ONCE UPON A TIME, Eknath Shinde was an auto-rickshaw driver in Thane. He was born and brought up in Satara in western Maharashtra, but had to leave the village as a child to make a living. During those Thane years he was in touch with the RSS, but he soon distanced himself from it as he found the Shiv Sena and its ‘sons of the soil’ ideology more attractive. He became a Shiv Sainik and started working for the party. Soon he was made shakha pramukh. His diligent work was spotted by Anand Dighe, a Sena heavyweight who was the party’s district chief.
A tragedy struck Shinde in 1999; he lost two of his three children in a drowning accident in his village. Shinde was depressed. He even contemplated quitting politics and moving back to Satara. But Dighe dissuaded him. On Dighe’s request, Rajan Vichare, the Sena’s group leader in the Thane Municipal Corporation, vacated his seat for Shinde. It worked and Shinde immersed himself in party work to get over his grief.
When Dighe died in an accident in 2001, Shinde naturally became his successor and led the Sena in Thane. Impressed by his work, Bal Thackeray gave him a party ticket to contest the assembly elections in 2004. Shinde won comfortably.
Shinde kept the party unit in Thane intact when Sena biggies like Raj Thackeray and Narayan Rane rebelled against Uddhav Thackeray, whom Balasaheb had made his successor. In return, Uddhav gave him a free hand in Thane. Shinde soon became a go-to man for Sena and BJP legislators in Thane and Navi Mumbai region.
In 2009, after getting elected to the assembly for the second time, Shinde got an offer from the Congress to become a minister. But he declined it. The loyalty brought him even closer to Uddhav who was still rebuilding the party after the rebellions by Raj and Rane.
As second-term MLA, Shinde developed excellent equations with other Sena legislators. He also did not ignore the needs of the organisation and was always ready to provide “men, money and material”. In 2014, after a brief stint as the leader of opposition, he became a minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government. He had an excellent rapport with Fadnavis unlike most Sena leaders.
In 2019, when Sena snapped ties with the BJP and formed the MVA government, Shinde became a minister with the urban development portfolio. Interestingly, the BJP never targeted Shinde though it unleashed central agencies against many MVA leaders.
Shinde recently produced a Marathi film, Dharmaveer: Mukkam Post Thane. Based on Dighe’s life, the film, with the tagline ‘Gaddarana Mafi Nahi (No Pardon for Traitors)’, has become super hit. Now many Shiv Sainiks are raising questions about his loyalty.