The Shiv Sena did quite well in the past week by its standards of acrimony. It sulked and boycotted all the programmes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited Mumbai on Sunday, bullied the organisers of ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali’s concerts into cancelling his Mumbai and Pune shows, poured black ink on Sudheendra Kulkarni for organising an event to launch a book written by a former Pakistan minister, dared the Bharatiya Janata Party to call off their alliance and quit the Maharashtra government, praised Modi’s role in exacting revenge for the 2002 Godhra train-burning incident (and later retracted the praise), showcased its hyper-nationalism which is essentially anti-Pakistanism, claimed once again to represent all of Mumbai and its citizens, and managed to hog national headlines and some international attention too.
The shrill and orchestrated drama, the muscle-flexing, the threat of “Sena-style action” against those it perceives as enemies were all typical behaviour of the party that will commemorate 50 years of its existence in June next year. The bellicosity had two purposes. One was to rouse its cadre with an emotive agenda for the coming elections to important municipal corporations. The other was to send out its strongest signal so far to the BJP – its alliance partner in government – that it can embarrass the government and undermine the authority of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
For the better part of the year that the BJP-Sena government has been in power, the Sena has behaved as if it were the principal opposition party. It has made ministers uncomfortable in the state legislature, criticised government’s decisions, hauled up the chief minister for not appropriately tackling the terrible drought in Marathwada, and left no opportunity to disparage and mock Modi in the columns of its Marathi mouthpiece Saamna. In its latest round of sniper fire, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray termed the government’s additional tax levy to raise Rs 1,600 crore as “pick-pocketing”.
It is clear that neither the BJP nor the Sena wants to partner the other in government any more, but neither has mustered the courage to officially call off the alliance. Both the parties will seize the most suitable timing before the spate of local body elections should they decide to end the alliance.
BJP game plan
The fissures appeared in the aftermath of BJP’s victory in May last year and deepened to a point that the 25-year-old alliance was called off on the eve of the state assembly election last September. After the Fadnavis government was sworn in in October, the Sena was accommodated but with insignificant portfolios. It has since then frequently complained that it has no say in the government.
The BJP’s game plan is clear: claim Sena’s territories and render it irrelevant in the coming years. The deliberate insults, the marginalisation, the indifference of top BJP leadership, including Modi and Shah, are all part of the strategy. The Sena is aware but, true to its character, has not been able to come up with a counter plan. It hopes that sulking, drama and spectacle are sufficient replacements to strategy. This worked well in the Bal Thackeray-Pramod Mahajan era of the alliance, when the relation was more amicable, but has no place in the equation re-formulated last year.
Each party would like the other to exit the alliance so that it can claim popular sympathy for being “dumped”. It is a useful emotion to have in one’s electioneering arsenal. The forthcoming local body elections are a win-or-perish battle for the Sena. Beginning with Kalyan-Dombivli, a significant and growing urban agglomeration in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region next month, the Sena must retain all the local bodies going to polls in the next 18 months to remain relevant in the state and bargain with the BJP. This includes the all-important, cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
In these municipal corporations, the Sena holds the majority seats but needs the BJP to stay in power. It is a reversal of roles in the state government. Over the last two decades, the Sena-controlled corporations have done little by way of planned and equitable urban growth in these areas. Some of the fastest growing urban areas of the country – Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli – are also its most dense, haphazard, inequitable, dirty and corrupt.
The BJP smells an opportunity to repeat at the local level what it nearly managed in the state last year: to become the ruling party or at least the lead player. Without control in these corporations and the multiple returns it brings to the party – and the Thackerays – the Sena would be marginalised.
Within the state BJP, the anti-Sena sentiment is considerably strong and growing. Many leaders have privately discussed the possibility of calling off the alliance. Ironically, the strongest defender of the alliance has been Fadnavis. The numbers in the 288-member state legislature are poised in a way that he needs slender support from another party. He would rather have the Sena on board than, say, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party or any other.
Thackeray’s lost opportunity
Uddhav Thackeray was in an enviable position last October when the results of the assembly election were called. He had managed to lead his party to its best-ever performance without the magnetic presence of his father and was in a position to determine the strength and survival of the BJP-led government. He had a critical decision to make in the light of the humiliation heaped in the weeks prior to the election: to re-ally with the BJP as a junior partner in the government or stay out of power so that the Sena could be the vociferous opposition while retaining its own space.
For weeks together, he dilly-dallied as he was pulled in different directions by key leaders in his party. When he eventually decided to join the government, it seemed a half-hearted decision, especially as Fadnavis ensured that the Sena ministers would not have much clout in the government. Thackeray has since been unable to resolve his – and the Sena’s – dilemma: to support the government or criticise it. This has put him in embarrassing positions too. His cabinet ministers were ostensibly a party to the government’s non-budget tax hike this month, yet he termed it as “pick-pocketing”. He spits fire outside, while his ministers make conciliatory noises within the government.
The duality has to end sometime, either in his accepting his subordinate political status or quitting the government. This dilemma at the top tier has meant that the rank and file remain confused. The uncertainty and lack of strategy have resulted in off-the-cuff responses and impulsive actions. What better than to fall back on issues that yielded dividends in the past such as its belligerent anti-Pakistanism?
The Sena has always had a peeve about Pakistan and its cross-border ceasefire violations for more than two decades. As a tactical and convenient move at that time, the late Bal Thackeray had conflated Muslims with Pakistan and mocked the successive Congress governments at the Centre for participating in dialogues and peace efforts. In his formulation of macho nationalism, Pakistan had to be put in its place and this meant, more than anything else, snapping cricket ties. Who can forget Shiv Sena cadres damaging cricket pitches at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai and the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in Delhi to disrupt scheduled India-Pakistan matches?
Uddhav Thackeray is in a good position to contribute to the nation’s Pakistan policy. As an ally in the Modi government, he could have confronted the prime minister on the policy, thrashed out the issue with the external affairs minister, opposed visa to the former Pakistan minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri for his book launch. Yet, Sena men showed their colours on the streets of Mumbai.
It is the same Uddhav Thackeray who not only quietly sat through Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in the presence of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in May 2014, but also showed no compunction in his party man being sworn in. The Sena has hardly evolved or participated in a programme to support or rehabilitate widows of Indian soldiers killed in cross-border violations. It confronted neither the establishment nor worked outside it to demonstrate its opposition to having a dialogue with Pakistan.
Therefore, when the Sena flexed its muscles in Mumbai about Kasuri’s book launch and Ghulam Ali's concerts, the gap between its professed and virulent anti-Pakistanism and its action showed up. The duality is unsustainable. True to type, the Sena places a premium on spectacle rather than the substantive.
The state loses
From 1999 to 2014, Maharashtra’s progress and development suffered thanks to the conflicts and contradictions between its ruling allies, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, as each worked to its own agenda often undermining the other. It set the state back and damaged the social fabric that Maharashtra was known for. The 2014 assembly election had promised to change this scenario.
Within a year, however, it seems that the ruling alliance partners are so out of rhythm with one another that such a dissonant and distrustful alliance will only harm the interests of the state more. It is better that the BJP and Sena go their separate ways.
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The shrill and orchestrated drama, the muscle-flexing, the threat of “Sena-style action” against those it perceives as enemies were all typical behaviour of the party that will commemorate 50 years of its existence in June next year. The bellicosity had two purposes. One was to rouse its cadre with an emotive agenda for the coming elections to important municipal corporations. The other was to send out its strongest signal so far to the BJP – its alliance partner in government – that it can embarrass the government and undermine the authority of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
For the better part of the year that the BJP-Sena government has been in power, the Sena has behaved as if it were the principal opposition party. It has made ministers uncomfortable in the state legislature, criticised government’s decisions, hauled up the chief minister for not appropriately tackling the terrible drought in Marathwada, and left no opportunity to disparage and mock Modi in the columns of its Marathi mouthpiece Saamna. In its latest round of sniper fire, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray termed the government’s additional tax levy to raise Rs 1,600 crore as “pick-pocketing”.
It is clear that neither the BJP nor the Sena wants to partner the other in government any more, but neither has mustered the courage to officially call off the alliance. Both the parties will seize the most suitable timing before the spate of local body elections should they decide to end the alliance.
BJP game plan
The fissures appeared in the aftermath of BJP’s victory in May last year and deepened to a point that the 25-year-old alliance was called off on the eve of the state assembly election last September. After the Fadnavis government was sworn in in October, the Sena was accommodated but with insignificant portfolios. It has since then frequently complained that it has no say in the government.
The BJP’s game plan is clear: claim Sena’s territories and render it irrelevant in the coming years. The deliberate insults, the marginalisation, the indifference of top BJP leadership, including Modi and Shah, are all part of the strategy. The Sena is aware but, true to its character, has not been able to come up with a counter plan. It hopes that sulking, drama and spectacle are sufficient replacements to strategy. This worked well in the Bal Thackeray-Pramod Mahajan era of the alliance, when the relation was more amicable, but has no place in the equation re-formulated last year.
Each party would like the other to exit the alliance so that it can claim popular sympathy for being “dumped”. It is a useful emotion to have in one’s electioneering arsenal. The forthcoming local body elections are a win-or-perish battle for the Sena. Beginning with Kalyan-Dombivli, a significant and growing urban agglomeration in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region next month, the Sena must retain all the local bodies going to polls in the next 18 months to remain relevant in the state and bargain with the BJP. This includes the all-important, cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
In these municipal corporations, the Sena holds the majority seats but needs the BJP to stay in power. It is a reversal of roles in the state government. Over the last two decades, the Sena-controlled corporations have done little by way of planned and equitable urban growth in these areas. Some of the fastest growing urban areas of the country – Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli – are also its most dense, haphazard, inequitable, dirty and corrupt.
The BJP smells an opportunity to repeat at the local level what it nearly managed in the state last year: to become the ruling party or at least the lead player. Without control in these corporations and the multiple returns it brings to the party – and the Thackerays – the Sena would be marginalised.
Within the state BJP, the anti-Sena sentiment is considerably strong and growing. Many leaders have privately discussed the possibility of calling off the alliance. Ironically, the strongest defender of the alliance has been Fadnavis. The numbers in the 288-member state legislature are poised in a way that he needs slender support from another party. He would rather have the Sena on board than, say, Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party or any other.
Thackeray’s lost opportunity
Uddhav Thackeray was in an enviable position last October when the results of the assembly election were called. He had managed to lead his party to its best-ever performance without the magnetic presence of his father and was in a position to determine the strength and survival of the BJP-led government. He had a critical decision to make in the light of the humiliation heaped in the weeks prior to the election: to re-ally with the BJP as a junior partner in the government or stay out of power so that the Sena could be the vociferous opposition while retaining its own space.
For weeks together, he dilly-dallied as he was pulled in different directions by key leaders in his party. When he eventually decided to join the government, it seemed a half-hearted decision, especially as Fadnavis ensured that the Sena ministers would not have much clout in the government. Thackeray has since been unable to resolve his – and the Sena’s – dilemma: to support the government or criticise it. This has put him in embarrassing positions too. His cabinet ministers were ostensibly a party to the government’s non-budget tax hike this month, yet he termed it as “pick-pocketing”. He spits fire outside, while his ministers make conciliatory noises within the government.
The duality has to end sometime, either in his accepting his subordinate political status or quitting the government. This dilemma at the top tier has meant that the rank and file remain confused. The uncertainty and lack of strategy have resulted in off-the-cuff responses and impulsive actions. What better than to fall back on issues that yielded dividends in the past such as its belligerent anti-Pakistanism?
The Sena has always had a peeve about Pakistan and its cross-border ceasefire violations for more than two decades. As a tactical and convenient move at that time, the late Bal Thackeray had conflated Muslims with Pakistan and mocked the successive Congress governments at the Centre for participating in dialogues and peace efforts. In his formulation of macho nationalism, Pakistan had to be put in its place and this meant, more than anything else, snapping cricket ties. Who can forget Shiv Sena cadres damaging cricket pitches at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai and the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in Delhi to disrupt scheduled India-Pakistan matches?
Uddhav Thackeray is in a good position to contribute to the nation’s Pakistan policy. As an ally in the Modi government, he could have confronted the prime minister on the policy, thrashed out the issue with the external affairs minister, opposed visa to the former Pakistan minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri for his book launch. Yet, Sena men showed their colours on the streets of Mumbai.
It is the same Uddhav Thackeray who not only quietly sat through Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in the presence of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in May 2014, but also showed no compunction in his party man being sworn in. The Sena has hardly evolved or participated in a programme to support or rehabilitate widows of Indian soldiers killed in cross-border violations. It confronted neither the establishment nor worked outside it to demonstrate its opposition to having a dialogue with Pakistan.
Therefore, when the Sena flexed its muscles in Mumbai about Kasuri’s book launch and Ghulam Ali's concerts, the gap between its professed and virulent anti-Pakistanism and its action showed up. The duality is unsustainable. True to type, the Sena places a premium on spectacle rather than the substantive.
The state loses
From 1999 to 2014, Maharashtra’s progress and development suffered thanks to the conflicts and contradictions between its ruling allies, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, as each worked to its own agenda often undermining the other. It set the state back and damaged the social fabric that Maharashtra was known for. The 2014 assembly election had promised to change this scenario.
Within a year, however, it seems that the ruling alliance partners are so out of rhythm with one another that such a dissonant and distrustful alliance will only harm the interests of the state more. It is better that the BJP and Sena go their separate ways.