They say that politics makes for strange bedfellows. And we have seen this throughout the last century of the most unlikely alliances. Political marriages of convenience. The BJP and the PDP in alliance to form a government. Mamata Banerjee and the TMC in alliance with Vajpayee’s NDA – until she huffed out. There was the Mayawati-led BSP – with its strong emotions about upper-caste hegemony – in alliance with the BJP. Even our coalition governments at the centre had strange mixes. The reforms-leaning Dr Manmohan Singh’s UPA government in alliance with the Communists. Or the third front with so many inherent contradictions that it was unstable to begin with. Of all the strange alliances that has come into play in India, as politicians seek power, none has been stranger than the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra.
The alliance between the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the Congress is less a political marriage of convenience and more a political marriage of inconvenience. While their central leadership has gone into government, for a large part of the Sena, the transition from a grassroots level disrupter to a government based on a common minimum programme has been tough. Uddhav Thackeray’s pivot to a softer Hindutva has been seen with suspicion by many in his own party.
The Sena started in the mid-1960s as a movement that was built around the employment rights of Maharashtrians in cities like Bombay (as Mumbai was then called). It focused on millworkers, o factory workers, and other kinds of blue- and white-collared roles to ensure that Maharashtrians did not lose out to less expensive ‘outsiders.’ In the late 1980s the Sena moved beyond Maharashtra-centric issues and pivoted to hard-line Hindutva, taking up a number of causes and issues that kept it in the national limelight. Its role in the Bombay riots only cemented its positioning of hard-line Hindutva.
The Sena was cadre-driven, with local offices and local leadership, all of them homegrown. Their capacity for hard-line politics was tremendous. As was their capacity to bring localities to a grinding halt with the threat of violence. Often, a local Sena volunteer walking into your office to tell you to shut down for the day, because they were protesting, was enough to pull down shutters. The implicit threat was good enough.
For the longest time the BJP Shiv Sena alliance was cast in stone. It was like nothing could shake this. That changed after the last Vidhan Sabha elections. The alliance broke as the Shiv Sena held out for the CM’s post and better allocation of portfolios. But, underlying this was the fear that the Sena, which was always the senior partner in the Shiv Sena BJP alliance, was now relegated to a junior role, with relegation from even state politics in the offing.
The alliance with the NCP and the INC was the Sena’s way of recasting itself. From the time of the MVA government forming, it has been on shaky territory. The pandemic allowed Uddhav Thackeray to talk directly to the people of Maharashtra with regular tangible updates. The man who was seen as a reluctant politician was suddenly centre stage, and gaining accolades for the way the pandemic was contained.
But like most dynasts, Uddhav Thackeray does not have a base of his own. His power arises from the magnetic effect his father had, on not just the rank and file of the Shiv Sena but the state as a whole. While the power of the chieftains of Shiv Sena arose from the approval of Balasaheb Thackeray, his son was the head of the Sena, because of the approval of the local chieftains. Eknath Shinde is one of those chieftains who derives his power form a very strong local connect, something that Uddhav Thackeray does not have.
A political party is an organisation, and like all organisations it is made up of people at various levels who are not just aligned to the values of the organisation but also looking at growth within that organisation. The cornering of power and authority by a single family or a group alienates not just those who aspired for more responsibility, but also the rank and file. Ambitious people look for other opportunities.
Just as other parties that have moved from mass participation organisations to family run businesses – the INC, the NCP, the PDP, the NC – the Shiv Sena too faces upheaval. Those who believe they deserve more, move to pastures where they are promised more. And that is what we are seeing today, in the Maharashtra political crisis. You see ambitious homegrown leaders of the party asking why they need to take directions from a 32-year-old, Aditya Thackeray, whose only claim to fame is that he is the grandson of Balasaheb Thackeray.
All the opposition parties need to solve for the tricky question of dynasty. Be it the SS, the INC, or the NCP, unless they allow the space for ambitious leadership to rise, and take charge, they are losing the best talent. And this will get them to hurtle faster towards irrelevancy. The question is whether they have the political will to do so.
The writer works at the intersection of digital content, technology and audiences. She is a writer, columnist, visiting faculty and filmmaker. She tweets at @calamur
