From shield and sword to flaming torch, a history of Shiv Sena’s political symbols
While the Election Commission order allows the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena to use the flaming torch symbol for the bypolls, it needs to be seen how the party goes about popularising it.
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It was only in 1989 that the Election Commission allocated the bow and arrow to the party as its permanent poll symbol. (File) The Election Commission’s decision favouring the Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction on Friday brought to an end the Thackeray family’s three-decade-long association with the bow and arrow symbol, which had become the most recognisable asset of the party that Bal Thackeray founded.
In a political environment where party symbols matter more than the candidates’ names, the loss of the bow and arrow symbol will be a major setback for the Shiv Sena, which had used the symbol’s aggressive iconography to portray its image as a militant political party and to consolidate its presence in Maharashtra’s political landscape.
When the Sena was founded by 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; it had been contesting polls on different symbols available then.
The Sena contested the 1968 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections on the shield and sword symbol and the party’s symbol in the 1980 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls was the train engine. The Sena fought the 1984 Lok Sabha elections on the BJP’s symbol since it did not have a symbol of its own.
In 1985, Sena candidates contested the Assembly elections on different symbols like the torch, the sun, and the bat and ball. Chhagan Bhujbal, whose symbol was the torch, was the party’s lone winner in that election.
The Sena had locked horns with the BJP as their relationship went south after the 1984 Lok Sabha elections and Thackeray started hitting out at the latter at every opportunity.
Also a cartoonist, Thackeray depicted the BJP as a fat man and showed a hand holding a lotus. “You (BJP) were happy when we took the lotus in our hands (for the elections),” he wrote. On the right panel of the cartoon, the same fat man was seen getting scared and baffled as the hand holds a torch. It had a text with a warning “now face the flames of the torch”.
However, it was only in 1989 that the Election Commission allocated the bow and arrow to the party as its permanent poll symbol.
Since then, the Sena had been contesting elections on the same symbol in Maharashtra and it had become the party’s identity.
While the Election Commission order allows the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena to use the flaming torch symbol for the upcoming bypolls, it needs to be seen how the party goes about popularising this new symbol.
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