Nawazuddin Siddiqui is Bal Thackeray in a biographical film



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Some of the jokes of Abhijit Panse's biopic Bal Thackeray are written themselves. In a scene, furious that the cinemas of Mumbai do not project Marathi films but favor Hindi productions "cheap", the members of the Shiv Sena party get to work. They make sure that Dev Anand-starrer Tere Mere Sapne is replaced by Songadya of Dada Kondke . Of course, Kondke's bad-rich films would not respect the moral standard that the Sena defends elsewhere. But as Kondke is a Marathi, all is well in the universe imagined by Shiv Sena.

The greatest irony lies in the casting and in the fact that the film about a nativist champion was made in Hindi as well as in Marathi. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, from Uttar Pradesh, plays Thackeray, Amrita Rao, who lives in North Karnataka, his wife, Meena, and many non-Maharashtrian speakers occupy the credits. When Thackeray began his satirical weekly Marmik in the 1960s, he was publishing lists of "outsiders" who allegedly flooded Mumbai and refused to employ native speakers. Marathi. In the credits of the end of the film Thackeray it is clear that this film could not have been made without the help of these damn underdogs, just as Mumbai would not have been able to do it. Flourish without its migrants.

Subtlety Thackeray A 139-minute propaganda video for Shiv Sena preparing for elections in Lok Sabha later this year. The project was produced by MP Shiv Sena, Sanjay Raut, and is an audiovisual extension of the official journal of Sena Saamna of which Raut is the editor.

Abhijit Panse's long tread lies between the late 1960s and the mid-1990s and covers every aspect of the fundamental values ​​of the right-wing party. The list is short: Maharashtra belongs to Marathi speakers. Mumbai has been ruined by foreigners. Violence is an acceptable mode of protest – and even the best. Democracy is overrated and autocracy is a good thing.

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Thackeray (2019).

While he graduated from the cartoonist Free Press Journal he left behind a series of violence that fundamentally reshaped the city then known as Bombay. but is presented here as a necessary consequence of the alleged discrimination against Marathi speakers. The film is divided into chapters and the one on Shiv Sena's formation in 1966 titled "Sunrise".

In the process of exploring the rise of the demagogue, the film gives its agony and bigotry a normal rank. Thackeray proudly resurrects Sena's violent campaign against the communities of southern India in Mumbai in the 1960s (grouped under the pejorative term "Madrasi"). The notorious rallying cry "Uthao lungi, bajao pungi" (detach the lungi, sound of the trumpet) has been transformed into "Bajao pungi, hatao lungi" (sound of the trumpet, move the lungi away), but the feeling hovers over the same hatred.

Key events in the history of Maharashtra are rewritten to provide vivid evidence of Thackeray's growing influence. The communists are described as "red baboons" and the badbadination of the leader of the Indian Communist Party, Krishna Desai, in 1970 in Mumbai, is described as a milestone event for the party. Other gravestones posing as milestones are being put in place – Thackeray's support for Indira Gandhi's Emergency in 1975 ("If an emergency is needed for the discipline, so be it"), Thackeray's adherence to Hindutva in the 1990s ("Why can not we vote for Hindu" the basis of religion "?) and the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992 (" We are not We have not demolished the mosque, we have simply cleared it. "

  Nawazuddin Siddiqui at Thackeray Courtesy of Rauters Entertainment
Nawazuddin Siddiqui at Thackeray With kind permission of Rauters Entertainment

The communal riots that followed the destruction of Babri Masjid in Mumbai in December 1992 and early 1993 changed the city forever.The official commission of inquiry into the violence appointed Sena officials for having planned and fanned the violence, especially the second phase, which targeted the city's Muslims.Perfectly, the film stands by the first series of riots and the leap of March 12, 1993, The attacks on the bomb that were unleashed by Muslim gangsters, backed by Pakistan in retaliation, but rather than being portrayed as the instigators of the community riots, Thackeray and Shiv Sena are touted as saviors of the city. were included only because one of the objectives was the party headquarters, Sena Bhavan, in central Mumbai.

Throughout revisionism, Thackeray is portrayed as a cool autocrat who enjoys his pipe, his cigars and a mug of beer and is a devoted husband of his wife Meena (Amrita Rao). The film concludes with the highlight of Shiv Sena in Maharashtra politics – the victory of the Sena-Bharatiya Janata party alliance in the 1995 parliamentary elections. Subsequent events that disrupted the party, such as the nephew's exit Thackeray, Raj, who trained rival Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, are left out. The result is a saffron – tinted film that recalls glorious times for some and nightmarish for countless others.

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