Shiv Sena and BJP: How love turned to hatred in a saffron haze

Strangely, the current political crisis dogging Maharashtra has started showing what can well be the early signs of schism among some of the zealous protagonists of Hindutva. This seems to be unmistakably so, irrespective of the outcome that the crisis that right now grips the state may eventually have. 

This vexed situation was created a few days ago with the flight of a sizeable chunk of Shiv Sena MLAs from the state along with state Urban Development and PWD Minister Eknath Shinde. The MLAs were first ferried to Surat in buses and later flown to safely distant and secure Guwahati. Shinde is challenging the leadership of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray while swearing in the name of Hindutva.

Also read: What’s the secret of Uddhav’s calmness? It’s the Shiv Sena cadres

Shinde and the group of MLAs led by him claim to be the true flag-bearers of the legacy of Uddhav’s father and Sena founder, the late Balasaheb Thackeray. They offer the argument that Hindutva formed the core of Balasaheb’s politics which was getting compromised under Uddhav. It is so, according to them, since the Sena is now running the state government in alliance with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Sonia Gandhi’s Congress. 

Course correction

This needs a course correction in the rebels’ scheme of things. What they imply, or rather prefer, is Sena’s alliance with the ideologically closer and homogeneously Hindutva-wadi BJP, as was the case before the truncated verdict in the 2019 Assembly polls in Maharashtra.

This, as per the numbers thrown up by the last Vidhan Sabha polls, may well rob the Sena of the Chief Minister’s post. The BJP had emerged as the single-largest party with 106 seats in the Assembly followed by the Sena (56), NCP (53), and Congress (44). There are 29 independents and others, or smaller party members, in the 288-strong House. 

It was amid such a deeply divided verdict given by the electorate that the Sena called off its pre-poll alliance with the BJP and entered into coalition with the NCP and the Congress to form the government with Uddhav as the Chief Minister. He upstaged the last BJP chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is now trying to bounce back to power with the help of Shinde. The BJP, however, denies this and maintains that the party has nothing to do with the Sena’s internal crisis.

Maharashtra loss stings BJP

Yet, it is a fact that the BJP could never reconcile to the loss of Maharashtra and left no opportunity to berate the Sena and Uddhav for this. The coalition led by Uddhav could feel the heat because of this and always feared the Hindutva card to be played to break the Sena. To do away with such fears, Uddhav’s son Aditya Thackeray visited Ayodhya only days before the current turmoil rocked the party though Uddhav had been to Ayodhya only months after being sworn in as Chief Minister.

Also read: From Raj to Rane to Shinde: Shiv Sena’s long tryst with rebellion

Now, Aditya’s Ayodhya visit is being made an issue against him and his father by Shinde and his cohorts. On Thursday, Shinde appended a letter to his tweet to show his resentment against the father-son duo. The letter dated June 22 is written in Marathi by Sena’s Aurangabad MLA Sanjay Shrisat to Uddhav. 

It questions Uddhav’s stand on Hindutva. The letter asks the Chief Minister — are Hindutva, Ayodhya and Ram Mandir on Shiv Sena’s agenda? “Why were we stopped from going to Ayodhya when Aditya Thackeray visited the city? You had called several MLAs and asked us not to visit Ayodhya. Why were we not allowed a visit to Ram Mandir?”

All-encompassing Hindutva 

So, the Sena rebellion is conveniently couched in Hindutva, to which both Uddhav and his son too show their adherence to, in keeping with the tradition that goes back to the days of the Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray. The charismatic founder of the Sena skillfully combined Hindutva with nativism. He was a cartoonist who took to politics way back in the 1960s by first targeting Gujaratis settled in what used to be then Bombay, followed by South Indians and still later by turning Marathi Manoos against workers trooping into Maharashtra from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. 

Bal Thackeray supported the BJP through the days of the Mandir movement. This led both LK Advani and Pramod Mahajan to often say during the days of NDA-I that Shiv Sena and BJP were as close allies as was the case with the constituents of the Left Front in West Bengal and Kerala.

The ideological divide between the Sena and BJP had got so hazy in those times that the RSS veteran, late Sundar Singh Bhandari, tried to rescue the BJP from the widespread shock and indignation caused by the demolition of Babri Masjid in December 1992 by saying soon after it was demolished that the mosque was actually razed by Shiv Sainiks rather than Sangh volunteers. Bal Thackeray immediately lapped this up, saying that he was proud of the Sainiks if they brought the masjid to dust. Ever since, the ties between the Sena and the BJP had only been deepening.

Bal Thackeray favoured Sushma Swaraj

Yet, this underwent a change when the BJP started toying with the idea of making Narendra Modi its prime ministerial bet for the 2014 polls. Months before his death in November 2012, Bal Thackeray favoured the candidature of Sushma Swaraj for the top post, as she was the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha at that time and, thus, he thought, she was the natural claimant for the top post. 

This made the BJP and Modi a bit cold to the Sena and the first Assembly polls held in Maharashtra after his coming to power were fought separately by the Sena and the BJP though the two parties entered into an alliance after the polls. This paved the way for Fadnavis to become the Chief Minister.

The next Assembly polls were fought together by the BJP and Sena but things went awry though Fadnavis briefly became the CM with the support of Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, which was not approved by the senior Pawar. Soon, the NCP supremo turned the tables on the BJP by cobbling up an otherwise impossibly difficult coalition with Uddhav as CM and Ajit Pawar as his deputy.

So, the rebel Sainiks are seeking a resetting of this on ideological lines where they think that the Congress and NCP could never be natural and as staunch allies of the Sena as the BJP once was. To counter this, Uddhav has been pointing to the alliances that the BJP had or still has with Mehbooba Mufti in Jammu and Kashmir and Nitish Kumar in Bihar, despite the two having totally divergent ideologies from what Hindutva stands for. 

If the BJP can have ideologically diverse alliances, why can’t the Shiv Sena opt for the same, he asks. And in a speech addressed to his party workers on Friday, he remarked that the BJP and his detractors in the Sena flaunt ideology in Maharashtra with the obvious motive to oust him.

‘If not Uddhav, then who’

The Sena rebels somehow don’t have an answer to the question that the present crisis poses about the choice of the next CM. Sena MP and Uddhav loyalist Sanjay Raut has been posing this question to the rebels. The question that is being asked is whether Shinde himself, or Fadnavis, or another former Sena chief minister Narayan Rane, or somebody else would come forward to fill the void created by shunting out Uddhav as per the demands being made by the rebels. Their idea is to change the ambience of the state by bringing together the saffron flags that both Sena and the BJP cadres love to wave to ensure their sway over the politics of the state.

Also read: Will resign if rebel MLAs ask me in person: Uddhav

But behind this grandstanding by Sena rebels, ostensibly for the sake of Hindutva, can well be the lurking fear of the Centre’s law enforcement agencies catching up with them. 

One of the ministers in Uddhav’s team is in jail and so is the case with another peer who earlier held a cabinet post in the state. Observers point out that once the former Congress minister in the state, Harshwardhan Patil, was asked what he gained by joining the BJP and he shot back, “At least I can have sound sleep at night without fear of the ED (Enforcement Directorate) or other agencies knocking at my doors.”

Some of the Sena rebels may well have similar compulsions or thoughts despite the fact that Patil subsequently lost the polls, point out supporters of the current coalition led by Uddhav. They also point to the public support that the Chief Minister has been getting ever since the current crisis came to afflict Maharashtra.