#dnaEdit: Right-wing mutation

The falling apart of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the eve of the Maharashtra assembly elections is an interesting development in the country’s right-wing politics. The quarter-century Sena-BJP alliance was predicated on the premise that right-wing Hindutva parties cannot afford disunity, and whatever their internal differences — and there were always enough of them simmering beneath the surface — they should hang together.

Because that was the only way to achieve electoral success and political power. In 2014, the Shiv Sena in its post-Bal Thackeray phase, feels the need to independently step out into the political arena. The Sena chairman Uddhav Thackeray made his chief ministerial claims amply clear. The BJP, on its part, following its heady Lok Sabha victory with Narendra Modi at the helm, feels confident enough to strike out on its own in the state. For the first time, the right-wing parties are not afraid to confront each other. They seem to believe there is enough space for them to fight each other and not harm their ideological cause. 

The two parties — in power as part of an alliance — are quite confident that the split would not harm their political prospects. The lines of difference between the two have not hardened. And if they do not manage to get the required numbers on their own, they could well reunite. There has been no bitterness — at least publicly — in the parting of ways. 

The BJP-Sena split indicates that while the space for right-wing politics has increased, the space for left-of-centre has shrunk considerably. The logical corollary is that Hindutva may no longer be the solitary theme for the political right. The play of differences between Sena and the BJP is significant in this context. The Sena remains largely a party which wants to protect the interests of the Maharashtrians. In its political imagination, it also see itself as the defender of the Hindu nation as symbolised by Shivaji. But it never ventured too far out to stake its political claim outside the state. Regardless of its limited success, the BJP on the other hand, felt the need for a pan-Indian identity.  Its nationalist idiom was also expressed through Hindi, which was in contrast to the Sena emphasis on Marathi. By going their own ways, neither party has to be apologetic about the other’s polemical sphere. Sena will talk of developing a Maharashtra which will ensure the welfare of Maharashtrians and their cultural glory,  projecting the Shivaji legacy within the state. The BJP can choose to celebrate Gandhi and Patel, Ambedkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyay. It can also woo more freely the people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, from Kerala and Gujarat in Mumbai, in the name of the nation.

In contrast, the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) split is ideologically less significant. It is almost an attempt at dividing the family property as the stakes of the two parties are centred round power. The NCP, under Sharad Pawar, is making its last bid to carve out a niche for itself in the state’s politics. Pawar is known to pursue pragmatic politics which in light of the Congress-NCP split, opens up several post-poll possibilities. No doubt, the twin-split in the two rival political camps, sets the stage for a division of votes. It remains to be seen which way the fractured mandates will play out in the four-cornered contest.