launched

 His youngest son and incumbent Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav drew cartoons for Marmik briefly from 1979 to 1980. Though Thackeray had stopped cartooning around 1987 as his hands had begun to tremble, Shrikant’s son, Raj, who was close to his uncle and had learnt the nuances of the art from him, published his first cartoon in Marmik while in Class X. He later handled the weekly’s cover page cartoon.

 Like his uncle, Raj, who left the Shiv Sena after a feud with Uddhav and formed his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in 2006, was deeply influenced by the legendary political cartoonist David Low.

 The launch of the Marathi daily Saamna (1989), and the Hindi tabloid Dopahar ka Saamna (1993) led to Marmik taking a back seat due to apathy and lack of fresh blood and content.

Now, the relaunch plan under Uddhav’s wife, Rashmi, who replaced her husband as the editor after he became the chief minister last year, includes a digital edition, getting new contributors, experimenting with content like memes and increasing the cover price from Rs 5 to Rs 15. 

The weekly also plans to have strong political stories. But there is an inherent contradiction here.

Marmik has a legacy of taking anti-establishment positions. But, in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena is part of the ruling order. As the decision to drop a cartoon by Satish Acharya, which shows the late Shiv Sena patriarch passing his cartooning legacy to his estranged nephew Raj, from the diamond jubilee issue makes it clear, the weekly will have to tread a fine line between artistic liberty and political correctness. And therein lies the rub.

The writer is the author of The Cousins Thackeray