Newly allotted Shiv Sena symbol and its historical significance

“As Uddhav Thackeray ji said in his speech that he will turn the crisis into an opportunity, the allotment of the name and the symbol ‘mashaal’ has literally instilled a spirit in the Sainiks. Looks like, not only the Sainiks specifically in Mumbai but Sainiks all over the state are now feeling the new spirit in them. We are sure that we will bounce back,” claimed a leader of the Thackeray-led Sena.

The name of the party was given by Uddhav’s grandfather Prabodhankar (Keshav) Thackeray in 1966 and his father Bal Thackeray had founded the Shiv Sena.

Flames of the Sena’s torch

The ‘mashaal’ or the torch has a historical significance for the Shiv Sena as a party and Bal Thackeray. This dates back to the 1980s when the situation was similar as today for the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Sena had locked horns with the BJP then as well. The Shiv Sena had in the 1984-85 Lok Sabha election contested on the BJP’s symbol of the lotus. However, the relationship between the BJP and Sena went south after the elections and Bal Thackeray started hitting out at the BJP at every opportunity.

In the next elections, which was the Assembly polls, the Sena had got a temporary electoral symbol of ‘mashaal’. During that time, Bal Thackeray had published a cartoon he made hitting out at the BJP.

On the cartoon’s left panel, he depicted the BJP as a fat man and showed a hand holding a kamal or a lotus. “You (BJP) were happy when we took the kamal in our hands (for the elections),” he said in the writeup. On the right, the same fat man was seen getting scared and baffled as the hand holds a ‘mashaal’. It had a text with a warning “now face the flames of the mashaal”.

The Sena had then got its first MLA Chhagan Bhujbal in the state who won on the ‘mashaal’ symbol in the Assembly polls.

Different poll symbols

When the Shiv Sena was founded by Bal Thackeray, it was not a political party, but an organisation and the “roaring tiger” was its logo, which has continued to be widely used by Shiv Sainiks at every party office, poster, or official documents.

Till 1989, the Sena did not have a permanent poll symbol allotted by the Election Commission and it had been contesting on different symbols available then.

During the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election in 1968, the Sena contested on the shield and sword symbol and, in 1980, the party’s symbol in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls was the train engine. In 1984, it fought the Lok Sabha election on the BJP’s symbol since the Sena did not have any symbol.

In 1985, the Shiv Sena contested the Assembly elections on different symbols like the torch, the sun, and the bat and ball. Chhagan Bhujbal was the lone winner in that election and had won with a symbol of the torch. In 1989, the party was allocated the ‘bow and arrow’ as its permanent poll symbol by the EC.

Since then, the Shiv Sena had been contesting elections on the same symbol in Maharashtra and it had become the party’s identity.

Split in the middle

After almost four decades, the relationship between the Sena and BJP has taken the same sour turn.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena faced a major split since its inception in 1966 after party leader Eknath Shinde along with 39 MLAs raised a rebellion in June this year. They accused the party of abandoning the thoughts of Bal Thackeray and joined hands with the BJP to form the new government led by Shinde as the chief minister and BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as his deputy.

Shinde not only toppled the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, but also staked claim over the party, its name, and its symbol claiming that his faction is the true inheritor of Bal Thackeray’s legacy. This irked the party’s head as well as those loyal to Thackerays.