A stone’s throw away from Mumbai’s famous Shivaji Park, revered as much by politicians as budding cricketers, sat the low-rise building Kadam Niwas. In its modestly appointed house of the Thackerays, on a typically heavy rain day of June 19, 1966, a handful of men gathered to shape an organisation which, in their imagination, would speak for and fight for the Marathi manoos in the cosmopolitan Bombay that gave primacy to South Indians and Gujaratis.

In the room were cartoonist Bal Keshav Thackeray, accountant and organisation man Madhav Deshpande, street-level trailblazer Dhuri Master, trade unionists, culture connoisseurs and others. Today, the organisation that transformed into the political party, Shiv Sena, should have celebrated its 60th founding day with aplomb and style, led by Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray, who uncomfortably inherited the political mantle from his father. After all, few regional or subnational parties survive this long despite rebellions and splits and despite being undermined by larger political parties.

Yet, the Shiv Sena in 2026 is, with generous help from the apex court and the Election Commission, that of Eknath Shinde’s, who claimed the party, its name, and symbol in June 2022.  This, we know, considerably weakened Uddhav Thackeray, who watched the party shaped by his father and others getting snatched away from under his feet. The rump left with him—an elongated name, a different election symbol, and considerably reduced influence—has come under a dark cloud on the eve of the original party’s 60th anniversary. Six of his party’s Lok Sabha MPs—twothirds of the nine elected in........

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