After the split between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena just on the eve of the assembly polls in Maharashtra, there has been a fair amount of bad blood between the two parties who were allies for 25 years. While the BJP has been considerably restrained, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi even going on to say that he will not attack the Shiv Sena out of respect towards Balasaheb Thackeray, that feeling hasn’t been reciprocated. Uddhav Thackeray and other Sena leaders are screaming hoarse, finding fault with everything the BJP stands for, and even flaws in the campaign mechanism of the prime minister. But unfortunately for the Sena, their bold speak is mostly coming across as an act of desperation after being unceremoniously dumped by the BJP.
The fact of the matter is the Sena couldn’t properly read the changing political condition of the state. While historically it has been the dominant partner, its strike rate - to borrow cricketing parlance - has gone down steadily across the elections. So much so, in the last assembly election with only 44 seats out of 160 contested, it was relegated to the fourth largest party of the state. The BJP won 46 out of the 119 it contested.
In the general elections held this year, the NDA swept the state but the BJP had a higher strike rate of conversion of contested seats to winning it. All this naturally meant the BJP, under an ambitious president in Amit Shah, wanted to up the stakes for them and sought the rights of being an equal partner. But Sena remained stuck in its time warp and clinging by the age old “agreement” between Pramod Mahajan and Balasaheb Thackeray. It is another matter that the BJP had even earlier broken the agreement in their bid to seek the upper hand in the state.
In 1990, Sena won 52 out of 183 and BJP got 42 out of 105 seats. Naturally Sena got the post of leader of opposition. But shortly after that, miffed with Manohar Joshi getting the post, Chagan Bhujbal joined Congress with some other MLAs. Gopinath Munde promptly seized the opportunity to seek claim for the post of leader of opposition. This soured the Sena- BJP relationship for a while. The relationship also suffered stress due to BJP’s different stance viz a viz Sena to forma the separate state of Vidarbha and non-committal response to resolving the border issue with Karnataka. Sena even tried to disrupt the resumption of cricketing ties between India and Pakistan in 1999, but was promptly rebutted by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. There have been a few other disagreements in the past, like Sena voting for Pratibha Patil in President Election, but the alliance managed to survive them.
Also, the BJP has had indirect ties with the MNS (Raj Thackeray openly endorsing Modi) which had made Sena deeply distrustful of its ally. But they never really took the step of severing ties, which could have at least given them a moral high ground. Now Uddhav Thackeray is comparing Modi’s electoral campaign to that of the army of Afzal Khan. But Uddhav didn’t have any problems when Modi was carpet bombing the state prior to the Lok Sabha elections. Shiv Sena is currently asking the PM to concentrate on countering Pakistan rather than campaigning in Maharashtra. The reality is the Indian army is actually giving it back to the Pakistanis this time around. But when the Chinese incursions were at their peak and the army was in a spot of bother, Sena didn’t squeak a word, perhaps because it still had ties intact with the BJP.
So all in all, Sena’s recent posture screams of hypocrisy and desperation. Its greatest fear is that even in the Mumbai-Thane-Nashik belt, considered to be the Sena’s backyard, the party may suffer a huge setback. This predominantly urban belt has a huge young population, many of whom are ardent Modi supporters. So they may way well choose to vote for the BJP instead of the Sena.
Even Sena’s Marathi votebank faces stiff challenge from a resurgent Raj Thackeray. Facing these odds, Sena has started a subtle campaign by pitching the BJP as a Gujarati party. But in reality it’s sort of hard to convince voters that a party with 282 seats nationally merely caters to the interests of a single state or community. Yet, the Sena is playing the high stakes game as it is the only card left with them.
If the BJP can form a government of its own or cobble together an alliance sans the Sena, Uddhav Thackeray can brace for a long outing away from the political limelight. Balasaheb Thackeray was a pragmatist who supported Emergency and the Congress as well, before his successful stint in combination with the BJP. Unfortunately for Sena, it has moved too far to the right to reinvent itself. Its only natural ally is and will be the BJP. By resorting to personal attacks against Modi, it is only further limiting its options.
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