Sheila sinks Moral Ma’am - Sena cubs cheer ‘bar dance’ numbers

Mumbai, Oct. 18: Good you weren’t there, Grandpa, the show was for adults only.

Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena may be known for its moral policing, but its kid wing Yuva Sena turned one yesterday to the raunchy tunes of Sheila ki Jawani andJalebi Bai. Party patriarch Thackeray “watched” from huge posters while his son Uddhav and grandson Aditya, the chief of the youth wing, clapped away merrily as women gyrated on stage to the Bollywood numbers and sexually suggestive Marathi songs “This is the new age,” Uddhav said today, clearly uncomfortable when asked if the Sena’s “morals” were changing. “You have to talk to the youth in their language.” For years, though, the senior Sena’s language has been rather rigid when it has come to dealing with anything that according to the self-appointed custodians of morality had the slightest hint of vice. From tarring faces of bar girls to tearing down sexually explicit Bollywood posters and terrorising couples on Valentine’s Day, Sena cadres have done it all in the name of culture. Yesterday, they took a break. Barstools, placed as props on the dais, created an atmosphere like that of a dance bar. The event, at Mumbai’s 60-year-old Shanmukhananda Hall in Sion which has in the past hosted Zubin Mehta’s New York Philharmonic, was organised by Uddhav’s 22-year-old son Aditya. Both Thackeray and Uddhav have addressed party workers here in the past, exhorting them to be custodians of the Sena’s version of Indian culture. Yesterday, however, Uddhav, flanked by Mumbai mayor Shraddha Jadhav and ex-Sena chief minister Manohar Joshi, cheered on, while Yuva Sena cadres, celebrating the outfit’s first anniversary, joined in the jubilation with catcalls and whistles. Before the “controversial” show, Bal Thackeray had addressed young delegates of the Yuva Sena through video-conferencing, advising them to read newspapers and stay abreast with current affairs for survival in politics. Sena sources said the senior Thackeray was not amused when he learnt that senior party leaders had let their hair down before the media. “Balasaheb was peeved when he came to know that all this happened in the presence of the media. He, in fact, even scolded Aditya,” said a Sena insider.