Parsi endorsed Shiv Sena

After the Shiv Sena enforced withdrawal of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey from the Bombay University’s syllabus, Vaibhav Purandare, author of The Sena Story, an authorized biography of that party, recalled in Hindustan Times of October 17, 2010 that a Parsi lawyer had endorsed that party’s stand on the sons-of-the-soil policy.

In the 1960s a prominent lawyer, H. R. Pardiwala, was known to often discuss the Shiv Sena with fellow professionals in the Bombay High Court and vehemently criticize the party. One day barrister Achyut Chaphekar, a colleague, gave Pardiwala a small booklet containing the official party statement, titled Shiv Sena Speaks. After perusing it, an impressed Pardiwala distributed 25 copies of the booklet among his friends who had been critical of the party. He even wrote a book titled The Shiv Sena: Why and Why Not, published in 1967 in which he justified the party’s demand for jobs for locals, Purandare mentions. At a time when very few non-Marathi speaking people were willing to afford the Sena legitimacy and even prominent Marathi intellectuals were bashing it as pro-establishment, it came as an unexpected boost to the party that a Parsi lawyer should endorse its demands which went against the city’s cosmopolitan spirit.

Purandare adds that there was one aspect that Pardiwala strongly disagreed with — the Shiv Sena’s use of violence and coercive tactics. Were the party to eschew that, he felt its position in the political mainstream would be easily established and secure. Concludes the columnist, "The way the Sena has treated a Parsi writer recently, Pardiwala’s words hold as true today as they did four decades ago.”