Identity crisis for Shiv Sena

If all this recent posturing from the Shiv Sena's grand patriarch Bal Thackeray is the party's attempt to show that he's back in the saddle, then the most obvious conclusion is that having run out of fresh thinking, the party is going back to its tired and not-so-true ideas from the past.

Over the last week the senior Thackeray has objected to industrialist Mukesh Ambani stating that Mumbai is for all Indians and to film star Shah Rukh Khan stating that the Pakistan cricketers who were not picked up in the recent IPL auctions had been treated badly. The Sena has also stated that Australian cricketers were not welcome in Mumbai after the spate of attacks on Indians in Australia.

Politically, the Sena has found that it has been pushed into a corner. Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has had a clear upward trajectory since it was launched three years ago and the breakaway group has managed to use all Bal Thackeray's old tactics on its road to success. The Sena in that time, under the direction of Uddhav Thackeray, attempted to spread its wings wider than Mumbai and look beyond mere parochial issues.

However, the feeling in the party is that it drifted too far from its core constituency and lost its edge.

All that may well be true in the narrowest possible sense. However, it is also true that the world around the Sena has changed and the party has not kept pace with those changes. In some sense, while Uddhav may not have the charisma of his cousin Raj, he certainly tried to apply a wider idea to his vision for the party. Unfortunately for both the party and him, while his vision may not have worked, the return to the past is both false and likely to backfire. The Sena had to backtrack when it took on Sachin Tendulkar last year on the same issue of Mumbai being part of India.

In a sense, the Sena is eating right into the MNS's hands by mimicking it. While this is an attempt to regain lost ground, the sad fact for the Sena is that that land has already been captured by the MNS. To constantly have to go back to narrow-minded and shrill hectoring in order to appeal to a small, lumpen constituency only shows desperation. This is visible to everyone and especially to the MNS.

The Sena needs a rethink on all levels. Its saffron partner the BJP is all support for statehood for Vidarbha, which means one more point of contention for it to handle.