Samrat : How The Shiv Sena Changed Mumbai Forever

Full of anecdotes and pulling no punches, Samrat explores the life and times of Bal Thackeray and attempts to bring to the readers a unique insight into how a rather timid man from the working classes was shaped by his circumstances—and certain vested interests—into becoming a demagogue with the kind of success and following few could either dream of or replicate in the future. Thackeray not just changed the name of Bombay to Mumbai but quite altered the character and fabric of the city even though he was driven not by ideology, as might have seemed to most outsiders, but by his own pragmatism and personal interests. As Vir Sanghvi says in the forward, 'The book is an attempt to understand the milieu that Thackeray operated in and to capture the essence of his style amidst the shifting stands and the politics of pragmatism'.