For the past 30 years, Thackeray ... he has grown from strength to strength and even today ... the 70-year- old Shiv Sena chief, continues to draw huge crowds anywhere in Maharashtra.

In 1966, when he launched the Shiv Sena from the sprawling Shivaji Park ground in central Mumbai ... Bal Thackeray then was a popular cartoonist-editor, in his 40s. He himself was stunned by the response to his appeal ... To him all Southerners were Madrasis and all Northerners, Bhayyas ... His grandest vision was to fill all the vacancies in Big-blue-chip companies by Marathi peons, clerks, head clerks and junior officers.

He was no fiery speaker. He had no programme. He had no ideology. He did not even have any exciting ideas. He had no intention of launching a political party. Indeed, he was critical of politics per se ..

He did not quote inspiring passages form the Maratha history. He did not use the name of the great Maratha warrior Shivaji in his otherwise lacklustre speech. He thundered against the Madrasis for snatching the jobs that he though belonged to the Marathi people. His philistinism was transparent as much as his political innocence ....

Having identifies the villain, Bal Thackeray declared a war against the lungiwallahs. The aimless, lumpen, energetic Marathi youth promptly formed gangs of stormtroopers whose target was Udipi hotels.

The Sena chief was neither a militant Hindu nationalist nor a classical anti-communist and fascist leader. He could not be defined or typified and that was his strength. He did not know what to do with the huge following he had established. He had the cadre but no party. He had popularity but no programme.

Ironically, (the) Congress provided the Shiv Sena with a programme. The internal struggle within the Congress had begun to intensify ... The Syndicate decided to 'cleanse' the party. The cleansing meant removal of Nehruites and fellow travellers from the Congress ... The Sena (also) came in handy to break the communist hold over the trade union movement.

... Thackeray could not adjust himself with Morarji Desai-led Janata Party. Again he found himself in political vacuum - no programme, no ideology, no political line. But the lumpen mass base remained more or less intact. This lumpen mass was not criminalised till the early eighties ... The criminalisation of the Sena began after the collapse of the textile industry, caused by Datta Samant's mindless strike and millowners's sinister tactics ... The textile workers were crushed and uprooted. Most of the cadre of Shiv Sena as well as Arun Gawli's Akhil Bharatiya Sena come from them.

... (Thackeray) retains the alliance with the BJP for the upper-caste-upper-class-urban support. He continues to attack the Congress because that is what provides a raison-de'etre for his otherwise substance-less politics.

Thackeray is not an enigma. He represents a phase as well as a face of lumpenisation of Maharashtra.                                                            (Source: The Pioneer, 21 September 1997)

S.S. Banyal On BSP's Electoral Strategy

The Bahujan Samaj Party leaders have started sending feelers to the "like-minded" political parties to explore the possibility of an alliance with them during the mid-term poll slated for next year.

The BSP is one of the many small parties which had not entered the coalition of the UF Government. It had also kept away from the political hullabaloo which preceded the dissolution of the Lok Sabha ...

Mr. Kanshi Ram, the BSP supremo has from time to time declared that his party would ally with such parties in the next Lok Sabha which will give it a position of prominence. Now that the time has arrived for working out political alliance, the BSP is examining all the available options.

In the 11th Lok Sabha the BSP had 11 seats, out of which it had won seven from Uttar Pradesh and two seats each from Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. Unfortunately for the BSP no political party seems to be like-minded. It has  burnt its fingers with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party of Mr. Mulayam Singh.

The Congress maintains an ambivalent attitude towards the BSP. During the '96 polls, the BSP had insisted that the Congress should allocate 25 Lok Sabha seats to them but the latter had declined.

However, this time Mr. Kanshi Ram may be a little more magnanimous ... The Congress has also kept its doors open both for the BSP and the SP and the party which gives a better offer will be acceptable to it ...

Since in Uttar Pradesh the BSP has alienated the upper class people, its bargaining power with the Congress has been impaired ... but the BSP still has strong pockets of influence and has held on Dalit voters and that would keep the BSP in demand. The Congress is therefore not averse to a poll understanding ..

The biggest surprise, however, could be the revival of an alliance between the BSP and the BJP ... Last movement parleys between them could not be ruled out. A compromise can be reached again between the two just in order to keep the Congress and the SP away from UP. The BJP-BSP alliance in UP could be lethal for the other  political parties ...                                                                                                   (Source: The Hindustan Times, 8 December, 1997)