Thackeray is a propaganda film that aims to lionise the Shiv Sena founder

It is revealing to watch news clips showing Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray hosting Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad at his Mumbai home in 2004. Thackeray, the original “Hindu hruday samrat” (emperor of Hindu hearts), laughs as he admiringly recalls Miandad hitting the famous last-ball sixer that scarred a generation of Indian cricketers and fans. And he adds, incredibly, that he has nothing against cricket between the two rival nations. For a section of the TV press this rare conciliatory comment from the nativist politician amounted to perfidy.
 
The Miandad meeting is recreated in Thackeray, a bilingual biopic starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui. But it shows Thackeray sternly telling Miandad that his batting wasn’t good enough to let him forget the pain of families who lost soldiers fighting at the borders. The obvious agenda is to lionise Thackeray, and the movie serves up unabashed propaganda material in a critical election year for the Shiv Sena.

 
The story, written by Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut — also executive editor of the party mouthpiece Saamana — spans over three decades, from the early 1960s when Thackeray was a cartoonist with the Free Press Journal until his trial in a Lucknow court in the Babri Masjid demolition case. The director, Abhijit Panse, who made a critically acclaimed Marathi film (Rege) on the Mumbai underworld in 2014, sticks to a realistic portrayal of the Mumbai. The first half, barring the courtroom scenes, is in black and white and recreates a nostalgic, cosmopolitan Bombay that existed before Thackeray turned it into a saffronised Mumbai.

 

The appeal of Thackeray, and indeed his party, lies in unapologetic rabble-rousing. The movie is an extension of his ideas. He quit his job because he felt South Indians held all the important jobs. In an early scene, Thackeray is seemingly the only “native” watching an animation film in the theatre that shows South Indians and other communities poking fun at the Marathi local.
 
With the blessings of his father, who fought for a “Unified Maharashtra”, he starts his own cartoon weekly to get back at the “outsiders”. The party, a militia, is set up next, followed by crushing disaffection within, resorting to violence and arm-twisting local authorities to wrest economic nationalism for the Marathi people.

 
Thackeray’s disdain for democracy and preference for dictatorship is oft-repeated in the movie. And, as in real life, his character spouts populist sophistry that suits majoritarian sentiments just fine. Sample this: as a pall-bearer of a Shiv Sainik who is killed trying to prevent the car of minister Morarji Desai from entering the city, Thackeray tells a cop, “Yeh jo mere kandhe pe hai woh tumhara loktantra hai. (It’s the corpse of your democracy on my shoulder.)”
 
Unsurprisingly, the film shows little of the post-Babri riots in the city that followed, and for which Thackeray was briefly arrested. It also shows him allowing in a Muslim family seeking his mercy after they are left homeless in the riots, and urging the man to offer namaz in his house.

 
Despite its predictably defensive stance, the filmmakers’ credibility could have fared better by shedding more light on how the Congress propped up Thackeray and his party to weaken the hold of Communists in the textile mills.
 
Siddiqui’s rendition brings out Thackeray’s forceful persona, without quite capturing the brooding menace evoked by his saffron-clad, cigar-smoking latter avatar, eyes hidden behind dark shades, wrists wrapped with prayer beads. Other characters, from Amrita Rao playing his wife Meena Tai to those enacting political personalities, lend authenticity but have scant roles.
 
The ending feels abrupt, but it promises a sequel. More than anything else, Thackeray is a refresher course on the modern history of a city of paradoxes. For its makers, the last word on its “success” will be said after the general elections this year.